Mobile App Development

• A mobile application, commonly referred to as an app, is a type of application software designed to run on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet computer.
• Mobile applications frequently serve to provide users with similar services to those accessed on PCs.
• Apps are generally small, individual software units with limited function.
• The use of app software was originally popularized by Apple Inc. and its App Store, which offers thousands of applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
• A mobile application also may be known as an app, web app, online app, iPhone app or smartphone app.
• There are four different types of app components: activities, services, broadcast receivers, and content providers.
• Application architecture is a set of technologies and models for the development of fully-structured mobile programs based on industry and vendor-specific standards.
• Mobile app architecture design usually consists of multiple layers, including: presentation layer, business layer, and data layer.
• There are three main types of mobile apps including native apps, web-based mobile apps and hybrid apps.
• Native apps are developed for a certain mobile device operating system like Windows Phone or Android, therefore, they are native for a certain device or platform.
• Advantages of native apps include good user experience, high performance, and no limits on app usage.
• Disadvantages of native apps include higher costs in comparison to other types of mobile apps.
• Web-based applications behave in very similar fashion to those native mobile apps.
• Web apps use a certain browser in order to run and they are commonly written in CSS, JavaScript or HTML5.
• Web apps redirect users to URL and further offer install options by creating a bookmark on their browser.
• Advantages of web-based apps include requiring a minimum of device memory and users can access web apps from any device that is connected to the Internet.
• Disadvantages of web-based apps include the use of web applications with poor internet connection commonly results in very bad user experience and access to not so many APIs, with exception of geolocation and several others.
• A performance of web-based apps is inextricably linked to network connection and browser work.
• Devices available from different manufacturers vary from 120 dpi for the lower-end HTC Tattoo / Wildfire and 240 dpi for the higher end Droid series—a difference of 100% in screen density.
• Mobile platforms place many limitations on design and content, they also open up new opportunities that traditional desktops cannot provide.
• A further benefit of this type of app interaction is that you can use a sound to inform a user whether an action was correct or incorrect.
• Smart phones are sophisticated communication devices.
• Tactile (haptic) interactions are a type of interaction that involve vibrations to provide feedback.
• Making phone calls is their most basic function.
• Cards are very conducive to app interaction because they mimic real life objects and users can swipe horizontally or vertically through lists of them.
• The most obvious app interactions your UI can provide users with are graphic interactions, that is, visual feedback.
• Lately, iOS is focusing on providing an even more immersive experience to its users than ever-before with the abolition of the home button.
• Buttons states often change by being highlighted or depressed when a user taps them.
• Through gestures, users interact with the visible elements in a UI.
• Images, like cards, are another example of a rich source of app interactions on both Android and iOS platforms.
• There are some gestures for Android that you won’t find on iOS mobile devices and vice versa.
• Developers need to write algorithms and perform code optimization to support the mobile device capacity.
• The UI then offers feedback confirming the gesture and responds.
• A user performs a gesture on a screen to carry out a certain task.
• The app then further interacts by navigating the user to another screen or by causing something else to happen on the screen.
• Making elements such as vertical card lists slide with a swipe such as those seen in Gmail is one way of letting a user take action to delete or archive the email.
• Mobile devices lack the computing power and memory capacity of most desktop and server systems.
• Another way in which we can see app interaction with the user in both Android and iOS devices is in the form of overflow menus that occur when a user taps a hamburger menu icon, for example.
• Sounds can provide feedback and confirm a user’s actions, as well as enhance the overall user experience.
• They do this by letting them select one element with a long press which subsequently reveals check boxes next to all other selectionable elements.