Course Review – Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 2 (Adam Porter, UMD)

Here is my review of May-Jun 2015 Coursera offering of Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 2, which is the second course in
Mobile Cloud Computing with Android Specialization. It is ranked 4.4 out of 5 (very good), while I passed with 100% grade.

Technologies and Material. The course dives deep into user interactions with Android, interactions of applications with each other, and handling of sensors.
More specifically, basic Threading, Handlers, AsyncTasks, and Notifications are mixed with Graphics, Gestures, and Multimedia + handling of accelerometer and location sensors.
Programming assignments involve completing Java code. Students are asked to build a fully functional app from scratch for a final project. Unlike for the Part 1, the created app (DailySelfie) is quite meaningful. Course apps are implemented in Eclipse.

Instructor/lectures. Lectures are very applied, mostly consisting of in-depth discussions of working apps and their source code. Adam Porter supports his brand from Part 1 of the course, being very enthusiastic and very eager to check your knowledge every minute.
The course is a lot of fun. It discusses cutting edge topics of modern applications, especially the ones dealing with retrieval/processing/presentation of data.

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