Overcome Challenges In Android App Development With These Tools

BY: Ashish Joshi
JULY 16, 2019

With billions of smartphones used by people across the globe, the use of mobile applications for various purposes is increasing at a rapid speed. Organizations can choose to go for mobile devices for a number of reasons like increasing revenue, boosting customer loyalty, as well as enhancing engagement level. Moreover, mobile applications help to increase customer user experience.

With more number of businesses trying to use mobile applications to offer highly personalized and contextual customer experience, looking for opportunities in app development becomes inevitable. Before you get deep into it, it is important that you understand this area of app development well. You should know which platform you should choose, who your audience are and which features should be included in there.

Globally, the Android app development services are ruling the market. Even in 2019, Android app market is said to dominate the world. The usage of Android devices is rapidly increasing and this clearly points to increasing Android app development.

If you take a look at the Google Play Store, you will realize that there are more than 3.5 million Android apps and so it means you will have to put in efforts if you want your app to stand out. Today Android app development is experiencing a number of challenges and it becomes important for developers to identify and address them quickly.
Some of such challenges are:

Software Fragmentation

Fragmentation has always been the issue with Android ever since its launch. The problem of fragmentation keeps on getting complex with newer versions of Android getting launched every year. In case of Android, the adoption of newer version remains low; this is not in the case of iOS. This means, when carrying out app development, developers have to target multiple Android versions. Many a time, this makes Android app development a challenging job for developers.

Device Fragmentation

Different manufacturers get to customize Android OS as per their needs as android is open source. As hardware features will change based on the devices, developers face the dilemma for building the app features. Some devices may let you use fingerprint sensors while others may not support it. This makes it challenging for the developers to use fingerprint sensor rather than going for other authentication options available on other devices.

User interface for Android

When it comes to developing Android app which works seamlessly well on every device, mobile app developers have a hard time because of different UIs. In order to make the Android app appealing, developers need to follow the UI design guidelines which are recommended by Google for app development. In order to keep the app compatible with individual devices developers need to look for ways to keep the layout adaptive and responsive.

Programming Language

Kotlin and Java are the two official programming languages used for Android app development. Here Java is the older one compared to Kotlin, which was launched a few years back. In order to streamline Android app development and maintain app code, Kotlin comes with apt features. For developers, it becomes challenging to use Kotlin as it is not supported by a number of Android app development tools.

Security Issues

Android is more vulnerable when it comes to security attacks due to its huge market share. In order to protect the app and user data, developers bring together advanced encryption mechanisms and security features. Still, they are confused about keeping the app and user data secure.

Top Android App Development Tools

Android Studio
You can use Android Studio IDE in order to have tools which can help you build apps for any Android device. Android Studio is powered by Gradle and it can be used to build customization of higher level in order to come up with different variants of an app from a single project that can be used on different devices.

Eclipse
Eclipse is the most widely used Java IDE. It is an integrated development environment which comes with an extensible plugin system to customize the environment and a base workspace. The main use of Eclipse is to develop applications in Java.

IntellijIDEA
By analyzing code, Intellij IDEA provides in-depth error analysis, coding assistance, quick navigation and refactorings.

DroidEdit
This is used for Android platforms as a code editor and Android text. It can be used for editing files on the cloud, to code on the go as well as to highlight Syntax for more than 200 programming languages.

Android-IDE
This is a comprehensive Android and web development environment. This can also be used to edit PhoneGap and Java apps.

Universal Image loader
This is a very powerful, flexible and customizable library used for caching, loading and displaying images on Android.

GSon
This is a Java serialization/deserialization library. This is used to convert the Java Objects into JSON.

Retrofit
This is considered as the best solution used to organize API calls.

Awesome Java
This is the collection of amazing Java libraries and frameworks.

AndroidView Animations
You can get your regular View animations to work seamlessly with simple syntax that comes with this library.

Plugin collection for Intellij
This is a primary storage of Intellij plugins. This can be used for integration with application servers, version control systems and other tools apart from extending the core functionality.

GenyMotion
GenyMotion is considered as one of the most reliable and biggest emulation and testing tools available for Android apps. In order to run your app on the website or to enhance test automation, it also offers Cloud-based Android virtual devices.

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Written by Ashish Joshi

"After years of guiding teams of software engineers to deliver large enterprise solutions and complex data integration projects with unmatched accountability, Ashish Joshi manages our expert Research & Development team and is ultimately responsible for the financial management, quality, and timely delivery of projects for our customers.​"

JULY 16, 2019
RD Global Empowers Insurance Companies to optimize total digital experience, unify data, and harmonize processes by developing high impact technology solutions infused with a 5-star customer experience.