One of the most remarkable aspects of modern smartphones is the way they can detect their location either through a Global Positioning System (GPS), or cell towers and WiFi signal strength; and more often than not, applications use both.
For managing location based information, Android provides the android.location package which in turn gives us the LocationManager class that gives us access to location based functions such as the latitude and longitude of a device's position. Tracking a device over time is made equally convenient and the LocationListener class monitors changes in location as they occur.
Listening for location changes is only a part of the story, as Google provides APIs for managing Google Maps data and displaying and manipulating maps through the use of the MapView and MapController classes. These powerful tools require us to sign up with Google first, and once done enable us to zoom in and out of maps, pan to any location that we are looking for, and when...