Embedded Android: Porting, Extending, and Customizing

by Karim Yaghmour

Embedded Android is for Developers wanting to create embedded systems based on Android and for those wanting to port Android to new hardware, or creating a custom development environment. Hackers and moders will also find this an indispensible guide to how Android works.

Genres: Programming, Technical, Nonfiction, Computer Science, Technology

414 pages, ebook

First published October 1, 2011

Reviews

[Arvind · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a must read book for Android AOSP tinkerers.. But not much for the Android application developers.The book has a breadth wise approach to all topics where it almost covers the key topics but it limits itself to provide only less information about each topic but when this book is used along with the Android Internals Confectioners cookbook.They go well together and this book acts as a starting book to learn how Android works at the OS level and for further reading checkout the Android Internals book.

[Venkatesh-Prasad]

The best book for an informative and accessible peek under the hood of Android platform. This is all in the first chapter which is 70 pages long. Later chapters provide interesting details about the organization of Android code, various components of Android, how they are related, and how they cooperate. This also covers a bunch of tools (such as adb) used make sense of Android while debugging. A great place to start peeking under the hood of Android platform.

[Bruno · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone looking to build their own Android fork. Although it doesn't go to deep in how to support your own device, the explanation about the internals and how all the components connect to each other is fundamental.

[Blundell · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good, as a read front to back and now as a reference book. Need to find more like this.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an early release from 2011 which gave a good, if brief, overview of AOSP's history, subsystems, build system, and board interface. This book gets down and dirty with the sources in a way I haven't seen in other Android books. Where in-depth analysis of a system is beyond the scope of the book, the author provides links to related documents and key source files.

Some of AOSP is self-explanatory with a bit of exploration, but some things, like the build system and device trees, are rather esoteric. The chapters covering these topics were particularly helpful to me.

My only complaint is that the book, at 133 pages, was too brief, but again, I read an old early release. The latest 2012 release is 300 pages. I'd love to read the latest and greatest, but $24 for an early release ebook is a bit much in my mind.

In any case, this book should be considered required reading for anyone interesting in porting Android to new hardware, or creating custom source-level mods. It will, without a doubt, save a great amount of time that would otherwise be spent grepping and grokking the AOSP sources.

[Alessandro Pellizzari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buon manuale che riesce a spiegare bene una buona parte dell'architettura di un sistema Android, e dà buone indicazioni su dove mettere le mani in caso si volesse realizzare un dispositivo Android o, ma non lo dichiara apertamente, una ROM personalizzata per un dispositivo esistente.

In diversi campi è abbastanza carente di dettagli e approfondimenti, ma d'altro canto il codice è open source e quindi può (e deve) essere letto, quindi già sapere dove iniziare a guardare è un ottimo punto di partenza, e non esistono altri manuali sull'argomento.

Consigliato sia che vogliate fare piccole modifiche alla vostra ROM non standard, sia che vogliate costruirvi un dispositivo Android, ma in questo secondo caso consiglio anche la lettura di altri manuali sull'architettura del kernel Linux.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book that serves as a good introduction to the internals of the Android Operating System.

For those interested in getting Android up and running on a new piece of hardware, this book will serve as a guide that tells you how to download Android and how to start building and customising it to your requirements.

It also serves as a good book that gets you started on understanding just how Android works from the system point of view; what are its underlying services, what they do and how to modify the services or add new custom services to your Android system.

If you are interested in programming and running an Android app, this book is not for you.

[Alex Salo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously this is a very technical book, with a nice overview of the Android system at the beginning which gives a basic grasp on the core principles. Otherwise will only be useful to people actually working on Android OS.

[Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is the only and the best resource of Android Embedded Developers and System Integrators

[Pavel Livshits · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best and unique book on Android internals. Very clear stated, practical and useful.

[Elie De Brauwer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, unfortunately the book is getting old very fast.

[Navid · Rating 2 out of 5]

First two chapter of the book is awesome, i wish this book was 2000 pages and all was like first two chapter. Discussions and analysis of architecture of android with a little bit of code in some places.

But it isn't. From chapter 3 it starts describing details about command line and stuff which most of them you can find with single google search.

I am not saying this is bad book. No it is not, but it was not useful for me and was not kind book i like to read.