For mobile apps Archives - X-SoftM

8 things you need to know before writing code for mobile apps

Rollins Charles — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 08:40:00 +0000

8 things you need to know before writing code for mobile apps

Before writing code or developing an application, there are several factors to consider, including the following:

assess and research the app market
Comprehensive market research is the initial step in developing code for an application. You should be familiar with current market offerings and use this information to determine the niche market that your app will fill. Your mobile app code should aim to provide a new and complete solution to the problem you are solving.
define your presentation and the audience you want to reach
Can you explain what the purpose of your app is? For novice coders, this is usually the most difficult step. It’s not easy to condense all of your ideas into one or two phrases with a clear purpose, but it’s also one of the most important tasks in making your app a success. Before you write code for app development, take a few minutes to clarify:

What will be the main functions of the app?
Can you describe the problems your software solves?
Who are the likely users of the app?
What business goals will you be able to achieve?

Choosing between a native or hybrid approach to app coding
When you’re learning how to write the best code for application development, there are several technical considerations to keep in mind early on, one of which is critical. Choosing between a native or hybrid application has many implications for future development and maintenance. Below are the key differences between native and hybrid:

Programming languages. Android apps are written in Java or Kotlin, while iOS apps are written in Swift.
Native device APIs. This will be determined by the functions of the device you want to use in your app.
Distribution method. This will significantly affect how you market your app and apply marketing tactics.

Make sure you are aware of your monetization options.
The app can serve you for a variety of purposes. One obvious example is direct revenue generation, but others can be as simple as providing resources to your customers. If you want to generate money directly from your app, you should explore the following app monetization options:

Free apps. You can download these apps for free, but some features remain blocked until you pay a certain fee.
Paid or premium apps. These apps must be purchased from the store. Because of the high cost of the model, a mobile marketing strategy is necessary to demonstrate the greater value of the app compared to free apps.
In-app purchases. The app can be free or paid, but the developer offers digital or physical products that users can buy in the app.
Subscriptions. These are similar to freemium apps, but have the added benefit of a constant source of income.

Create a marketing plan before launching your app.
Planning for advertising and growing your app, including branding, pre-launch work, reach and overall web presence, is one of the most important factors in its success. If you start creating buzz about your app before it hits the app stores, your efforts will pay off in the long run.
Know what resources you have
Ideally, you’ll be able to publish a launch date ahead of time to generate excitement and create anticipation for the app. You need to be aware of the growth period in front of you to make this happen. This can help you in successfully managing the entire project and assigning appropriate due dates for the various planning and development phases, such as:

Describing the use cases for the application
Functionality mapping
Creating a minimum viable product (MVP)
Wireframing
Selecting a programming language and platform
Application design and coding
Analytics for mobile apps and testing

Make sure that security measures are in place
Finally, if your app collects sensitive information from users, you must provide a privacy policy, and that policy must specify what information is collected and how it will be used. Many app developers are so busy with their own applications that they overlook important security aspects. However, every time you create an app or start a new app project, security is critical.

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Programs and development tools for android applications

Rollins Charles — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 08:25:00 +0000

Programs and development tools for android applications

To create a serious banking program or a mobile cab ordering service, you need knowledge of programming languages and development tools. To create a simple mobile application, you only need development tools and the desire to develop.

All you need is to learn how to use the standard templates built into the software. Let’s break down in detail what specific tools and programs we need to do this.

The development environment is the program in which applications are created. The closest analogy is a shipyard, where ships are built, repaired and modernized. The most popular development environments for mobile are Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and the Android Studio (AS) based on it. The latter was purchased by Google in 2005 and became the official development environment for android. So we chose Android Studio as the main one and will continue to talk about it.

Java development kit is a set of tools that greatly simplify the process of creating an application and greatly extends the capabilities of the development environment. Simple projects can be created without it.

