title: Android AsyncTask vs. Threads for a specific case
body: <p>I am working on an application that Looks similar to the Google Play App (swipe view with gridviews inside the fragments, in addition data in the gridview [image + text] is retrieved from a remote server).</p>
  
  <p>My problem is with background tasks. I can’t decide what to use for retrieval of data from the internet. Mainly I am trying to decide whether to use AsyncTask or manual threading.
  Of course it would be easier to implement AsyncTask, but after some research I noticed that many people find it limiting.</p>
  
  <p>In my particular case, I want to download data from the internet as Json Objects, parse them and display the data in the gridview. The gridview would have up to 30 items, each item contains a thumbnail and 3 textviews. In Android documentation, they say that AsyncTask is suitable for short operations (few seconds at most). Would filling up to 30 items be considered as a short operation?
  I want the data to be fetched concurrently. Also I want to support Android phones from API 8 and above. I read that for different APIs AsyncTask behaves differently (serially or concurrently)</p>
  
  <p>My question is: Is it appropriate to use AsyncTask for my app? Or do I have to do everything manually? Is ThreadPoolExecutor a 3rd way to do this? Is it easier than manual threading? </p>
  
  <p>Any advice would be appreciated, I can't move forward in the implementation without deciding on this issue.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in Advance!</p>