Concurrent Programming on Android

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.