What you need for this book
This book is much more valuable if you have an Android environment set up and can play with the concepts and examples discussed in this book. Please refer to developer.android.com for detailed instructions on how to set up your environment and get started with Android development. If you are interested in kernel development, please refer to source.android.com.
At the time of writing this book, Jelly Bean (Android 4.2, API level 17) is the latest release. I have tested all my code snippets on this platform. Ever since the first release of Cupcake in 2009, Google has been continuously enhancing the security of Android with successive releases. For example, remote wipe and device management APIs were added in Android 2.2 (API level 8) to make Android more appealing to the business community. Whenever relevant, I have referenced the release that started supporting a particular feature.