Learn Android SDK Development From Scratch!

Learn Android SDK Development From Scratch!

on Aug 27th 2012 with 46 comments

Interested in learning native Android SDK development? Now is the perfect time to get started! Mobiletuts+ is pleased to announce an in-depth, fully up-to-date session on how to become an Android SDK developer.

Five Reasons to Learn Native Android Development

  • Market Opportunity: According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Android phones comprise 68.1% of the smartphone market worldwide, with over 104.8 million units sold.
  • Career Advancement: Mobile developers are in high demand. Already know HTML5 or iOS? Adding native Android SDK development to your resume will only enhance your competitiveness in the market.
  • Cross-Platform Distribution: If you’ve been successful with a native application on iOS, Windows, or Blackberry, learning the Android SDK will allow you to port your app natively to the Android platform.
  • Innovative Freedom: The Android Market has far fewer restrictions than the iOS App Store. This means you are primarily limited only by the hardware and your imagination; not seemingly arbitrary business rules.
  • Academic Enhancement: Understanding the fundamentals of the Android SDK will introduce you to a new programming paradigm, regardless of whether you have a prior background in mobile development or not.

As you can see, we think learning the Android SDK is a worthwhile investment of time. By the end of this casually paced yet comprehensive session, we hope you’ll agree!

Session Format

Over the next month and a half, we will be releasing weekly tutorials on getting started with the Android SDK. The tutorials in this session will cover everything you need to know to become comfortable working with the SDK and begin writing Android applications. We will also release interviews with successful Android developers and will quiz you on your understanding of the material.

Tutorials published to-date include:

This list will be updated weekly as new content is published. Check back soon!

Session Preparation

In order to prepare for this session, you may want to read through the Mobiletuts+ Learn Java for Android SDK Development series. Java is the programming language used by the Android SDK, and you’ll need to be at least somewhat familiar with Java syntax in order to build native SDK apps.

What Do You Want to Build?

Planning on following along? Sound off in the comments section below to let us know what kind of Android applications you would like to build.

 
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  • Doug D

    I would like to learn how to make complex and beautiful android layouts, and learn how to use the maps api more effectively.

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Hey Doug, thanks for you feedback. I’ve added these requests to our list of potential Android SDK content.

    • Carlos

      +1 for beautiful android layouts. Nobody buys ugly App. App Appearance is important to sell.

      • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
        Author

        Thanks Carlos. It helps to know that we have demand for this.

    • Debojyoti Ghosh

      Just came across this post. I am new to mobile app development, and have decided to start with Android.
      Will gain a lot from this series. :)

    • Debojyoti Ghosh

      +1 for this.

  • http://www.akkis.gr akkis

    I am waiting for the season! I believe it will be a helpful tutorial series for us we want to begin with Android development. Once again, thank you!

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Great, glad to hear that Akkis! Hopefully we’ll get you up and running.

  • David Rodriguez

    I’d would like to learn about data management in android, for example SQLite. I find many tutorials on parsing XML’s but very few on how to store the data itself.

  • Simi26J

    I’m interested in building an android app that will use the phone camera to scan and save barcode information along with some additional input from the user (and perhaps the geolocation).
    I would also like to learn how to synchronise this kind of data between multiple devices (with the use of an external web server perhaps?)

    I’m very glad you guys are doing this series! Great job and keep the good stuff coming ;)
    Simi

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Thanks for the feedback. Although it would be separate from our “From Scratch” session, I’ve thought about running a series on a bar code scanner app in the past. Would anyone else like to see this?

  • Rennan

    I would like to learn how to make a complete app. Splash Screen->Menu->Activities including layout techniques using images…

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Great, keep following along! We’re going to start off walking through all the tools needed (this is a major stumbling block for some people), and then we’ll launch out into a “Hello World” app before starting a series on a more advanced concept.

  • http://www.cartondonofriopartners.com K.C. Hunter

    Just getting back into mobile development at my work (finally) and am excited about hitting up Android. Only tooled around with it a few times so this is a good introduction.

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Great, glad to hear this session will be useful for you! Thanks for the feedback, and keep us in RSS as updates should be posted each week.

  • http://www.cartondock.com Cartondock

    I would like to suggest tutorials on building android apps for websites and also on how to use android apps to make notification on the phone and may be a bit about integrating APIs. I’m largely waiting for these tuts :)

  • ioni

    I would like to build an app that uses data from the web. Like a news app, horoscope app or any app that uses data from the web. I already have an app like build with phonegap, but I would like to go native.

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      This is a very common app task, so I’ll be sure that we cover this in an upcoming tutorial. Thanks for the feedback!

  • Prasath

    This is great as the session format covers all the platform. I would like to build an app to scan a document and retrieve the values/text in it.

  • http://www.julianjosephs.com Julian

    Wow. This could not come at a better time as I decided to start learning two skills two weeks ago, Portuguese and Android Development! I’ve been wondering where to start with Android. Most of the books cover the older pre 4.0 versions and the rest I don’t really like.

    I would like to build an app that uses Augmented Reality (AR). I truly believe that AR is going to be the next big thing and with Google’s Project Glass set to run Android, it’ll be easy to port any Android phone skills to the glasses. Making Android SDK skill even more valuable.

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Awesome, glad to know you’ll be following along. :) We will be posting 1-2 tutorials/articles in this session each week, and the session should wrap up sometime in the middle to end of October.

