Develop Reference

How to create the layout for this kind of activity?

How can I display information in the following format? What controls should I use, listView or RecycleView?
Note that the question isn't about this particular activity and how to use it. It's about how to show the information in the same format and how to create the layout for it.

That is a ListView. You would just need a ListAdapter/ArrayAdapter to fill it and that's about it.

You can make exactly the same thing using the layout simple_expandable_list_item_2 in the SimpleAdapter of a ListAdapter (here is how you do it : Displaying kind of static data in ListView)
RecyclerView is of course much better in terms of performance and flexibility. However, ListView is enough in many cases like this one.

Android ListView custom row overlay

I am developing an activity with a ListView in which I need to change the current row by another layout by clicking on the row, and I'm not finding any way to do as much as I look (I take hours searching for possible solutions and I have not seen any reference to this problem). I do not know if this can be done in Android, but if anyone has an idea of ​​how to do this would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
PS: The ListView control is normal and just want to replace a layout with a different layout. I'm using the API 15.

Use a ViewSwitcher
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ViewSwitcher.html
A ViewSwitcher is -
ViewAnimator that switches between two views, and has a factory from
which these views are created. You can either use the factory to
create the views, or add them yourself. A ViewSwitcher can only have
two child views, of which only one is shown at a time.

I suggest merging the two layouts in a single one and hide the second one. In your adapter data you should have a flag or something to indicate which layout to display. When you click a row, toggle that flag for the selected item and notifyDataSetChanged() on the adapter. This will make sure the changed layout remains even if you scroll up and down and the row goes off screen.
A more optimized solution is to have different item types in the adapter.

Android engineering: ListView versus just a dynamic LinearLayout

When you are working with a long, big list, certainly one should use ListView because it handles cell recycling.
Notice here, for example Can i use nested linearlayouts instead of list view, for a big list? the OP is asking about ListView verses a dynamic LinearList -- the answer is "have to use a ListView, because of recycling"
Now, say you are making a short list -- imagine say a popup with only 10 or 20 items. It may even fit all on the one screen, so there's no recycling.
In fact, is there any difference between using a ListView and just using a LinearLayout, and dynamically populating the little views inside it?
It seems to me that the latter is in many cases much simpler, more elegant, and easier to work with. But I could well be missing something that seasoned Android engineers know about.
Should I just use an ordinary LinearList (populate it dynamically) for lists where recycling is not relevant? What's the usual, and why? Cheers!
{Incidentally, for popup cases, is there some better, lightweight method for "choose one from a popup-list" that I'm too silly to know about?! :) )

ListView(and other lists) supports very useful idea: splitting data and view. These parts could be changed at any time so it's important to support flexibility. And it could be solved by special mediator object: Adapter. Adapter roughly speaking says how to fill your view with particular data item.
So I'm sure that if you decide to use LinearLayout sooner or later you will implement you own Adapter.

If you used dynamic linear view then rendering the view will take more time as compare to listview. In listview we are rendering views which are visible only but if you used dynamic linear view then its problem.

How do I set up non-scrolling lists?

I am trying to produce an activity with an interface somewhat like that of the 'add contact' activity in the standard people application - ie something with a number of lists (email addresses, phone numbers, etc) each of which has a variable number of entries and an 'add' button. The lists themselves don't scroll (ie all entries are shown all of the time), but the overall interface does scroll.
My first attempt uses several listviews inside a linearlayout inside a scrollview; the code adds elements to the listviews as required. However, I cannot find a way to prevent the lists from being scrolled, rather than being shown full length.
Can anyone suggest how I might stop the listviews from scrolling ? Or perhaps suggest a better container than the listview (I don't want to re-invent the wheel) ?
Thanks,
Richard

Have you considered using table view instead? It should be possible to make rows clickable. Here is how to create table rows in code in my other answer:
How to populate the TableLayout with ImageView dynamically in android jdk?

Maybe ExpandableListView will be more helpfull here. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ExpandableListView.html for more info

The lists themselves don't scroll (ie all entries are shown all of the time), but the overall interface does scroll.
This is incorrect. All entries are not shown all of the time.
My first attempt uses several listviews inside a linearlayout inside a scrollview
You cannot put a ListView in a ScrollView.
Or perhaps suggest a better container than the listview (I don't want to re-invent the wheel) ?
The add-a-contact activity uses a ScrollView wrapped around a LinearLayout holding each of the "editors".

Should I use multiple ListViews?

I have a RelativeLayout with different elements. I was planning to have two ListViews on it, but I have noticed there are some problems with scrolling. Since each ListView only shows a maximum of 5 rows should I try to make some kind of custom adapter to merge those ListViews? Or is it better to replace the ListView with a LinearLayout/RelativeLayout and add the rows as I get them manually? (like the first answer in here: android listview display all available items without scroll with static header ).
Which should be the proper way on doing this? or is there another way? Also, each row will have an OnClickListener.

There's two solutions if you'd like to keep your list... list-y, without having to prerender all the row Views like the above solution suggests (which can be slow to render, eats RAM and doesn't scale nicely to more than a screen or two of Views, but is a fine quick solution for smaller lists, though I'd just use a bunch of Views in a LinearLayout in a ScrollView rather than a ListView in that case).
Write a custom ListAdapter, overriding getItemViewType, getViewTypeCount and GetView to inflate the proper kind of view and recycle appropriately for your two types of views. You'll also either need to override getItem to contain custom logic for figuring out which set of source data to look in and to map the data accordingly, or mush the data down into one list of Objects (if you're using an arrayadapter) and cast in the getView method (probably a bit slower than handling it in the getItem without casting).
Just use cwac-merge, a view-and-adapter wrapping adapter. You can put two ListAdapters into a MergeAdapter and set that as your single ListView's adapter.

I had problems with scrolling. I never figured out how to have the ListView share vertical space with a different View, and have a single scrollbar for them both.
I worked around it by having everything that needs to scroll on the layout a row in the ListView.
Adding views as rows to a LinearLayout may have problems scaling up, but I think you'll be OK if you only have 10 rows in total. On 1st gen Android devices it'll probably start to get sluggish around 20 items (depends on Layout complexity obviously). ListView scales up by only inflating views as they come on screen.
So in answer to your question either of the two alternatives you suggest will be OK, but the LinearLayout option will be the easiest to code.