The Java development kit includes:

Template libraries – these are used to assemble application blocks;
interpreter – translates code into machine-understandable signals;
debugger – eliminates errors in the code;
instructions and user manuals – help to understand the technological details;
utilities – small auxiliary programs.

Test device – this can be a phone or any android gadget: a tablet, watch, TV, vacuum cleaner or even a refrigerator. If you don’t have anything like that at hand and the equipment in your house is not “smart”, it’s okay: AS has a built-in emulator that allows you to test the created project directly in the program. You can also use other free emulators to run android applications: Bluestacks 3, Andy, Genymotion, etc.

Mobile development software is free, freely distributed and available on official websites. This means that you will not incur any additional costs when learning.

Components of android apps
Any mobile application, like a sandwich, consists of several layers. Just like in a real sandwich – the component layers have different compositions and do not mix with each other.

This architecture is necessary for the Android system to clearly understand which file in the application structure to refer to, depending on the event that has occurred in its field. If the phone runs out of power during a game, the system understands “aha, that’s for the receivers”; if we decide to listen to an audiobook in the subway, that’s for the services.

There are four main elements of the mobile android applications:

Activity, activity – everything that the user clicks on and directly interacts with: sliders, buttons, all sorts of notification boxes and any available interfaces.
Broadcast receivers – these are reactions to system events: loss of connection, network recovery, low battery, system upgrade notifications, etc.
Services, service – components that run in the background, out of the user’s sight. They perform tasks that last longer than clicking a button or swiping to flip through a feed. This includes playing video and music or launching one application through the interface of another.
Sync adapters, sync adapters – synchronize your device’s data with various cloud services. This includes synchronizing your contacts and calendar with your account storage.

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Comparing Android and Java ME

Rollins Charles — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 08:12:00 +0000

Comparing Android and Java ME

Android takes a comprehensive, targeted and focused approach to building a mobile platform, and the usual JVM-based solutions are not enough for that. In Android, everything you need – the operating system, device drivers, kernel libraries, native Java interface, an optimized version of the Dalvik VM and the Java development environment – is in one package. The developer can be sure that when developing a new application all the main libraries will be on the mobile device.

This comprehensive approach differs from other solutions used in mobile programming, such as Java ME. Let’s take a brief look at Java ME, and compare the two approaches.

The standard version of the Java platform (Java SE) is suitable for personal computers and workstations. The enterprise version of the Java platform (Java ME) is designed for servers. The micro version of the Java platform (Java ME) is a shortened version designed for small devices. Java ME is available as two configuration options. The first option is called Connected Device Configuration (CDC). Java ME for CDC contains a simplified version of Java SE – with fewer packages, fewer classes in them, and even fewer methods and fields in those classes. For equipment and devices that have additional constraints, Java uses Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC).

The CLDC Java platform is based on a specialized and highly reduced version of the JVM called the K Virtual Machine (KVM), which is capable of running on devices with only 128Kbytes of memory. The CLDC under MIDP 2.0 (profile for a mobile device with information functions) can use additional application programming interfaces. Such interface contains a number of packages for javax. microedition. *. The basic packages include midlets (simple applications), a package for user interfaces called LCDUI, game and media packages.

The application programming interfaces for CDC configuration contain the java. awt API and the java.net API and some APIs for implementing security functions, in addition to those interfaces contained in CLDC. Additional profiles installed on top of the CDC give application developers access to the application programming interface javax. microedition. xlet (xlet is the application in the CDC configuration).

