chapter eight
Chapter 8. Notifications and alarms
This chapter covers
- Building an SMS notification application
- Working with Toasts
- Working with the NotificationManager
- Using alarms and the AlarmManager
- Setting an alarm
Today’s cell phones and tablets are expected to be not only phones but personal assistants, cameras, music and video players, and instant-messaging clients, as well as to do just about everything else a computer might do. With all these applications running on phones and tablets, applications need a way to notify users to get their attention or to take some sort of action, whether in response to an SMS, a new voicemail, or an alarm reminding them of a new appointment. With Android 3.1 Google has updated notifications, refined them, and made them richer. These notifications will be part of the next version of Android, currently code-named “ice cream sandwich,” which will run on handsets as well.