The Different Stages of Android App Development - Past to Future

The OS market is dominated by the major leaders, Android and iOS. Android is leading the league by holding a share of 82% percent of the mobile market. When development becomes the concern, the question remains the same, “which platform to consider for mobile app development?” The platform war and answer to this question varies significantly because of the extensiveness of scenarios.

In this article, we will address this question differently. Instead of answering this question specifically which has been answered by various researchers, we will try understanding why Android is the most vividly used platform. And why and how the complexity of Android platform changed to an easier to comprehend platform.

Our question was answered by a team of developers at VeztekUSA dealing with mobile app development for both iOS and Android platform. They have years of experience and expertise in developing applications that are never less than a success. Moreover, this company also provides consultations for areas where anyone new to app development would seek assistance.

According to these app developers, even the simplest of app development could result in nightmares. Here’s the past, present, and future of development on Android OS as told by the development team.

Android Development in Past

For a clear understanding of future of Android development, a quick note of the problems faced by developers in the past are as follows:

IDE and Bugs: 

Android originally had IDE which enabled Android development. IDE was not devoid of problems and resulted in being filled by bugs and slow processing. This made the development process unfriendly.

OS Fragmentation: 

The transition of Android OS version from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0-the makeover of the OS brought latest APIs, screen density, and hardware was meant to show a better performance of the apps. But this resulted in more bugs, more work for developers, and a slow development.

Android Emulators: 

For testing of Android apps earlier, various devices possessing various versions and containing different sizes were required.  These emulators were slow, dull, and annoying and were a reason why people avoided emulators.

Android Development in Present

Android transited from monotonous and rigid features. A huge list of changes was incorporated into the latest OS just a year back that resulted in refurbished Android ecosystem, stable OS, better hardware, and a great open source system functionality. Here are the major factors:

Android Studio: 

Android studio has made IDE more stable and thus a stable development process. The latest version of IDE is V1.0.

Continuous Integration Development with Gradle: 

Gradle is a project automation tool that automates the automation builds servers and test automation libraries. It does become slow sometimes.

Lollipop: 

It enables creating similar but not identical applications on Android.  It makes possible focusing on minute details for a better user interaction experience. The Lollipop ART has replaced Dalvik and has brought some great features to the app-one of these is AOT compilation.

Android Development Future

Android is becoming universal as every other smart device is operating on Android, but before you get into the development of your app on this platform, here’s a look into the future of Android development:

Change of Language:  

Android fixed the bug issues and the operating system is now a better platform. However, there are other impending issues such as language that requires a change. Java for Android has always been there but it’s time for another programming language. They can look into combining different programming language features.

Database Management: 

Android’s API is a concern as its difficult debugging SQL errors on the default Android API. Apple, on the other hand, uses a set of exclusive procedures which when combined with GUI results in some good database objects. 

Conclusion

Android has the major share of the mobile app market and the reasons are obvious. A huge transition took place for better performance and smooth development performance. The present is definitely greater than the past but the future has room for improvement. Java as the programming language is the major reason that seems to be a hurdle while the database can use some improvements for a good development speed.