Let’s compare Java ME with Android:

Multi-device configuration options. Java ME distinguishes between two classes of microdevices, with standard and specific solutions for each. Android, on the other hand, uses only one model. It will not work with low-level devices unless their configuration is improved;
understandability. Because Android is device-specific, it is clearer than Java ME. Java ME uses several variations of user interfaces for each configuration, depending on what features the device supports: midlets, xlets, AWT, and Swing. JSRs for each Java ME specification are harder to track. They take longer to develop, and finding certain versions of them can be tricky;
responsiveness. The Dalvik VM is expected to be better optimized and responsive than a standard JVM used on a device with a similar configuration. Dalvik VM and KVM can be compared, but KVM is designed to work with less complex devices with much more modest amounts of memory;
Java compatibility. Since Android works with the Dalvik VM, it uses byte-code in DEX files rather than Java byte-code. This is not much of a problem if Java is compiled as standard Java class files. Only the direct interpretation of Java bytecode will not be possible;
breadth of implementation. Java ME is widely supported in mobile devices, since most cell phones are based on it. But Android is uniform, cheap and easy to develop programs – so Java developers may also be interested in writing programs for Android;
Java SE support. If we compare Java SE support in CDC and Android, Android has slightly more complete support, apart from AWT and Swing. As mentioned above, Android uses its own approach to working with user interfaces. In fact, Android’s declarative user interfaces resemble more advanced UI platforms such as Microsoft Silverlight and Sun’s JavaFX.

Thus, the comparative analysis suggests that Android is the preferred platform for application development.

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How is artificial intelligence used in mobile development?

Rollins Charles — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 08:06:00 +0000

How is artificial intelligence used in mobile development?

Mobile applications have become an inseparable part of human life. They solve many problems, help businesses promote products and services both locally and globally. Given the growing demand for feature-rich applications and providing users with increased value and the best experience, companies are increasingly focusing on creating unique and smart applications based on advanced technologies: Blockchain, 5G, AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality), AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning). AI and ML have transformed the way we interact with different machines and are helping to maximize the personalization of the user experience. Media and marketing companies, the education, healthcare industries and others are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence into their products, thereby seeking to improve their service and brand reputation.

Below we describe the benefits of applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to mobile development.

Increased search capabilities.
AI and ML have led to an increase in the use of voice search and voice commands. You can now ask a virtual assistant like Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa or in the domestic version, Alice or Marusya, to find something for you. Whether it’s restaurants, or jewelry stores, or any other information you need, you can get answers just by asking the right search engine question.
analysis and forecasting
Whether it’s food or grocery delivery, booksellers or kitchen vendors, companies are using artificial intelligence and machine learning in mobile apps to research customer interests and figure out how to make their service better for them. The data is obtained directly through the mobile products themselves, and it is then transmitted and processed most often on the server side.

Chatbots allow customers to get answers to standard, frequently asked questions faster without having to wait for a live employee to respond. And through push notifications, personalized recommendations based on search history, user location, age and preferences can be delivered.

Artificial intelligence analysis and forecasting are also used in IoT applications (applications for the Internet of Things – multiple objects connected via the Internet and exchanging data with each other). For example, existing similar services for industry collect data from various sensors and sensors, analyze them, generate reports, enable quality audits, detect defects, AI and ML technologies simulate negative scenarios for production processes and equipment, identify them, warn and notify of the need to influence them.

Facial Recognition System.
Since the release of the iPhone X in 2017, facial recognition has become a popular smartphone feature because of its ease of use and added level of security. Smartphone manufacturers use AI and ML-based algorithms to identify faces to unlock the device and the various apps on it. In the future, advanced versions of these technologies will appear in phones that will identify a person based on changes in their appearance: such as having a beard or wearing glasses.
Increased app security
With the rise of cybercrime, data and app security has become even more important. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning in mobile app development will help detect malware and threats in real time and alert users or businesses to them to prevent harm.
Real-time translation of foreign languages
Translation apps are quite popular, but most of them require a stable internet connection for proper smooth operation. With the integration of AI and machine learning directly into the mobile app, smartphones will no longer need an Internet connection to translate from multiple languages.

It is possible that those companies that quickly and effectively integrate artificial intelligence technologies in their projects will have a tangible competitive advantage in the market. We at AppCraft mobile app development studio are ready to advise on how AI and ML technologies can be applied in your service and implement your idea in the best way.

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