What Should Be Included For Android Application Development?

As a powerful and hugely popular mobile operating system, Android attracts many developers to build mobile apps to target the mobile devices running on this platform. As the mobile platform is open source, programmers also get the option to tweak, twist and improve it according to their specific requirements. The mobile app development frameworks have further made it easier for programmer to switch to Android application development within a very short span of time.

But with every other company launching Android apps, it has become essential for developers to understand the latest trends in mobile application development. At the same time, they have to explore innovative ideas to optimize the look, feel, performance and security of the application. On the whole, a developer has to make and implement a comprehensive application development plan that must include several key factors.

Things that Must be Included in Android App Development

Mobile Payment
Mobile devices have become an inseparable part of modern lifestyle. In addition to gathering information on a variety of products or services, users also use mobile device to purchase the items on the go. So many users will love to use an app that allows them to make payment for the product or service in a quick, hassle-free and secure app. You can always consider designing apps with features of a mobile wallet that allows users to carry out financial transactions on the go, while keeping their sensitive financial data secure and inaccessible.

Cloud Technologies
Each user wants to access both personal and business data immediately regardless of his current location. Therefore, many people are using Cloud technologies to store a variety of information. As the technology enables users to access the information stored in the Cloud at their own pace and convenience, many enterprises have started investing in Cloud computing. Your Android app can surely meet the new trends in storing information when it supports Cloud technologies.

Health Tips and Advice
The busy lifestyle and packed professional schedules of modern people makes it difficult for them to follow a balanced diet and exercise regime. So an increasing number people are gathering health tips and advice by using their Android mobile devices. In addition to providing regular health tips and advice, the app will further enable the users to get relevant solutions by consulting a doctor. At the same time, the app can help users in remaining fit and active through regular exercise and yoga. You can always consider developing healthcare apps to target the users who are getting conscious about their health.

Blend Social Media into the App
Similar to mobile applications, social media has also become an integral part of modern lifestyle. Many people use social media to evaluate the pros and cons of a variety of products and services. At the same time, users also love to share their recent activities and achievements through social networking platforms. So you must consider blending social media seamlessly into the Android app. Along with allowing users to share photos, videos and posts on major social networking platforms, the app also needs to allow them access these websites in quick and convenient way.

Animation Effect
The choice of Android apps varies from one user to another. But most users decide about downloading a mobile app based on its look and feel. So you must explore options to optimize the aesthetic appeal of the application, along with its features, functionality and performance. Many reports have highlighted how animation effect can make an app look attractive and exciting. So you must consider designing apps with adequate animation effects to impress users belonging to different age groups.

The must-include things for Android app development keep changing on a constant basis. Also, these factors are affected by the frequent changes in user choice and technologies. So each developer must stay tuned to the ongoing trends in mobile application development to build a powerful Android app that will surely attract and impress users.

We provide android widget 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.

Guidelines for Android Mobile Design

Android offers an outstanding platform for mobile design and goes a long way in creating an effective app that offers a brilliant experience across numerous devices of diverse combinations of aspect ratio, pixel density and screen size. The diversity of Android throws a number of challenges to the designer and here we bring to you some crucial guidelines in terms of pixels, user experience, layouts, styles and themes that need to be considered for creation of successful Android apps.

Pixels

An app’s perceived quality is largely dependent on the visual design, which also enhances the usability. Most of the developers are well-versed with the UI patterns, but only a handful has the requisite visual design skills. You need to concentrate on the following in order to deliver an experience that is aesthetically pleasing.

• Nice Scaling: The Android platform comes with diverse screen densities, with no definite resolutions for targeting but a measurement format for layouts widgets and graphics that is somewhat density independent. So, it is always advisable to optimize the graphics for a varying range of screen densities. Make sure to test the designs across low-end devices and optimize resources that do not scale well.
• State Friendly: Significant confirmations of selections and clicks are provided by the touch states. During customization of the widgets like buttons, the creation of drawables with respect to all required states such as disabled, pressed, focused and default is crucial. The size is also a significant factor. Touch targets should usually be minimum 45 density pixels in height and width.
• Use Fonts: Roboto and Droid Sans are the two major fonts of Android. However, any fonts can be roped in for an application in TTF format.
• Utilize 9-patch Drawables: These facilitate stretching and scaling of PNGs in a pre-defined manner. Markings alongside the top-left edge outline the stretchable regions. Optionally, the padded content region can be defined through markings alongside the bottom-right edgings. 9-patches are crucial for creation and customization of UI widgets.

User Experience

As is the case with any other platform, Android app development has conventions and patterns. These help in formation of expectations regarding the behavior of an unfamiliar app.

• Design of User Flows: Android apps contain a set of screens, at the basic level. Navigation within the stacks is possible with the help of buttons, list items and action bar icons. There is also the up affordance which facilitates the navigation along the information hierarchy. It is good to try user flows with prospective users through mock-ups or wireframes and iterate. Ideally, prototypes on real devices should be leveraged because the same facilitates testing within realistic mobile environments.
• Use of UI patterns: UI patterns should be considered as tools rather than constraints, because they provide recognizable hints regarding interaction and navigation, maintaining platform consistency. Some of the common Android patterns are the action bar, the dashboard pattern, the workspaces pattern and the ribbon menu. These are the most effective tools for carving out app navigation and layouts.
• Design Responsively: With varying screen areas, Android is somewhat similar to responsive web design, wherein rendering support to each screen is the target. You can avoid premature optimization through focusing on popular devices and target users. The ideal option is to target middle sized popular phones and then go for requisite optimization with user flows and alternate layouts for specifically small tablets and devices.
• Comprehension of Mobile Interactions: Users interact with mobile apps in a different manner than with websites or PC software. In case of mobile apps, most interactions utilize touch input and are often capable of measuring in seconds.
• Optimization of First Use: Installation of apps often is a response to real world problems. So, it is always wise to render a feel of the experience. You can also think of launching a tutorial with the app.

