Neerhaj Joshi

yes, but not A2DP or OBEX as of now.

Yes, you can add your own jars. And Android does provide APIs for several Google services.

SMS handling yes, incoming call handling no, but Android does provide hardware-level access to Camera, Sensor etc.

Yes, you need to request for permission android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED , you have to declare it outside the <application> node of Android Manifest file as,
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED" />
When the phone boots, an Intent is broadcasted to all apps who have registered to receive this Intent. To register for this Intent, like Imran said, you have to use BroadcastReceiver, first declare a receiver inside the <application> node as,
<receiver android:enabled="true" android:name=".MyReceiver" android:permission="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"/> <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" /> </intent-filter> </receiver>
MyReceiver.java is the class that will receive the Intent. You will handle the Intent in the onReceive() method of BroadcastReceiver class. You get approx. 5 secs to do what you want inside onReceive(), after that the system will show 'App not responding' dialog to the user, so make sure you don't do any heavy processing inside that method.

Android is not just for cellphones. We have already seen Android running on tablets like N810, netbooks like EeePC and even on an E-Ink display. So once you understand coding for Android, it will be relatively easy to adapt to these various devices.

If you know Java and J2ME, it will help alot. It depends on how quick you are in grasping things, once you get the basic concepts, app development is fast. A simple app like an address book can be written in under an hour.

Yes, there is a project going on which provides db4o for Android. db4o is an Open object database. You can look at an example here.

Yes. Android provides APIs for touchscreen apps. I haven't read the book but considering it is based on the SDK 1.1, it should have several relative examples.

Android SDK comes with an emulator which you can use alongwith ADT plugin/Eclipse to test your application.