Asynchronous Android

Harness the power of multi-core mobile processors to build responsive Android applications

Overview

• Learn how to use Android's high-level concurrency constructs to keep your applications smooth and responsive
• Leverage the full power of multi-core mobile CPUs to get more work done in less time
• From quick calculations to scheduled downloads, each chapter explains the available mechanisms of asynchronous programming in detail

In Detail

With more than a million apps available from Google Play, it is more important than ever to build apps that stand out from the crowd. To be successful, apps must react quickly to user input, deliver results in a flash, and sync data in the background. Multithreading is the ability of an operating system to execute different parts of a program, called threads, simultaneously. It is one of the major techniques used for parallel computing and concurrency.

This book provides a step-by-step tutorial which will explain how Asynchronous Tasks and Handlers are used for performing multithreading with Android to improve the performance of Android applications. This book also guides you through the concurrency constructs provided by the Android platform, illustrating the applications, benefits, and pitfalls of each.

In this book, you'll learn how to use AsyncTask correctly to perform operations in the background, keeping user interfaces running smoothly while avoiding treacherous memory leaks. It will also help you discover Handler, HandlerThread, and Looper, the related and fundamental building blocks of asynchronous programming in Android.

This book will help you to build well-behaved applications with smooth and responsive user interfaces. By the end of this book, you will be able to delight your users with speedy results and data that is always fresh.

What you will learn from this book

• Understand Android's process model and its implications on your applications
• Exercise multithreading to build well-behaved Android applications that work with the platform
• Apply and control concurrency to deliver results quickly and keep your applications responsive to user input
• Discover Android-specific constructs that make asynchronous programming easy and efficient
• Learn how to apply Android's concurrency constructs to build smooth and responsive applications

Approach

Asynchronous Android is a step-by-step guide that builds a complete picture of the concurrency constructs available on the Android platform.

Who this book is written for

This book is for Android developers who want to learn about the advanced concepts of Android programming. No prior knowledge of concurrency and asynchronous programming is required. This book is also targeted towards Java experts who are new to Android.