Android Programming Tutorials is a collection of exercises that will have you build a pair of relatively sophisticated Android applications: a restaurant database and a microblogging client. The goal of the tutorials is to expose you to a wide range of Android capabilities in the context of a larger application, rather than standalone demonstrations like a programming guide might profile. Each exercise is a set of step-by-step instructions on how to add different features and functions. There is only a bit of theory presented, focusing instead of having you "learn by doing".

Each exercise contains pointers for further reading, along with "extra credit" tasks you might wish to try, to experiment in areas beyond what the step-by-step instructions supply. Hence, this book is geared for people who like working through code, but want guidance along the way.

These tutorials cover many major areas of Android application development, including:

Setting up basic user interfaces, with fields, buttons, lists, tabs, and radio buttons
Adding option menus
Supporting both portrait and landscape orientations, with custom user interfaces for each
Storing data in local databases
Collecting preferences from the user and applying those preferences
Working with background threads
Having multiple screens ("activities") in a single application, linked to each other
Accessing Web services via your own HTTP client code or via existing third-party JARs that somebody else wrote to access a service's API
Setting up Android components decoupled from their user interfaces ("services"), including allowing a service in one application to serve clients in other applications
Putting icons in the status bar ("notifications")
Integrating location tracking and Google Maps
Embedding a WebKit Web browser (e.g., for online help)
Incorporating video playback (e.g., for a screencast to accompany the online help)
Animating our user interface, to allow portions of it to fade in or out based on user request
Creating "app widgets" - bits of our UI that can go on the user's home screen
Integrating with the camera and accelerometer