I got a chance to review the ebook “Xamarin Android Application Development” by Diptimaya Patra and I would say he makes the life of the developer easy with all the basic stuffs covered in simple terms to start developing you application with Xamarin. So for the readers “Xamarin is a Cross platform Mobile application development framework for .net developers using C# as the coding language. Xamarin provides the environment to develop iOS, Android apps using C#.Net using Visual Studio”.

The ebook covers Android Application development using Xamarin with C# as the code base ( For iOS developers the author has written a separate book focusing on developing iOS apps with C# as the code base which is expected to be released pretty soon). The book covers topic for Novice to professional to have a copy as a cook book in their desktop for immediate access and reference to topics. The book covers step by step approach to set up the development environment for Xamarin (good step by step approach with screen shots) and covers all the major controls that are pretty much useful to develop the application.

About the eBook:

The eBook has 15 Chapters focusing on all the major controls, layouts, common errors developers used to face etc with detailed explanation.

eBook Name – Xamarin Android Application Development

Chapters – 15

Author – Diptimaya Patra

Link to download – https://leanpub.com/xamarin-android-app-dev

Price – $8.99

About Author:

Diptimaya Patra is a blogger at http://diptimayapatra.wordpress.com. He was Microsoft MVP in Client Access Development in 2011. He has hands on experience in Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone, Xamarin, Android and Windows 8 development. He is very active over the social network (Facebook, Twitter etc) and provide excellent support to the Microsoft community online and offline.

My Review:

This eBook can be used as a Cook Book for Android Application development using Xamarin which covers most of the topic and here are my Pro’s and Con’s after going over the ebook.

Pro’s
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– Author is just to the point and most of explanations are clear and thorough.
– I personally feel I have a good resource to start developing Android Application using Xamarin.
– The topics covered are much required to develop Android apps with good explanation.

Con’s
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– The eBook is lacking usage of native components and how to use that in Xamarin development.
– Occasionally, concepts are introduced without providing context.
– Some conspicuous omissions. like, no information on Camera usage, Accelerometers etc.

Hope this ebook will be of great use to start my development for Android platform using C# as the code base as a Microsoft enthusiast and developer.