This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development-related article every day during the month of August 2021.
Mobile apps are often front ends for APIs, so one of the first things you should learn about Android programming after getting a reasonable grasp on the basics is how to access an API. If you’re at this stage, this is your lucky day: Tutorials.EU has just posted a new tutorial titled Everything You Need To Know About Retrofit in Android | Get Data from an API that shows you how to build an app that accesses the Rick and Morty API:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyqK1hbZ6Z4
There are a number of Android libraries that you can use to access APIs, including OkHttp, Volley, and the one used in this tutorial: Retrofit.
Both OkHttp and Retrofit are creations of the digital payments and financial services company Square, whose work you’ve probably encountered when buying something. Both are HTTP clients, but when it comes to accessing APIs, you want to use Retrofit, because that’s exactly what it’s for.
This video is the first in a series. This first video will cover the basics of API access with Retrofit. There’ll be a second video where you’ll clean up the app’s architecture using the MVVM pattern, and then a third video where you’ll change the implementation so that it uses coroutines to perform tasks in the background.
The top of the RedMagic 6R box. Tap to view at full size.
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development-related article every day during the month of August 2021.
I write apps for both iOS and Android devices, so I make it a point to own both an iPhone and an Android phone. Since I’m giving my current Android device, a Motorola One Hyper, to my father-in-law so that he has a mobile phone from the current millennium, I needed a replacement. This set of photos is of that replacement: the RedMagic 6R.
The bottom of the RedMagic 6R box. Tap to view at full size.
The side of the RedMagic 6R box. Tap to view at full size.
RedMagic, a sub-brand of Nubia, which was originally a sub-brand of higher-end phones from Shenzhen-based phone and telco equipment company ZTE, specializes in gaming phones. In addition to using the better CPU and GPU chipsets required for gaming, RedMagic also does a better job of packaging than you’d expect from many other Chinese phone companies who are competing solely on price.
Case in point: Compare the sleek RedMagic packaging you’ve seen so far to the box that my 3rd-generation Motorola G came in:
Tap to read the original article.
I peeled off the shrink wrap and opened the box to see this:
The top layer inside the RedMagic 6R box. Tap to view at full size.
The RedMagic 6R packaging is layered in a manner similar to the iPhone’s. The top layer is a box, which I flipped over to open, as shown below:
Opening the top layer box. Tap to view at full size.
In addition to the SIM tray ejection pin, the top layer box contained the following:
The contents of the top layer box. Tap to view at full size.
Its contents were the Quick Start Guide, a warranty card…
The Quick Start Guide and warranty card. Tap to view at full size.
…as well as a basic case, contained within a protective envelope:
The included case, still inside its envelope. Tap to view at full size.
The case itself is one of those clear, pliable, “soft gel” ones:
The case. Tap to view at full size.
The next layer contained the phone itself:
The phone layer. Tap to view at full size.
The phone’s thin protective plastic sleeve has a little tab that makes it easy to lift out of the box, which was a nice little high-end touch:
The phone, now out of its box. Tap to view at full size.
Here’s the front of the phone, which is still inside its protective plastic sleeve…
The front of the phone, still in its sleeve. Tap to view at full size.
…and here’s the back:
The back of the phone, still in its sleeve. Tap to view at full size.
Finally, I hit the bottom layer, which contained the AC adapter, a USB-C to USB-A charging/data cable, and a USB-C to 3.5 mm headphone adapter:
The bottom layer of the box. Tap to view at full size.
I knew that the RedMagic 6R came with a basic soft gel case, I decided to spend an extra 15 bucks for the hard case, which came in this box:
The box for the RedMagic 6R hard case. Tap to view at full size.
Here’s the case:
The RedMagic 6R hard case. Tap to view at full size.
This may be my favorite Android unboxing experience of all time. It’s certainly a good deal more photogenic than the 3rd-gen Moto G unboxing experience:
Here’s your weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events — plus a little area tech news — for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, August 9 through Sunday, August 15, 2021.
This is a weekly service from Tampa Bay’s tech blog, Global Nerdy! For the past four years, I’ve been compiling a list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events happening in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. There’s a lot going on in our scene here in “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”!
This list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under the category of:
Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
Tech project management / agile processes
Video, board, and role-playing games
Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
Toastmasters (because nerds really need to up their presentation game)
Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
Anything I deem geeky
I’m moving this list to Fridays so that you’ve got more time to plan for the upcoming week. Let me know if this change works for you (or if it doesn’t)!
By “Tampa Bay and surrounding areas”, this list covers events that originate or are aimed at the area within 100 miles of the Port of Tampa. At the very least, that includes the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, but as far north as Ocala, as far south as Fort Myers, and includes Orlando and its surrounding cities.
San Francisco-based fintech startup Fast, an online checkout company, is expanding to Tampa.
Fast announced the plans on Tuesday during an event in partnership with Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, NASCAR driver Parker Kligerman and other local athletes at Sparkman Wharf.
Fast CEO Domm Holland will lead the efforts to expand in Tampa and name it the company’s East Coast hub. Holland co-founded the company with former Uber operations executive Allison Barr Allen.
