Essential Tools for Getting Started With Android App Development

With approximately 2.8 million apps available for download and 6,140 apps published daily, the Google Play Store holds the largest share of the app market. Well, this isn’t surprising given the fact Android had 85% of the global market share in 2018.

As of July 2018, the world's best-selling Android apps include popular game apps such as Pokemon Go and Candy Crush Saga.

To add onto some astonishing facts, the latest statistics show that there are around 12 million mobile application developers worldwide, representing more than half of the global developer community - almost half of them are focusing on Google Android. Yes, you read that right.

This clearly shows how Android is a versatile platform and offers endless opportunities for developers to grow and reach a vast audience. Fortunately, there are also several Android developer tools to get you started. Developers are able to churn out apps much faster and efficiently a combination of sophisticated IDEs as well as other advanced tools. Good news: these tools are on a constant rise while each one continues to become more efficient and intuitive. 

While each one is loved, some tend to show up on Android developers’ “favorites” list.

Here are the top 5:

Android Studio

Android Studio is the official Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android app development. Supporting SDK and NDK for native app development, it boasts some remarkable features including Visual layout editor, APK analyzer, intelligent code editor, flexible build system and real time profilers. Android Studio supports SDK and NDK for Native application development.

Further, the IDE supports Java, C++ and Kotlin.

Visual Studio With Xamarin

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s IDE which supports a range of languages including C#, VB.net, JavaScript and more with extensions. C# makes it possible to create cross-platform apps and testing on multiple devices. It’s free to use and a good choice if you plan on releasing a utility app for both Android and iOS without any fancy code. Moreover, if you don’t have multi-platform aspirations, it can serve as a powerful and appealing alternative to Android Studio. 

Unity 3D

Unity 3D is a game engine and IDE for cross-platform game development – and probably the best option for everyone from beginners to advanced users. Supporting JavaScript and C# for scripting, Unity is quite easy to learn and comes with a large variety of features for game development. While it’s possible to create a game with Android Studio, Unity lends itself to that kind of work much more readily and saves you a considerable amount of time. The best part: it is well0suited for 2D, 3D and VR games or apps.

Basic4android

B4A (Basic for Android) is a tool from Anywhere Software, focused on “rapid development”. As the name suggests, this is an IDE and interpreter that allows developers to create apps using the BASIC programming language. For those who aren’t familiar with BASIC, it’s essentially a much simpler and easy programming language that reads closer to regular English. Despite essentially being a one-man project, B4A manages to offer some very useful features including wireless debugging over Bluetooth, a visual editor for adding and arranging views and more.

Though it’s not free, but the license is completely affordable.

Fabric

Well, Fabric is the development platform behind Twitter’s mobile app. It gives developers the ability to robust better mobile apps by providing them with a suite of “kits” that include everything from beta-testing to marketing and advertising tools. Developers or users can choose according to their requirements.

After Google purchased Fabric from Twitter in 2017, tech giants like Uber, Spotify, Square, Groupon and many others have utilized Fabric in developing their mobile applications.

The list doesn’t end here. We will be back with more advanced tools to up your Android app development game and help you in creating an undiminishing online presence.

However, we can still say that, with these tools, there has never been a better time to create your Android app!

Three elements for successful iPhone application development

As one hears the term iPhone quality and perfection comes in mind. Developing applications for iPhone is itself a very specialized process. You are trying to woo people who care a lot about precision, class and most importantly using what is the best. There are thousands of applications on iTunes store, but only few a dozen of them have been able to make an impression upon the iPhone users. So the question is, How to design an iPhone app that becomes popular and successful?

Keep the below-mentioned things in mind as they decide the outcome of the iPhone application development services you offer:

• They care about the look:Design is what matters a lot to every iPhone user. Like the design of the phone, the UI of your app should also be superb. They are not looking for any high-end animations or over decked apps. Flat design, simple but effective look is what makes a good app different from others. UI should appear high-end and classy.

• Security is very important:Creating an app for iPhone without keeping in mind the security essence is like building something which would be eventually thrown in the trash. Customers won’t be opting your app if they don’t feel secure while accessing it. And when money is involved you need to be extra cautious.

• User-experience is what decides the whole scene: Some great looking apps also fail because they are unable to offer the desired user-experience. For iPhone applications, UX decides whether the app is going to be a hit or flop. No one wants to have compromised experience on a high-end device, therefore, design keeping UX in mind.

If you carry out iPhone app development ensuring above parameters are not goofed up, you will be able to create a better iPhone app.