Android Best Practices by Godfrey Nolan shows you how to make your Android apps stand out from the crowd with great reviews. Why settle for just making any Android app? Build a brilliant Android app instead that lets your users praise it for ease of use, better performance, and more. Using a series of example apps which gradually evolve throughout this book, Android Best Practices brings together current Android best practices from user interface (UI)/user experience (UX) design, test-driven development (TDD), and design patterns (e.g., MVC) to help you take your app to the next level. In this book you'll learn how to: * Use Android design patterns for consistent UI experience on many devices * Use agile techniques such as test-driven development, behavior-driven development, and continuous integration * Improve the speed and overall performance of your app * Organize an Android app using design patterns such as MVC/MVP * Create and consume REST and SOAP web services Designing and developing an app that runs well on many if not all the leading Android smartphones and tablets today can be one of the most daunting challenges for Android developers. Well, this book takes much of the mystery out of that for you. After reading and using Android Best Practices, you'll become a much better Android app designer and developer, which in turn can make your apps better placed and more successful in the market place.

Augmented reality (AR) offers a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment, where the elements and surroundings are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as graphics and GPS data. It makes a game more real. Your social media app puts you where want to be or go. Pro Android Augmented Reality walks you through the foundations of building an augmented reality application. From using various software and Android hardware sensors, such as an accelerometer or a magnetometer (compass), you'll learn the building blocks of augmented reality for both marker- and location-based apps. Case studies are included in this one-of-a-kind book, which pairs nicely with other Android development books. After reading Pro Android Augmented Reality, you'll be able to build augmented reality rich media apps or integrate all the best augmented reality into your favorite Android smartphone and/or tablet.What you'll learn * How to use most Android cameras * How to find the user's location with GPS data * How to detect movement and orientation of the device * How to program against the accelerometer and compass * How to use the AndAR library in marker recognition * How to create an artificial horizon for your app * How to integrate the Google Maps API into AR apps * How to build enterprise augmented reality apps using the case studies in this book Who this book is for This book is for Android developers familiar with Android programming, but new to the camera, accelerometer, magnetometer and building augmented reality applications in general. Table of Contents * Applications of Augmented Reality * Basics of Augmented Reality on the Android Platform * Adding Overlays * Artificial Horizons * Other Features of Augmented Reality * A Simple App Using AR * A More Complex Project Using More AR Features * A Project Using All AR Features * An AR Game