Learning Mobile App Development: A Hands-on Guide to Building Apps with iOS and Android

8. Access to Hardware and Sensors in Android

Mobile computing devices have hardware features that significantly distinguish them from their more stationary counterparts. Hardware features allow the device to both sense and interact with its environment. These features enable the reexamination of assumptions many developers make when developing a piece of software. The ability to sense and interact with the environment allows the developer to rethink business processes encapsulated in software. Innovative and powerful approaches to solving problems are possible. This suggests that the app developer needs to have a working knowledge of how to integrate the device’s hardware features into an app. This chapter describes how to integrate several different ...