Gprs and 3g Wireless Applications: Professional Developer's Guide [With CDROM]

As mobile internet becomes increasingly rampant and soon to be a household word, it's vital for the individuals who are on the design and sales forefront to educate themselves on this evolving technology. I recommend for all of our sales and marketing staff to familiarize themselves with Andersson's Professional Developer's Guide. Andersson's book can assist even the novice wireless hopeful with fundamental terms and concepts vital to surviving in this era of cutting edge wireless technology.

If you're looking for a book on wireless application development from a code perspective this is the wrong book. The value of this book is it provides a solid foundation that needs to be in place before coding starts.It begins with basic concepts of how wireless infrastructure works. Developers can safely ignore this section of the book. I liked it because it sorted out the "moving parts" as well as the technological underpinnings. It also answered a lot of questions I had regarding where standards and the industry as a whole were headed, and the strengths and weaknesses of existing technologies and why 3G is so important. As an aside, I learned one trivial fact that had been bothering me: where did the name "Bluetooth" come from? Answer: It was named after a Danish king, Harald Blatand who brought unity among different groups of people. Blatand means Bluetooth in English. Not only does the name capture the spirit of Bluetooth as a technology, but this piece of trivia might gain you "Alpha Geek" status at a seminar or convention :-)From chapter 3 on, however, is of paramount interest to architects and developers because it gets into lower level details of GPRS, 3G and Bluetooth. The author provides all of the key characteristics of each technology from which a design and development strategy can be derived. Chapter 6 is where both developers and architects will gain information for performance aspects of their products. The author is meticulous in describing the issues and factors that will arise with protocols (the realities of TCP/IP over wireless in chapter 6 is priceless), and is supported with graphs and diagrams that a developer should carefully go over before writing a single line of code. Because of my focus in QA and SQA I thought chapter 14 on testing was particularly strong. Again, this is something that developers need to fully understand (as well as the rest of a project team), and the information provided in this chapter fills a large gap in the testing body of knowledge.In response to previous comments about this book: (1) Although the content on the CD ROM is out of date, the author's web site contains up-to-date artifacts and URLs. (2) I contacted the author directly (contact information is provided in the book) about the missing test documents cited on the cover of the book and found out that last minute copyright issues prevented their inclusion on the CD ROM. He sent me to where these documents could be obtained (for free) and they were well worth the effort. (3) The book is anything but basic - it gets into some low-level details such as timing and state diagrams that are essential for *properly* developing wireless applications. The author has a talent for packing an incredible amount of information into a paragraph and still holding your interest. He also comes across as authoritative and manages to cover a wide spectrum of issues and facts without compromising on details needed by developers and architects

A superb book that explains what the mobile Internet really is all about in a very straightforward way. Mr. Andersson's book has been extremely valuable for me explaining the technologies behind the companies I meet in my work as an equity research analyst. I recommend the book to anyone that wants to understand both the opportunities and the risks associated with mobile Internet applications development.

Andersson states that the book is "ideal for those who know a bit about software/Web development and who want to get into the wireless field." As a member of that group, I found the book to be exactly what I needed: a comprehensive guide into the vast and technical world of GPRS and 3G. The chapters are far reaching in breadth and depth so that the reader walks away with a solid understanding and technical base, as well as clarity into the GPRS and 3G technology arena from an application development and deployment perspective. The three sections are divided up so that the reader is led step by step through the history, applications, relationships, and components of GPRS and 3G. In addition, all the wireless industry lingo and acronyms were very clearly defined, which not only helped me in my reading, but also makes this a great future reference guide. Overall, this book delivered much more than it promised and exceeded expectations presented by previous authors on this topic.

This book was great for giving me an understanding of the application's market. Though I'm not a truly technical person, Mr. Andersson explained systems and applications in layman's terms that were easy to understand. The layout of the book is great because one can skip certain chapters if they're too technical. Great job in creating a book that is both technical enough and simple enough for anyone to read. Two thumbs up!