Here's Why Mobile Startups Prefer Apple's iOS Over Google's Android

Even with the immense popularity of Google's Android, Apple's iOS is being increasingly preferred by the users. Now, there are several reasons supporting the growth and development of the iPhone OS. For instance, the iOS apps ensure smooth operation on a small range of iPhones and iPads whereas when it comes to Android, there are numerous devices of different versions with equally varying screen sizes and processors. Let us look in details at why the mobile startups prefer Apple's iOS over Google's Android.

Reasons Behind Preferring Apple

The present scenario implies that a majority of the Android users are working with the most advanced version of this particular operating system. On the other hand and quite in contrast, about 93% of the Apple's mobile device users were making use of the advanced version of the OS a day before iOS 7 was even released. The fragmentation of Android calls for high costs on part of the developers considering the point that they need different engineers for the different versions.

When it comes to the generation of revenue, it is found that the Apple's App store generates more than double of the revenue generated by the Google's app store. For the startups, this is a strong reason behind why they go for the former. Added to these are the several capital- raising issues encountered by the startups these days. As such, starting on two different mobile platforms becomes difficult resulting in an ultimate choice of Apple as the dominant platform instead of Android.

Arguments in Favor of the iPhone OS

Research on the matter reveals certain other points that make startups go for the operating system of Apple instead of the other. Here is a list of such points:

• It is often argued that the iOS, being an out of the box app, is more functional while also working without flaws. Compared to this, a few users find the Android applications to be rather chunky and that too, loaded with notifications.
• iphone operating system is considered to be better optimized than Android. Android is slower than the iOS. At the same time, a great advantage of Apple is that it checks every app prior to publishing them in the store and this is what makes it safer than Android.
• The interface of iPhone OS is much simpler to use. This leads to the shortening of the initial learning curve and hence, is beneficial for the non hi-tech users. IOS is also regarded better than the other in terms of the touch feature and the running of the flash games.

A Few More Benefits of Apple iOS

• Fluidity of the iPhone OS: The Apple hardware might have slower processors but the operating system is way faster and more fluid for most users. Apple puts utmost priority to the user interface, which somewhat compensates for the slow processors. The fluidity quotient of the other operating system in question, on the other hand, is the lowest.
• Apple iPhone OS is More Easily Learnable: It is a widely held notion that the Apple iOS is more intuitive, offering users with a hassle- free experience of learning than the other operating systems. There are certain counter arguments, which point out to the fact that different people learn in different manner and therefore, the choice of platform is subjective.

All said and done, it is accepted that Apple is more concerned about the aspects of usability and design standards. The growing preference for the iOS largely owes to the consistently satisfactory experience that it has been providing users for quite a long time now. Notwithstanding the fact that Android looks excellent out of the box, it is the Apple iOS that stands above the former especially in case of mobile startups.

You can hire developers from top android mobile apps development companies in India who can help you build mobile apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide android mobile application development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our expert android app developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

The Best 12 Healthcare Android apps

The Google Play Store comes up with a plethora of medical apps. While some of these are immensely beneficial for medical students, some others are helpful for all, like the app which can guide users on the procedure of first aid. Here we bring to you 12 of the most useful Healthcare Android apps catering to different medical sectors.

1. ICE or In Case of Emergency: This is a very beneficial app which contains valuable information that can be used by the first responders and medical staff when they are dealing with an emergency condition related to you. Some of the crucial information that this app contains are the list of the people who can be called during an emergency, names and numbers of doctors, insurance information, medical conditions, allergies and medications.

2. Visual Anatomy Free: This acts as a reference and education tool, enabling the reader to comprehend the bones, muscles, organs and different systems of the human body. The app consists of high-resolution photos as well as feature points. Every feature comes with its own description and label. This app also constitutes a number of multiple choice quizzes and queries.

3. Mosquito Repellant: This is a unique app that works on the principle that ultrasound may repel insects such as mosquitoes. This app is capable of generating ultrasound of high frequency that repels mosquitoes and hence acts as a protection against mosquito bites. Mosquitoes stay away from some ultrasound frequencies and thus you will be able to do away with mosquitoes without using any kind of mosquito coils or other such environment pollutants.

4. First Aid: This app is immensely useful and features a host of accurate procedures, which users can themselves apply in a demanding situation or for providing guidance and support to others. It incorporates videos, illustrations and short descriptions delineating the methods to take required action in a systematic way.

5. Test Your Hearing: This app lets you evaluate your hearing capabilities. It incorporates two tests, which are required to estimate the range and frequency differentiation. The first test evaluates your audible frequencies by presenting a range of frequency tones. Again, the second test brings to you a host of tone pair, thereby estimating the frequencies which you can differentiate.

6. Immunity Boosters: The immune system of our body plays a crucial role in the maintenance of good health. The individuals who have a good immunity are less prone to diseases and infections. Diet is something that is directly proportional to immunity. This particular app provides information about immunity boosters and factors which tend to have a negative impact on the immunity system. This information helps users in maintaining good health.

