Question

Right now all I am trying to do is detect when the screen is pressed and then display a log message to confirm it happened. My code so far is modified off of the CameraPreview sample code (it will eventually take a picture) so the bulk of the code is in a class that extends SurfaceView. API for the example code from the SDK is 7.

Answer 1

Try code below to detect touch events.

mView.setOnTouchListener(new OnTouchListener() {
    @Override
    public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
        //show dialog here
        return false;
    }
});

To show dialog use Activity method showDialog(int). You have to implement onCreateDialog(). See documentation for details.