The “In Case of Emergency” app is meant to help save your life in the event you become a victim of a serious accident. The idea is that if someone finds you in a state in which you are unable to communicate, that person might check your phone for important information about yourself. (Hopefully this is done after calling 911!) If this person launches the “In Case of Emergency” app, they will see an emergency contact whom he/she can call, as well as any important medical information that the paramedics should know.
To help this Good Samaritan stumble upon your “In Case of Emergency” app, its app icon and tile icon are bright red, as shown in Figure 3.1. Basically, this app is for superprepared people who don’t password-protect their phones! As ridiculous as this might sound, there is a market for this type of app.
Although the “In Case of Emergency” title fits (barely) in the app list, it does not fit on the tile. Therefore, this app modifies the default token title in the application manifest (as described in Chapter 1, “Tally”) to simply “ICE,” a somewhat-common abbreviation for “In Case of Emergency.” (Some people store a contact on their phone named “ICE,” in case their rescuer is familiar with this convention.)
This is the first app that must do work to support multiple orientations and the first app that involves typing, so before creating it we will explore the following three topics:
- Orientation
- The On-Screen Keyboard
- The Hardware Keyboard
