Android Developer Fundamentals Course

About this Android Developer Fundamentals Course

This project-driven curriculum from the Google Developer Training Team teaches practical, production-minded skills for building user-focused Android apps. The course emphasizes hands-on labs and progressive projects so learners apply concepts immediately: constructing adaptive UIs, managing component lifecycles, performing network I/O safely, persisting local data, and validating behavior through testing and debugging. Explanations are paired with sample projects that demonstrate common app architectures and modern, lifecycle-aware patterns.

What you’ll learn

The material centers on core Android platform skills and modern best practices that lead to maintainable applications. Key learning outcomes include:

• Responsive, adaptive UI: Build flexible layouts using constraint-based and resource-driven approaches; support multiple screen sizes, orientations, and device configurations with styles and themes.
• Lifecycle-aware components: Structure activities, fragments, and background work to respect lifecycle boundaries and preserve state through configuration changes.
• Background work and concurrency: Move CPU-intensive and network tasks off the main thread using modern, lifecycle-conscious mechanisms to avoid freezes and data loss.
• Networking and data handling: Integrate RESTful services, parse JSON payloads, handle connectivity edge cases, and map remote responses to UI elements.
• Efficient lists and navigation: Use RecyclerView patterns for large datasets, implement adapters and view holders, and design intuitive navigation flows.
• Local storage and state management: Persist user and app data responsibly, coordinate loading with lifecycle events, and provide continuity across rotations and interruptions.
• Testing and observability: Apply unit and UI testing strategies, use debugging and profiling tools, and adopt practices that raise app reliability and performance.

Who should use this course

The course is suitable for a broad range of learners and formats—self-study, instructor-led classrooms, or team onboarding. It scales from basic introductions to deeper, pragmatic patterns.

Beginners

Newcomers to Android will find clear, step-by-step labs that introduce layout building, resources, basic networking, and app structure without assuming prior Android experience. Projects guide you from simple UI screens to working, data-driven apps.

Intermediate developers

Developers familiar with Java or Kotlin can use the course to adopt lifecycle-safe practices, refactor blocking code, improve UI responsiveness, and master recommended APIs for networking and storage.

Experienced developers

Seasoned engineers will benefit from concise comparisons between legacy and modern approaches, practical migration advice, and examples that demonstrate how to harden and optimize existing apps.

Practical applications

Project examples convert concepts into deployable features: searchable content apps that fetch and display API results, compact productivity tools, and data-driven UIs. Each project demonstrates how to combine UI, asynchronous processing, caching, and error handling to produce extensible, real-world functionality.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Blocking the main thread: Run network and intensive tasks off the UI thread using lifecycle-safe components to prevent ANRs and poor UX.
• Neglecting configuration changes: Preserve user inputs and ongoing tasks across rotations and resource changes using retained or lifecycle-aware patterns.
• Updating UI from background threads: Ensure UI updates run on the main thread via callbacks or architecture components to avoid crashes and inconsistent state.
• Hardcoding resources: Use resource files for strings, dimensions, and colors to enable localization, theming, and consistent styling.

Practice exercises and projects

Labs progress from focused experiments to complete apps. Sample exercises include building a search-and-display app that fetches and parses JSON, refactoring background work to lifecycle-friendly patterns, adding caching and retry logic, and iterating on UI responsiveness and accessibility for a polished user experience.

Key terms and practical tips

• Lifecycle-aware components: Prefer ViewModel, LiveData (or modern equivalents) and coroutines/WorkManager over legacy helpers for robust state and background work management.
• RecyclerView: The recommended approach for efficient lists and smooth scrolling; combine with diffing utilities for performant updates.
• REST & JSON: Core formats and patterns demonstrated across projects to show networked data flows and error handling.
• Tip: Cache API results thoughtfully and favor lifecycle-aware components to reduce network usage, improve perceived performance, and simplify testing.

Ready to start

Work through the projects in sequence: begin with UI construction, then introduce lifecycle-aware networking and local data handling, and finish with testing and performance improvements. The course’s lab-first approach helps learners build confidence by creating working apps they can extend and ship.

Recommended prerequisites & difficulty

Recommended prerequisites: basic programming familiarity in Java or Kotlin and a willingness to work through code labs. Difficulty: beginner-to-intermediate—designed to onboard new developers while offering deeper patterns and migration guidance for those with prior experience.