Mobile Application Development Secrets

Currently, 9 out of 10 potential customers are requesting application development right under 2

platforms - iOS and Android. This is quite logical, since the mentioned platforms together account for more than 95% of the market, and it is economically feasible to develop a mobile application specifically for these platforms.

During communication with customers, the company's technical director Mauris Vladimir Bondarenko often has to explainWhat is the difference in development for each of the platforms and why they are two completely different products. Many people believe that programmers are developing one application, which they then register in the App Store and Google Play. In some cases, this is true, but not always. Vladimir spoke about the main approaches to the development of mobile applications.

There are only four of them:

Application Designer - a ready service that allows you to build a mobile application in 30 minutes.

This approach has two advantages: speed and cost.
As a result, you will get the sample notbranded application with limited functionality without the ability to adapt it for themselves. With this approach to the development of more than 50% of all your wishes will not be possible to implement.

Cross platform application - a single software solution immediately for both mobile platforms. The product itself is a website wrapped by a browser that launches the main page when clicking on an icon.

Benefits:

• Work speed The cross-platform application interface is responsive.
• Development time Due to a single solution for 2 platforms, development time is significantly reduced.
• Technical support platforms.

Disadvantages:

• It’s hard to find an experienced contractor. Find experienced developers in, for example, MonoTouch will be more problematic than specialists for native SDKs.
• Convenience debugging. Titanium has the ability to debug only your code, and you cannot access the source code of the framework itself, which makes it difficult to find problems. As for MonoTouch, many developers have constant problems when debugging and running the application.

In the end, you get a full flexibleapplication for the minimum period of time with one program code for 2 platforms. On older phones, the product can slow down, the platform also has a number of limitations when implementing complex applications.

React native - technology from Facebook that usesnative components for each of the platforms, and also has a common program logic. This approach allows us to obtain the performance of native development with time saving due to the implementation of common logic.

Benefits:

• Reuse code. In addition to a common set of source codes across multiple platforms, React Native allows you to reuse code with a web application.
• Platform: "All inclusive". React Native includes: React; additional tools for Android and iOS; Flexbox for styling user interface; various widgets, animations and more.
• Integrable native components.

Disadvantages:

• Limited API. Although React Native supports a huge number of APIs, there is still a need to use other APIs through embedded modules.
• Differences between Android and iOS platforms.
• Relatively poor performance. If you plan to develop a complex application, React Native will not work for you.

At the exit, the user gets a flexible applicationwith a native responsive interface and a single software base. But it is worth considering that the technology is quite new, and in some cases, the developers of your application will have to refine the standard for mobile development software components.

Native development - development of two independent applications for iOS and Android platforms.

Benefits:

• Ease of development and debugging. In general, the development of native applications is much more convenient than, for example, the development of cross-platform. This is due to the fact that in native development there are no additional layers between the application code and the executable file and, in general, the native tools are more developed.
• Availability of documentation and regular technical support.
• Work speed Native applications provide high speed and performance.
• Usability Native applications provide an opportunity to implement the interface and the general behavior of the program in the most natural way for this platform.

Disadvantages:

• Coverage platforms.
• High development cost.
• It’s hard to find an experienced contractor. In general, it is rather difficult to find a good Java or Objective-C developer due to the specificity of this field and the higher threshold for entering the technology.

What is the result? You will get the most flexible application with a full arsenal of opportunities for each of the platforms, but the implementation and support of the application for each of the platforms will require a separate development team.

There are a number of less popular technologies for implementing applications, but they all fit into the gradation described above.

Now, before developing an application, you will be able to choose the optimal approach to implementation, based on your budget, terms and functionality.

In this video you can find out how long it will take to develop a mobile application. More clips on our channel: