Smashing Android UI: Responsive User Interfaces and Design Patterns for Android Phones and Tablets 1st Edition

I'm relatively new to Android development having started just six months ago. I recently published my first app and wish I would have had this book as a reference throughout the process. I love great UI because as an app user, I love the great user experience a well thought out and polished UI brings. So nailing the UI in any of my apps is very important to me.This book is not about giving you the code up front and telling you exactly what to write to implement a certain UI. It does a relatively good job, however, in pointing you towards websites and sources where you can read more about how to implement certain UI code. And it also does a nice job in highlighting various open source libraries which implement the UI concepts.What I love most about the book is the level of depth used in exploring all stock Android 4.x UI concepts and methods. The author tells you when it might be a good idea to use one UI concept over another. He also describes why not to use something for a particular need and suggests which UI concept might be used instead, and why. I think such UI discussions are very important up front, before writing any code, because it forces the developer to think clearly how the user will use his or her app. Especially the first few chapters of the book talk about UI planning and how to make the user "not think" when using your app. Such pre-coding planning is critical for a user friendly app.If you care at all about you user experience when using your app, this book must be on your list of must-reads. As Google strives for a more unified and slicker user experience with Android 4.x, app developers should to update their pre-4.x apps UI to the latest. This book will be a great asset in that quest, as well as it is a great asset for any new apps being developed for Android 4.x and on.

I've preordered that book and was waiting for it! when it arrives, takes me 5 days to read it!!Is an excellent book for advanced android developers and for designers. It has a lot of usability tips, specially for developers and designers to understand that mobile world is completly different than web.I've read a lot of android books and all of them were allways technical books, this is the book we need to close the circle.Love it!

This was a recommended reading for my university degree subject. I can see why the teacher chose this book. It is very imformative and helpful.

Excellent book, material is well organized and informative... however it would have been better if the writer provided more coding examples rather than writing pages discussing a single idea.I recommend this book to new Android developers.

The book gives a decent overview of what you are capable of doing with the native Android UI components. It does however not bring anything new to the table to experienced developers.The book was quick and easy to read, with lots of nice examples.

Too much words for nothing. No code, no solutions. Just explains. I wanted more from book. It is not enough.

2012 might be described as the year Android finally acknowledged the importance of great design alongside great engineering. The rise of the tablet market, the launch of Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" and with it the first official Android Design guidelines really changed the way developers must approach the design of their applications in order to be successful.This book serves as a great introduction to these new design approaches and as a companion piece to Google's official Android Design site. The author does a fantastic job of presenting the material in a way that is relevant to developers and designers alike. I would recommend it to Android developers of all experience levels as well as to designers who may be experienced in working with other mobile platforms (can you guess which?), but are new to Android.Demand for Android development skills is on the rise and there is currently a glut of Android development books appearing on bookshelves. Many of these attempt to provide the broadest possible API coverage and thus fail to provide much in the way of depth around design. This book really stands out thanks to its focused nature and excellent coverage of an important topic that is so often overlooked.

This book is especially useful for all designers of Android apps. Juhani Lehtimäki presents important Android concepts, that are often unknown on other platforms and thus too often neglected by designers. But these concepts are essential for getting your app right and for getting good reviews on the Play Store.One focus is on creating responsive designs for Android Apps to support the multiple form factors found on Android. One cannot stress this enogh. So please heed his advice.Also great is his list of patterns and in which context to use them as well as his list of anti-patterns.Even though I think this book is more for designers I - a developer myself - have gained a lot by it. Usability and user experience are often our weak spots and Smashing Android UI helps us to avoid mistakes right from the beginning.And not to forget: This book is also a useful tool when dealing with designers and trying to find a common language.

As an Android developer, I am really glad someone has finally got around to writing a book to cover all the different elements that make up an Android interface. The book is not a short overview, but an in depth review of the graphical component choices necessary to ensure your application presents the most responsive and elegant interface to the user. I have not previously bought a smashing magazine or book, but on the evidence of this it will be something I will strongly consider in future. The book is dripping with excellent user interface examples and uses QR codes to link to example applications which can be downloaded via the Google Play store.Having published a couple of applications over the last six months I will be concentrating my efforts on reworking these titles based on the knowledge gained in this book. You should note this is not strictly a programming book (a couple of code snippets are provided), it is a user interface design book and therefore has very little code inside. What it does have is a detailed explanations of why certain actions should be performed in a particular way and order. The design patterns highlighted are not ground breaking, but they do show how little changes can make a massive difference both to the user experience and also activity management within your application. My personal take on one particular example was that I had written too much code trying to get a user to perform a particular action when replacing it with one graphical component removed the entire issue - how cool is that!The book itself is drop dead gorgeous and the page design is one of the best I have seen. It is literally like reading a sumptuous colour magazine. I highly recommend this book and would say it is an essential purchase for anyone developing user interfaces for the android ecosystem.

I have bought this book earlier today and I am very pleased with its content so far (and have heard many people over the Internet praising it, and the author). However, my disappointment comes from the Kindle edition of the book. After having had a look at the paperback version, and the Google Play one, the Kindle version does not look as nice, even on tablet. The images are in a bad resolution, and the book layout is not respected at all: it means that you often don't see the described images with their descriptions and context. Unpleasant experience.Conclusion: If it was only about the book, I would definitely give it a perfect score, but the 4 is justified by the poor quality of the Kindle edition.

Mostly presentation and interaction issues with little code was a bit of a disappointment for me however would be superb for a designer and a coder that has more time to really get into interface aesthetically pleasing design.If you are looking for a lot of code however this is not the book.Designers however should love it.

Designing for Android is a pain sometimes, however, this is a good book to get you started. Summarises all that on the Smashing Mag blog/Site and good to have around for referencing. Though bare in mind that with the ever changing Mobile market some of the information can get out of date very quickly.

I have read the reviews of that book and i was worried that it might be another book for Android. I have two years experience in Android so I didn't want o buy another book for Android programming. I borrowed the book to take a look and it really gives great examples and explanations on how to deal with the most difficult part in Android, fragmentation for all the devices. Although i could do my job by borrowing the book, I bought it because I think it is essential for everyone who is doing Android programming.