CHAPTER 2: Configuring Your Android App Development System 59Android Wearables: Creating a Smartwatch Application
In Chapter 15, we will look at a rapidly emerging area of Android wearable devices. The most
popular and widespread type of wearable Android devices currently are smartwatches, so we will
develop an Android application for the popular Neptune Pine Android SmartWatch.
This is another area of Android development that can be more complicated than some of the other
areas that have been covered, and for this reason, I saved this for the last part of the book. I am also
writing an entire book on this area called Pro Android Wearables in case you want to go more deeply
into this popular area of Android application development.
The reason I am using the Neptune Pine SmartWatch for the development in this chapter is because
it is a full Android device and does not require the special Android Wear SDK, so you can use your
existing IDE setup and develop apps for the Neptune Pine as you have been doing throughout the
book. This will allow us to simply go the next level, as you will have been doing from chapter to
chapter.
Android Appliances: Creating an Android Appliance App
In Chapter 16, we will take a look into the future of Android application development, which lies in
the areas of Android Appliances, which include cloud computers, iTV sets, 4K iTVs, game consoles,
robots, drones, home security products, kitchen appliances, automobile dashboards, car stereos,
and similar emerging consumer electronics products.
Android Appliances are anything that are not common Android devices such as smartphones,
tablets, phablets, or notebooks, and that are not Android wearables. I am also writing a
Pro Android Appliances title that will cover this emerging area if you wish to get into Android
appliance development at a more advanced level.
Most of these Android appliances will use Bluetooth technology to talk to another “primary”
Android device (usually this is your smartphone), and thus, we will take a look at these concepts
and techniques regarding developing for the future of Android devices in this chapter. This will give
readers a comprehensive view of exactly what the app development skills that were mastered within
this book can do for their app development bottom line!
The Future of Android: 64-bit Android 5.0
Just as this book title was going to press, Google announced Android 5.0 at the Google IO
conference, and so I decided to add a “Future of Android” chapter to this book, going over how
Android 5.0 will be different, including a new 64-bit Linux OS Kernel, ART run-time, and Java 7
support. This chapter will serve to upgrade this book title to being an Android 5.0 title, and one of
the first Android 5.0 Absolute Beginners titles at that, so it will be worth my extra effort to add in this
comprehensive chapter on Android 5.0.
It is important to note that Java 6 code is compatible with Java 7, and that Android classes which
we cover in this book will also work under future versions of Android, a concept called “backwards
compatibility.” This concept is especially important to Google and Android as they don’t want to
“break” their developers code, meaning the concepts and techniques you learn in this book will