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.

How to Perform Android Automated Testing

Android app testing is an essential part of the development process. Especially for Android OS, it is very important because the devices are very different from each other. They vary from each other in screen size and resolution, version, form factor, instruction set of the processor, front camera, NFC, external keyboard and so many other different factors. In such a scenario, automated Android testing provides an architecture and powerful tools that tests every aspect of android application at every level from unit to framework.

Many Android test suites are based on JUnit. The Android JUnit extensions provide component-specific test case classes. JUnit extensions test Android API. A functional test checks if the activity was correctly started. A unit test just tests the functionality of a certain component. These classes provide helper methods for creating mock objects and methods that help one control the lifecycle of a component.

Android SDK tools are available in plenty for building and testing such as Eclipse with ADT and also in command-line form for use with other IDEs. These tools gather data from the application under test and use this information to automatically create file, manifest both the file as well as directory structure for the test package. There are two utilities available in Android SDK to control Android devices: ADB (Android Debug Bridge) and Monkeyrunner. Monkeyrunner is an API used for testing devices with Python programs and its UI is a command-line tool for stress-testing. These two send pseudo-random events to a device.

The Android SDK provides the following tools to support automated, functional UI testing for its application:

• uiautomatorviewer - A GUI tool to scan and analyze the UI components of an Android application.
• uiautomator - A Java library containing APIs to create customized functional UI tests and an execution engine to automate and run the tests.
• InstrumentationTestRunner - A primary Android test runner class which extends JUnit test runner. framework.It runs any the test case classes provided by Android and supports all possible types of testing.

If one plans to test the application, the app must be installed first on a test device, analyzed UI components of the app and must be ensured that the application is accessible by the test automation framework.

1. Create automated tests to simulate specific user interactions on application.

2. Compile test cases into a JAR file and install it on test device along with your app.

3. Run the tests and view the test results.

4. Correct any bugs or defects discovered in testing.

Various Automated Testing methods used are:

• Testing with Monkey
• Testing with MonkeyRunner
• Testing with getevent and sendevent
• Testing with Robotium

These methods can work wonders testing the android apps. A properly constructed testing process that combines different testing methods including automated testing is an essential part of a high quality application development process.

Advantages of Android Automated Testing

• It brings flexibility to the application.
• Programming skills are not required to record event sequence.
• Actions are described at the application UI level.
• Script does not depend of the screen orientation and screen resolution.
• Automated scripts can check the state of an application only after an action.
• Avoids redundancy of effort in testing.

With the above advantages, developers can leverage automated android app testing methods and techniques to make their lives easier and mobile app development fun!

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