“I’ve been asked by many Silicon Valley friends why Tampa? One of the biggest reasons is Mayor Jane Castor,” Holland said, crediting her understanding of his business needs and how Fast fits into the city’s goals of bolstering the tech sector.
“I wanted to be in an area brimming with innovative energy and stocked with skilled talent,” Holland said.
Here in Tampa Bay, a not-so-quiet tech boom was already underway. From Oldsmar and Clearwater to Tampa and St. Pete, more and more tech companies were choosing to move to – or get their start in – the area. So when the world transitioned from hard copy to the cloud, the region was well-prepared to step into the role everyone needed: help figuring all that stuff out.
Perhaps the best example is Blue.cloud, a cloud-only digital transformation company that got its start in Tampa Bay. Having already been in operation for more than 15 years, Blue.cloud (formerly Bluenet, founded in 2004) was one of the industry leaders in a perfect position to leap to the rescue last March.
Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?
If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.
Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development a day during the month of August 2021.
Today, I’m giving you a quick entry for Android August:The Awesome Android Complete Reference repo on GitHub. This is a curated list of great Android development reference material, including tutorials, projects showcasing various architectures, third-party libraries, UI references, notes on performance and optimization, best practices, and more.
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development a day during the month of August 2021.
While you can buy Android video courses on Udemy and other places, don’t forget that there’s a good selection of great video tutorials for free. These are my current favorites.
If you’re new to Android development, chances are that you’ll actually be learning not one, but two different things simultaneously: the Android framework and the Kotlin programming language.
If you want a solid grasp of Kotlin, I can’t thnk of a better YouTube video than Donn Felker’s Kotlin for Beginners. The video is almost 10 hours long, but it’s quite thorough. Even experienced developers who are new to Kotlin will find it helpful:
My current favorite Android tutorial video on YouTube is Philipp Lackner’s Build a Simple Android App, which walks you through the process of building a “to-do list” app in just over an hour:
Straight from the Google mothership, Android Basics in Kotlin is a YouTube video-based course that tries to walk the middle road between teaching Android development and teaching Kotlin. It does this by having you build a set of apps.
If you’re into certifications, this course is designed to prepare you for the Associate Android Developer certification exam. Units 1 through 5 of the course are available, and there’s a Unit 6 coming soon!
I’ll admit it. I’ve been watching my new phone — a RedMagic 6R Android gaming phone, which I wrote about in this article — travel from the factory in Hong Kong all the way to my house in Tampa.
As I write this, it landed in FedEx’s Memphis facility two hours ago.
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development-related article every day during the month of August 2021.
If you’re a regular podcast listener and an Android developer (or an aspiring Android developer), you’ll want to check out these podcasts. Not only are they informative, but they’re also active, or in other words, they’re still in the process of making more episodes. Add them to your playlist and deepen your Android knowledge!
This is probably the longest-running Android developer podcasts. Hosted by Nick and Romain, two developers from the Android engineering team, Android Developers Backstage covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google.
Jetpack Compose, the reactive data-driven UI toolkit for Android, has finally hit the 1.0 stage, and it’s included in the “Arctic Fox” release of Android Studio. It’s the hot new thing, and Android Developers Backstage is right on top of it, with several recent episodes covering different aspects of Jetpack Compose.
For sheer volume of developer-focused episodes and topics, you can’t beat Fragmented, the Android-centric developer podcast hosted by Donn Felker and Kaushik Gopal. While they do talk a lot about Android, they focus on all sorts of topics that are relevant to software developers of all stripes, such as the importance of having a growth mindset, the importance of code conventions, the three things every developer needs to be able to do, growing an online presence in the software industry, and more.
I’m sure that there are still lots of Android developers out there who prefer to code in Java, but as far as I’m concered, Kotlin is the Android programming language. And wouldn’t you know it — there is a Kotlin programming podcast, and it comes straight from the source: JetBrains, the dev tool vendor behind Android Studio and Kotlin. Better still, it’s hosted by Kotlin’s best advocate, Hadi Hariri, JetBrains’ VP of Developer Advocacy.
This is the official Android developer podcast, put together by the Android team. It provides summaries of what the Android team has been up to that you, the developer should know about. It covers library and platform releases, articles, videos, podcasts, samples, code labs — whatever seems relevant and interesting for Android developers.
Lately, there’ve been a number of episodes covering the beta version of the upcoming Android 12.
“All About Android” is aptly named: For over 500 episodes, they’ve been covering all sorts of Android developments — “the biggest news, freshest hardware, best apps and geekiest how-tos”.
Samsung, the people behind what’s considered to be the Android flagship phone, have a developer podcast: POW! The Samsung Developers Podcast. It’s hosted Samsung senior developer evangelist Tony Morelan, Sr..
This is the official podcast of my friends at RayWenderlich.com, the premier mobile development tutorial site. RayWenderlich.com started off as an iOS dev tutorial site (it’s how I learned), but they’ve expanded to cover Android, Unity, and Flutter development, and so has the podcast.
