Create a spinning cube with OpenGL ES and Android

Android supports 3D graphics via the OpenGL ES API, a flavor of OpenGL specifically designed for embedded devices.
This article is not an OpenGL tutorial, it assumes the reader has already basic OpenGL knowledge. The final result will look like this:
First we write a new Activity and in the onCreate method we create the two fundamental objects we need to use the OpenGL API: a GLSurfaceView and a Renderer.

public class OpenGLDemoActivity extends Activity {
        
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        
        // Go fullscreen
        requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
        getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN,
                        WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);
        
        GLSurfaceView view = new GLSurfaceView(this);
        view.setRenderer(new OpenGLRenderer());
        setContentView(view);
    }
}

And this is our Renderer that uses a simple Cube object we'll describe later do display a spinning cube:

class OpenGLRenderer implements Renderer {

        private Cube mCube = new Cube();
        private float mCubeRotation;

        @Override
        public void onSurfaceCreated(GL10 gl, EGLConfig config) {
            gl.glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.5f); 
                
            gl.glClearDepthf(1.0f);
            gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST);
            gl.glDepthFunc(GL10.GL_LEQUAL);

            gl.glHint(GL10.GL_PERSPECTIVE_CORRECTION_HINT,
                      GL10.GL_NICEST);
                
        }

        @Override
        public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) {
            gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);        
            gl.glLoadIdentity();
            
            gl.glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, -10.0f);
            gl.glRotatef(mCubeRotation, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);
                
            mCube.draw(gl);
               
            gl.glLoadIdentity();                                    
                
            mCubeRotation -= 0.15f; 
        }

        @Override
        public void onSurfaceChanged(GL10 gl, int width, int height) {
            gl.glViewport(0, 0, width, height);
            gl.glMatrixMode(GL10.GL_PROJECTION);
            gl.glLoadIdentity();
            GLU.gluPerspective(gl, 45.0f, (float)width / (float)height, 0.1f, 100.0f);
            gl.glViewport(0, 0, width, height);

            gl.glMatrixMode(GL10.GL_MODELVIEW);
            gl.glLoadIdentity();
        }
}

Our onSurfaceChanged and onDrawFrame methods are basically the equivalent of the GLUT glutReshapeFunc and glutDisplayFunc. The first is called when the surface is resized, for instance when the phone switch between landscape and portrait mode, the second is called every frame and that's where we put the code to draw our cube.

class Cube {
                
    private FloatBuffer mVertexBuffer;
    private FloatBuffer mColorBuffer;
    private ByteBuffer  mIndexBuffer;
        
    private float vertices[] = {
                                -1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f,
                                1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f,
                                1.0f,  1.0f, -1.0f,
                                -1.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f,
                                -1.0f, -1.0f,  1.0f,
                                1.0f, -1.0f,  1.0f,
                                1.0f,  1.0f,  1.0f,
                                -1.0f,  1.0f,  1.0f
                                };
    private float colors[] = {
                               0.0f,  1.0f,  0.0f,  1.0f,
                               0.0f,  1.0f,  0.0f,  1.0f,
                               1.0f,  0.5f,  0.0f,  1.0f,
                               1.0f,  0.5f,  0.0f,  1.0f,
                               1.0f,  0.0f,  0.0f,  1.0f,
                               1.0f,  0.0f,  0.0f,  1.0f,
                               0.0f,  0.0f,  1.0f,  1.0f,
                               1.0f,  0.0f,  1.0f,  1.0f
                            };
   
    private byte indices[] = {
                              0, 4, 5, 0, 5, 1,
                              1, 5, 6, 1, 6, 2,
                              2, 6, 7, 2, 7, 3,
                              3, 7, 4, 3, 4, 0,
                              4, 7, 6, 4, 6, 5,
                              3, 0, 1, 3, 1, 2
                              };
                
    public Cube() {
            ByteBuffer byteBuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(vertices.length * 4);
            byteBuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder());
            mVertexBuffer = byteBuf.asFloatBuffer();
            mVertexBuffer.put(vertices);
            mVertexBuffer.position(0);
                
            byteBuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(colors.length * 4);
            byteBuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder());
            mColorBuffer = byteBuf.asFloatBuffer();
            mColorBuffer.put(colors);
            mColorBuffer.position(0);
                
            mIndexBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(indices.length);
            mIndexBuffer.put(indices);
            mIndexBuffer.position(0);
    }

    public void draw(GL10 gl) {             
            gl.glFrontFace(GL10.GL_CW);
            
            gl.glVertexPointer(3, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, mVertexBuffer);
            gl.glColorPointer(4, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, mColorBuffer);
            
            gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);
            gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_COLOR_ARRAY);
             
            gl.glDrawElements(GL10.GL_TRIANGLES, 36, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 
                            mIndexBuffer);
                
            gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);
            gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_COLOR_ARRAY);
    }
}

The Cube uses two FloatBuffer objects to store vertex and color informations and a ByteBuffer to store the face indices. In order for the buffers to work it is important to set their order according to the endianness of the platform using the order method. Once the buffers have been filled with the values from the arrays, the internal cursor must be restored to the beginning of the data using buffer.position(0).