7. OnTrack Diabetes: This constitutes one of the most effective yet convenient to use app. It facilitates the control of diabetes through tracking of a number of factors such as medication, weight, blood glucose, food, exercise and pulse. The noteworthy features include a conveniently usable interface which facilitates addition of new entries, a variety of detailed reports and graphs, amongst others.

8. Color Blindness Test: This app evaluates color blindness by offering a kind of test to the users. You just need to take the test to confirm whether you have color blindness or are free from it. This app is based on the fundamentals of color vision science in order to measure the extent and type of color vision deficiency.

9. Homeo Guide: This app presents different kinds of homeopathic treatments and medicines for a range of ailments and diseases that can be treated using homeopathic medication. The user can search treatment for various minor ailments and injuries such as allergies, cough, gastro-enteritis and so on.

10. Calculate by QxMD: This is in fact a kind of medical calculator which also serves as a decision support tool. The application chiefly involves those tools that are very helpful in clinical practice and aids in influencing diagnosis, treatment and determination of prognosis.

11. BMI Calculator: This app calculates the Body Mass Index, wherein you are simply required to enter your height and weight. Instantly, your BMI is calculated and displayed on the screen in addition to other values of overweight, normal weight, obesity, etc.

12. Micromedex Drug Information: This is an immensely beneficial app which is packed with information about drugs including drug administrations, interactions, dosage for adults and children, pharmacokinetics, precautions and so on.

These apps have brought about a revolution in the medical field and will help to carry our different medical procedures in a seamless manner. No wonder Android app development has forayed into healthcare domain in a big way.

We provide mobile app development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our expert android app developers, please visit Mindfire Solutions.

Advanced Tools and Techniques for Mobile Application Development

For every person in this world, cell-phone is a need. Every application is designed in a way to meet world-class business standards. There are a variety of applications in various fields including business, entertainment, utilities, hospitality sector, games and much more, these apps are made sure to fit to various screen sizes be it iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, laptop, palmtop etc. It has many great features which makes it all the more demanding.

Advanced Features of Mobile Applications

There is a great demand for apps as it benefits the business, like builds relationships, increases exposure across mobile devices, generate repeat business, reinforces your brand, increases visibility, increases accessibility, connect you to consumers and enhances social networking strategies. Big businesses like Target and Gap, Amazon, eBay, also started promoting their brands and merchandise with Mobile Apps a few years ago. Auto dealerships, hair salons, realtors – a whole host of industries – jumped to mobile apps in quicker time. All this has progressed as mobile apps are the most affordable and effective way to reach out to customers these days. Mobile application development has many advantages; firstly it has one-touch access to your contact information. Secondly its fast, one can easily access to inventory, get notifications of special events, launches and schedule appointments. Thirdly, one can freely have one-to-one chat. Fourthly get directions and location information easily and much more.

Smart features and functions are embedded that are unique to mobile devices, such as mobility, personality and flexibility, mobile applications are able to provide end-users’ added values, including anytime, anywhere access, the ability to pinpoint users’ locations and flexibility in arranging tasks. Convenience and efficiency are the main advantages of mobile applications both for customers and the company’s employees. They are the two primary fundamental objectives that end-users expect mobile applications to provide.

The demand for having an iPhone or iPad app has increased necessitating the needs for businesses to think beyond the PC. There are around half a million iPhone applications available on the web which has 20 billion downloads every month. Most mobile applications are not only portable but also support multi-tasking, multi-touch and multi-language features. They run across multiple platforms though developed by a single code. There are certain tools and techniques, which helps mobile application development achieve the need of modern apps.

Cross-platform Mobile app development tools

Everyone is aware about the next 'in- thing' today, that is multi-platform applications. iPhone or Android app developers take a number of cross platform development techniques and successful developers search for the right tools and approaches to suffice appropriate requirements and use cases. Top tools used for cross-formatting mobile application development are:

• RhoMobile: An open-source framework written in Ruby. OS, which includes Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone and RIM, creates native apps for all kinds of tablets.

• PhoneGap: is another great framework uses standard web development languages such as HTML and JavaScript. It now powers over a 1,000 native app per month.

• Appcelerator: This platform uses web technologies and develops great apps for desktop, mobile and tablet applications. It offers cloud-based services for packaging, testing and distributing software applications developed on the Titanium platform. Supports programming languages like HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby and Python. At present influences over 1,000 native apps per month.

• Sencha Touch: It supports BlackBerry, Android, Kindle and iOS. It develops around innovative HTML5, mainly its components deal with touch functions. As it is HTML5 based, it has the capability to way in apps at the same time as offline.

• MoSync: Is multi-platform mobile app developer SDK tool, which is based on custom web programming. This SDK comprises of compilers, libraries, runtimes, device profiles and other functional tools.

• Whoop: Is a WYSIWYG editor that allows one to play around by simply drag and drop mobile app elements onto it. Apps can be exported in numerous formats, depending on the OS, incorporating Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android, iPhone and more.

• WidgetPad: Is a mutual, open-source environment for development of Smartphone apps. This program mainly utilizes customary web technologies like JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3. Enterprises are focusing on porting existing desktop applications to mobile and creating new mobile applications for use within the enterprise to improve employee productivity.

