A fragment is a self-contained, modular section of an application’s user interface and corresponding behavior that can be embedded within an activity. Fragments can be assembled to create an activity during the application design phase, and added to or removed from an activity during application runtime to create a dynamically changing user interface.
Fragments may only be used as part of an activity and cannot be instantiated as standalone application elements. That being said, however, a fragment can be thought of as a functional “sub-activity” with its own lifecycle similar to that of a full activity.
Fragments are stored in the form of XML layout files and may be added to an activity either by placing appropriate <fragment> elements in the activity’s layout file, or directly through code within the activity’s class implementation.