Layouts, Themes and Styles

Let us now discuss some of the best practices for crafting performance-oriented and maintainable layouts. The commonly used layouts are Linear Layout and Relative Layout, and sometimes Grid Layout.

• Automation with framework: The Android framework makes room for automated resource switching revolving around the folder structure. This implies that there is the possibility of having distinct graphic layouts and assets for diverse screen sizes as well as densities.
• Extraction of values: Keeping the layout XML free from dimensions and colors is a good practice. You can separately define them and reference in the layouts, thereby enhancing the visual consistency and ensuring that things are easy to change at a later stage. Extraction of these values facilitates dimension switching across diverse platform versions, orientations and screen sizes.
• Use of themes and styles: An effective means to ensure a maintainable XML layout is to segregate the positioning concern from the styling concern. Every Layout View is required to possess a height and a width attribute. Sets of attributes that recur can be moved to styles whereas widget styles that universally occur across the app may be moved to the theme.
• Optimization: The merge and include XML tags facilitate the dropping of reusable sections of UI into the layouts, thereby minimizing duplicate XML as identical set of views appear in manifold layout configurations. Lint is a comparatively new addition for Android Developer Tools, which creates warnings regarding potential performance optimizations after scanning the project resources.
• Debugging: The Hierarchy Viewer tool makes it convenient to spot bugs through inspection of an app’s layout tree.

Hope you are now acquainted with the major tools and techniques pertaining to Android mobile design. Remember that the most effective apps rely a lot on clean visual design and platform consistency.

We provide android widget development services. If you would like to hire mobile app developers from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Reasons Why Google Play store may supersede Apple App Store

A user’s choice of mobile apps often depends on his mobile device and operating system. Each user has options to choose from loads of apps to suit his specific needs. Some of these mobile apps are free, whereas others are paid. At the same time, many developers have launched different editions of the same app to target major mobile operating system. But the huge popularity of Apple iOS and Google Android has encouraged many developers and resellers to launch new apps based on these two popular mobile operating systems.

As the first ever app distribution service, iOS App Store was opened by Apple on July 10, 2008. At Apple's 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference, Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, announced that the app store has over 650,000 apps that can be downloaded by users. On the other hand, Google launched the Android Market, as a global online store, to offer apps for Android devices. Google subsequently renamed the Android Market as Google Play in 2012. According to some reports, Google Play has over 700,000 apps available for Android devices by October 2012.

The estimated figures available online clearly indicate that Google Play has already superseded the Apple App store. Google also implemented a comprehensive strategy to make its app distribution store popular among both users and developers. There are also certain factors like option to return an app within 24 hours and get your money refunded that encourages users to try new Android apps. Also, developers find it easier to build new apps to target the Google mobile operating system as it is an open source platform.

5 Reasons Why Google Play is Growing at a Pace Faster than Apple App Store

1. Number of Free Apps: Most developers want to use apps without incurring any expenses. Many developers also launch the free as well as paid versions of the same app to target different types of users. In comparison to App Store, the Play has a higher number of free apps. But the developer and resellers interested in selling paid apps often target the iOS devices. So a number of reports have highlighted that the Apple store is more paid-app friendly than the Google store. With loads of free apps, Google has been able to attract a large number of users on a regular basis.

2. Return the App and Get Full Refund: Many people hesitate to use the recently launched mobile applications. Similarly, the apps launched by new developers or resellers often take time to attract users. Apple does not allow users to return an application if they are not happy with its features and performance. But users have option to return the apps downloaded from the Google Play within fifteen minutes from the time of download, and get a full refund. However, a user is allowed to return a particular app only once. However, the return and money back offer encourages many people to use the new Android apps.

3. Review Process and Revenue Model: Developers always want to launch and market their apps in a hassle-free way. Most developers also decide an app store based on the company’s review process and revenue sharing model. A number of reports have highlighted that Apple is not kind to the app developers. On the other hand, the terms of the developer distribution agreement ensure that neither Google nor Android can take advantage of the developers. The revenue model and simple app review process further encourages many companies to launch new Android apps, and market these smoothly through Google Play.

4. Frequent Upgrades: Often the upgraded version of a mobile operating system comes with a set of advanced features and functionality. The features further enable developers to incorporate new features in their app to impress the users. In comparison iOS, Android is being upgraded at a much faster pace. As Android is a open source platform, it becomes much easier for developers to take advantage of these new features. On the other hand, many companies hesitate to develop apps to target Apple devices as the iOS is a closed platform. Also, Apple does not upgrade the mobile operating system at a much higher frequency.

5. Restriction on Content: The choice of content varies from one user to another. So each user chooses apps that allow him to access the content of his choice. Apple has imposed restrictions on certain subjects that our society considers as taboo. For instance, despite being a taboo subject, pornography is hugely popular among a large section of people. So the people always turn to Google Play to download the apps that enable them to access the content restricted by Apple. Apple has taken an initiative that must be appreciated by all. But the restrictions are giving Android apps an edge, while contributing towards the popularity of Google Play.

However, Google has recently implemented strict guidelines to evaluate the nature and type of the app. Many Android apps are being removed from Google Play due to their inappropriate content. The app review strategy will further contribute towards enhancing the reliability and popularity of Android apps. In such a scenario, choosing the perfect app development company from thousands of sprouting mobile application development companies becomes critical.

We provide android widget development services. If you would like to discuss with an expert android app developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.