• AppMakr: Browser-based platform designed to create iPhone app quickly and easily. It manages existing content and social networking feeds to produce a variety of different approaches for apps. It includes features such as push notifications, location- details GeoRSS, custom CSS and JavaScript capabilities.

• GENWI: This is a Smartphone publishing platform allows to create and manage on all popular mobile devices, including iPad, iPhone, Android and HTML5 apps. It delivers rich graphics, photos, video, audio and other forms of interactivity. Apps can include various revenue-generating capabilities for businesses, like ads, coupons and in-app subscriptions.

• Mippin: This platform allows to create apps for Android, iOS and Windows. It provides flexibility in designing apps and makes it available in the iTunes, Android, Windows and Amazon stores.

• SwebApps: It easily deploys, tracks and updates native mobile app for any business. One can easily create iPhone and Android app online. Once it is available for download via the iTunes Store or Android Marketplace one can easily update content in real time.

• MobiCart: An e-commerce store which links with PayPal to allow any business or consumer with an e-mail address which securely and conveniently receive payments online at a low cost.

• MobBase: This app builder allows RSS feed to keep fans up to date on band news and events, one can easily browse apps to find information on upcoming shows, buy tickets and get directions. It has a huge following fan of singers and band.

• IPFaces: iPFaces is an open source framework developed by Edhouse for simple creation of native application for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, BlackBerry and devices . This framework is for simple creation of native, form-oriented network applications for mobile devices.

Building Mobile apps can be an effective way to differentiate your brand, opens new revenue channels and deepen relationship with customers. Above tools can help developers come up with the customized apps that are best suited for any business. Good tools help new developers easily get started and make experienced developers more productive in deploying great customized apps.

We provide mobile app development services. If you would like to know more about our android app development expertise, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

A Consistent Approach to Android Application Performance Testing

Android offers an open source software platform for mobile devices, initially created by Google and subsequently by Open Handset Alliance. The popularity of Android is on the rise as this platform is paving the way for a number of user-friendly apps. With more and more technological advancements, Android is making room for brighter features on Android phones. Irrespective of the time dedicated for Android design or the fact that an application developer is very careful with the programming part, nobody can deny the fact that mistakes can occur anytime leading to appearance of bugs. To reduce the impact of programming errors, and enhancing the productivity of the development procedure, it is crucial to adopt a consistent approach for Android application performance testing.

Phases of Efficient Android Application Testing

Before going into the details of consistent performance testing, let us discuss the crucial phases involved in testing of Android apps.

• Software Validation Testing: This testing phase can be sub-divided into functional testing, followed by non-functional testing, and finally documentation review. Code walk-through is a significant component of functional testing which involves tracing of the source code with the help of a miniature test case. The state program variables are monitored manually in order to analyze the assumptions and logic of the program. Most of the tests done revolve around the call flow and user-interface, involving a final testing done to locate new bugs. The non-functional sub-phase involves testing of user acceptance, compatibility and usability. Finally we have documentation review wherein things like design document review and architect reviews are performed.
  
  
• Performance Testing: This involves two elements: performance elevation followed by performance consulting. Performance elevation involves testing of code profiling, database, endurance, end-to-end transaction and so on, while performance consulting comprises capacity planning and architecture validation.
  
  
• Test automation: This phase ensures the quality assurance and comprehensiveness of the software through establishment of an automation framework, test execution, scripting and regression testing.
  
  

Significant Components of Android app performance testing

So far as performance testing is concerned a consistent delivery model needs to be followed across varying scenarios. This enables Android app developers to comprehend the performance level of the application on any given device from the end-users point of view. Let us understand the significant components of consistent performance tests on Android apps by taking a banking application as an example.

• Server Component: This component takes care of the business logic in case of the banking transactions initiated from a desktop browser or a mobile client.
  
  
• Network Emulator: This helps in the recreation of a range of network conditions like jitter, latency, packet error, reordering or loss, bandwidth restrictions, and so on, enabling developers to replicate environment like LAN, WAN, GPRS, 2G, 3G, etc. The network emulator helps in the determination of the traffic load that the application generates under diverse network conditions.
  
  
• Load Generator: This tool helps subjects the application to load under test conditions and evaluates the load times. Changes in configuration can be made like enhancing simultaneous users, increasing the load and boosting transactions occurring per second.
  
  
• Android Device: Both high-end and low-end devices are used for testing because performance varies and it is essential for a device to be configured accordingly.
  
  
• Performance Monitor: With the help of the performance monitoring tool ‘Perfmon’ which has windows mapping, the performance counters undergo configuration prior to the test. The data collector set once configured and started, leads to automatic data collection for every scenario.
  
  
• Android Debug Bridge: This is a tool that accompanies Android SDK, enabling interface with and control of the Android devices.
  
  
• Dalvik Debug Monitor Server: This tool for Android debugging makes room for things like screen capture, port-forwarding services, radio state information, location data spoofing, logcat and more.
  
  

It is very important to understand the plethora of resources involved before going for android app development. Performance testing is indeed crucial to understand how the application will perform with respect to satisfying the needs of diverse user groups.

We provide mobile app development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert android app developers, please visit Mindfire Solutions.