Best Android & iOS Tools for Advanced Mobile App Development

Sector: Digital Product

Author: Shreyansh Shah

Date Published: 07/05/2019

Best Android & iOS Tools for Advanced Mobile App Development

Mobile app development as the name itself suggests is a process of developing apps for mobile devices. These applications are either inbuilt within the phone during the manufacturing process or are delivered in the form of a web application with the help of server-side or client-side processing.

Mobile apps with its varied benefits have increasingly become popular amidst businesses. From establishing effective communication with customers and increasing brand awareness to targeting customers with features of geo-location and push notification. A mobile app helps businesses do it all seamlessly while attracting new customers and retaining the existing ones.

So, if you too want to leverage the advantages of a mobile app for your business, it’s high time you invest in a good mobile and see how you reach new heights of success in no time.

However, with a huge 2.1 million and 2 million apps already existing on Google Play and Apple’s app store, the competition amidst this plethora of apps are immense. Therefore, in order to thrive and have an edge over competitors, it is imperative to develop an app that’s not only high-end but performs seamlessly too. You can do this by choosing the right app development tool for your mobile app.

Here’s a quick look at the different mobile app development tools that can help you develop a word class app in no time.

1. React native

It is another mobile app development framework that makes use of JavaScript for developing native mobile apps. It is one of the most popular frameworks that leverage complicated UI and component-based UI. This, in turn, helps the developers make use of the same small UI component both into Android apps and react native iOS.

Further, it even has a feature of hot reloading which facilitates the running of new code while retaining an app’s application state.

In short, React Native is all about increasing the efficiency of developers across Android and iOS platforms.

2. Ionic

Ionic is an HTML5 mobile app development framework which works as a complete open source SDK and is used for building hybrid mobile apps with the help of web technologies such as CSS, HTML5, and SASS.

It has a wide variety of tools and services along with default CSS components and JavaScript components for building mobile apps that’s not only interactive but easier to develop too.

3. Flutter

Flutter is a modern development kit by Google, that will facilitate the development of mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Google Fuchsia, a new platform being developed by Google.

Since its inception, Flutter has got immensely popular among the developers—as evident from the graph shown below:

Hot reload refers to the fact that developers can preview all the changes made to the code in the app itself. It hardly takes few seconds to visualize the changes, thereby enabling the developers to directly experiment, resolve any technical glitches or buds, and add new features.

Flutter uses Dart as the programming language. It is similar to React Native as the programming style is reactive and declarative. It enhances the app startup times and overall performance as no JavaScript bridge is needed.

In case you want your investors to see the product on a short notice, Flutter mobile application can help you out.

4. Xamarin

Xamarin is a mobile app development tool that is built on C# programming language and runs on the .NET common language infrastructure. It serves as a great choice for developing any native application. Since it makes extensive reuse of data access across platforms and business logic layers, it proves to be beneficial for operations where a huge amount of data, image recognition and offline mode needs to be incorporated.

Further, it doesn’t only work as a mono framework and facilitates communication with the API of mobile devices but, also helps developers create strong and scalable mobile apps with the use of its high-end QA and testing features.

This is the reason it is used on a wide basis for creating apps for platforms like iOS, Windows, and Android. All in all, Xamarin is one of the best cross platforms for app development because of its impeccable features like lesser codes, fewer bugs and faster market time.

And, if that’s not enough, it also induces the developers with the opportunity of choosing from a host of free and paid components. From UI controls and third-party services to cross-platform libraries, the Xamarin component store has it all, thereby making the overall process of app development smooth and efficient.

5.  Android Studio

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Android studio is basically an integrated development environment (IDE) based on IntelliJ IDEA. It is extensively for Android application development. Further, it also accelerates the whole development process by making it faster and more production with its plethora of options for app development.

It even has additional features such as Gradle-based build support, Android-specific refactoring, Lint tools, Proguard, template-based wizards etc.

Pros of Android Studio:

  1. Officially supported by Google
  2. Easy to integrate with Google Services
  3. Pushes fast to the built-in emulator
  4. Generate extremely fast preview
  5. Uses the powerful Gradle build tool out of the box
  6. Live code updates and renderings of app
  7. Can test Google Play Services API straight from the emulator

Cons of Android Studio:

  1. Some errors that are almost impossible to remove such as Gradle sync fail, render problem, class can’t be found, reinstall repository
  2. Low personalization opportunities are seen in the code editor and settings
  3. High memory use
  4. Apps run slow on the ARM version of the emulator
  5. Android development only, if you want to develop applications for other platforms in Java, you have to learn another IDE as well.

6.  Xcode

Xcode works like Apple’s integrated development environment (IDE) created to develop applications for a plethora of Apple products ranging from iPad, iPhone, and Mac. It makes use of a single-window interface that helps developers manage app development from the beginning to the end.

Further, it also supports a variety of programming languages such as C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, etc. Its testing environment is also impeccable.

Since it provides the option of three testings, it helps developers to not only reduce bugs and make the application strong but, also shortens its market time.

Pros of Xcode:

  1. Its user-friendly interface helps the current coding process while not interrupting the development and editing in the main window.
  2. It has smooth navigation to find specific data
  3. It allows developers to test apps no matter what the targeted device is.
  4. Interface launches automatically the debug mode but it can also execute other operations when customized.

Cons of Xcode:

  1. Relatively complex IDE for beginners to learn
  2. Forcing to make additional changes to their projects after the next version

7.  Visual Studio

Visual code aka Visual studio is developed by Microsoft and works as a source code editor. Supported throughout Windows, macOS, and Linux, it is not only free and open-source but, also works as major support for debugging as well as controlling the inbuilt Git version control.

Further, Visual code comes with a highly customizable user interface, thereby helping users to switch between different themes, keyboard shortcuts, and preferences.

Pros of Visual Studio:

  1. Easy to use debug and testing tools which makes trouble-shooting code issues much easier.
  2. Extremely easy Integration through nuget
  3. Refactoring is so much easier
  4. Offers a free Community Edition of the IDE
  5. Fully integrated with Microsoft Team Foundation Server, running well in SCRUM scenarios.

Cons of Visual Studio:

  1. Sometimes the granularity and scale of configurations can be overwhelming
  2. Integration with DevOps (GIT) is cumbersome
  3. Components are hard to install
  4. A large number of functionalities can turn your development environment confused
  5. Uses a lot of system resources

8.  Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a cross-platform source code editor based on the Python application programming interface (API). It comes with high-end features like code folding functionalities, syntax highlighting, and auto-completion.

It also comes with a customized user interface kit which helps in its optimization while enhancing its speed and beauty.

  1. Super easy to use for basic text manipulation
  2. Fantastic syntax definition tool that automatically creates an index of every class
  3. Low memory usage.
  4. Cross-platform support for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
  5. Automatic code formatting/syntax highlighting.

Cons of Sublime Text:

  1. Sublime Text doesn’t have a print feature
  2. Text compare between two files is not easily accessible and not prominent
  3. Debugging Python code is not directly supported.
  4. PEP-8 coding standard suggestions for Python are not available natively
  5. Language packages are only for formatting/display; they don’t include code helps or hints

Wrap up

In conclusion, these are a few of the many app development tools that can help you create a high-end app seamlessly. From robust development features to impeccable faster market time, their frameworks have it all.

Therefore, if you are willing to give yourself an edge over competitors, it is high time you invest in a world-class app by getting it developed within a platform that best suits your preferences.

We at Techtic Solutions have an impeccable team of developers. Working as a leading mobile app development company, we have years of experience in developing and giving our clients the best of app development. Feel free to reach us. We will revert at the earliest.

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