      With regard to Augmented Reality, we have a lot of content in development right now on this topic for both iOS and Android. No word on a release date as I’m still working out the details of that, but hopefully it will be here soon.

      Stick around!

      • http://www.julianjosephs.com Julian

        Sounds great. I hope it’s the kind that recognizes the object using computer vision algorithms and can either draw information over the camera to show what the object is, how it’s oriented, or perhaps add or show other objects in the view.

  • Jeremy

    When are the tutorials going to start popping up? Just getting familiar w/Java at the moment…. interested in starting simple with a live wallpaper or something and then moving to some more advanced development.

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      We’ll be posting 1-2 tutorials each week from now until roughly the end of October. The series will start off a bit slow and pick up as we move along. The best way to keep track of things is to either follow us on RSS/Facebook/G+/Twitter or just bookmark this page and check back every week or so. As you can see from the above, we already have the first three tutorials posted, and I’m encouraging everyone to go through the “Learn Java for Android SDK Development” series linked above as either a Java crash-course or refresher.

  • Dilip Merani

    This is great to start, can wait for the tutorials.
    by the way the links for Android Prerequisites for Windows and Android Prerequisites for Linux are pointing to the MAC page

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Thanks for pointing that out Dilip, I’ve got the links working now!

  • Devang

    The biggest challenge I faced while developing for Android for a real world app was to make the app adapt to different screen sizes and densities. The app was image intensive and we even downloaded images from Web-services. It use to crash mercilessly on some devices while run flawlessly on others (mostly memory related issues due to image compression etc). The delays when compared to iOS on a better Android device were more and I had no clue how to optimize the Android code. Finally fonts appeared differently on HTC and Samsung phone. Some even showing foreign chars on HTC devices. So I would really love to see tips on how to handle the portability issues and cover as many android devices as possible with minimal customization. Also client expects to adapt it on Tabs … so I guess thats a whole new area to explore as well :) … Waiting for the series to start … hope we maintain a good pace :)

  • Svelg

    Not really about development, but I would like to know what are the best ways to promote and sell the application. Or at least in the development phase, which are the important elements to take care to sell the application well.
    Because this is the final goal and creating application is just useless if nobody buy or use it.

    Thanks in advance for your tuts.

  • Fran

    I’d like a web service consuming app with a beautiful layout made of fragments, using an Action Bar or ActionBarSherlock (in order to support older android versions) maintaining the recommended official style and patterns in developer.android.com

    Examples:

    1) A Twitter client
    2) A RSS or news reader

    Sorry my english! :P

  • Patrick Jackson

    Appreciated your decision a lot!

    I too want to revise my Android Development skills in the current version of ADT and Eclipse. However I have a question to ask.

    I want to go with my environment on the road. So instead of taking a notebook or a netbook, I decided to take a live distribution of Ubuntu with me in a portable hard drive. But I am facing problems in using the same ‘ADT folder’ (all of the API installed and tools) in both Windows and Linux (mainly Ubuntu). Please help by giving a solution for the same as it would save time and resources of mine in synchronizing between the two OS.

    Also, I love the way you write articles on how to achieve something rather than just another article for those methods and intents. It would be great if you focus more on the Gingerbread API and on solving compatibility issues, both hardware and software. Also, one always appreciate achieving something in Android on their own and from scratch rather than installing tons of apps. So please let us know how to do what other successful apps are doing.

    Sorry this is too long, but that’s enough, but for now!

  • Bipin

    I want to develop an app that takes in an input content for search on website(besides google) from user and performs search on user’s behalf and displays data

  • mrugen

    Hi ,
    I would like create a repository browser ,,to keep track of repositories of my choice, with a snazzy UI.

  • 43WDC.Sirius

    This is awesome ! . . Although, the “Introduction to Android Development” I think is out-dated. The screenshots and instructions are quite different from what i’m trying to do right now. I posted this at here for other developers would know it when they are about to explore those other series that are linked to your tutorials . .
    anyways. Thanks, this is so helpful specially to android-noobs like me . . :)

    • http://mobile.tutsplus.com Mark Hammonds
      Author

      Hey Sirius, what post specifically are you referring to? Please post in the link if possible.

  • Sean Salsman

    I would like to develop all kinds of stuff! First on the list, though, is an app that uses a form to collect data and send it (in-app, preferably, without the need for another mail app) to an email address. Also, it will ideally utilize a signature capture field. Woohoo!

    Looks like you already have the form tutorial. Nice! In fact, the whole series is nice. Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to break it down Barney-style for us. Much appreciated!

  • http://inventikasolutions.com/ Inventika Solutions

    Awesome! I’m planning to design an RSS reader for a blog. I’ve made one in HTML5 thanks to your tutorial but I want to develop a native RSS client.
    Thanks.

  • Ahmad Tariq

    well this is kewl but I wasn’t that much noob though lol .

  • HarrisMirza

    i want to make a simple music player (other music players lag)

  • Dave Macias

    i would like to develop a home replacement application, forget the dock at the bottom or the “pie” interface, people wants usability not fashion programs. My idea gives ease of use but i can’t make it happen until i learn proper development

  • Brijesh Chaudhari

    open iknowdroid.blogspot.com

    Might be helpful for you

  • Lisa Collins

    game apps!!

  • http://twitter.com/verneacular Verne

    a game. what else?

  • Jahanzaib

    internet apps..

  • Ram

    An app which could be more reliable and comfortable to users!