Way back in 2008, I was given my first Android device. It was the Dream, also known as the G1, and I immediately started tinkering with it. After all, here was a smartphone with the promise of thousands of applications, and who knew how many hundreds of possible handsets. That shows how much I knew at the time! I really should have been thinking in the order of millions of applications, and tens of thousands of devices, because that is where Android is heading today.

Whether it is traditional phones, tablets, cars, in-flight entertainment systems, robots, or any other of the myriad Android devices out there, what makes them great are the applications written by people like you, dear reader! Every day, Android developers push the possibilities of what applications—and Android—can do, and it is that energy that draws me to the community, and to helping in my own small way with books like Pro Android.

One of the best observations about technology and innovation I have heard is that innovation happens when you create something and share it with another person, which they then adapt and use in a totally unexpected way. So let me commend this book to you in that spirit. Enjoy everything Pro Android has to offer you, and take it to create something totally unexpected! We'll be first in line to try it out, whatever it is.

—Grant Allen
New York
May 2015