Write a mobile application specification
We recommend that you write a functional specification. This will allow you to answer these questions, but also to define the needs and constraints for the mobile application development. Your development agency can also support you in writing this specification.
Choosing between developing in-house or by an agency
Creating a mobile application is a qualification in its own right that is not always available in-house. Indeed, the solutions and methods will be different from the app developers uae of a site and require specific skills. In development, but not only: Publishing on stores is also a task that requires a certain expertise.
If you have these skills in-house, here is the advice of Useweb experts to make the right choices for your app
Adapt the solution to the mobile application project
Having defined the why of your mobile application will help you define the how. Indeed, there are many solutions, each with advantages and disadvantages. Among these solutions:
- The purely native ones that are development in Swift or Java/Kotlin, require rewriting the application on both platforms that are iOS and Android. We will not discuss them in this article
- Hybrid solutions like Flutter or React Native, which allow development with the same code base for both platforms.
- Embedded solutions with a webview like Ionic or Cordova.
Flutter, USEWEB’s choice for its customers’ mobile application
While previous solutions did not provide a real development platform (SDK, Software Development Kit). Flutter offers the new Dart language (Object-oriented, heir to JavaScript and C). If you have a data management tool (back-office) on an existing website. The application will be able to use it. Otherwise, you will simply need to create this back-office with app development companies in uae.
The application and its user interface must be coded with the Dart language. Through the Flutter framework, and the application can be deploy on the Android side. With the Play Store or iOS with the App Store from the same code base. And this is where the main advantage of this option lies: benefiting from a very strong link with the functionalities of a mobile terminal, and a single development for both platforms.
This choice is part of our overall approach: a decouple technical architecture:
- a part for the creation and storage of content
- one or more others, are responsible for presenting them to the user via an interface
The two systems communicate through web services or APIs. The data is transmit from the back to the front office through the JSON format. In this way, from a single back office, it is possible to feed several types of applications, websites, multi-site websites, mobile applications, smart watches, television interfaces, etc.
React Native, the first real mobile application hybrid technology
The first revolution in the world of applications with hybrid technologies. React Native was developed by Facebook in 2015 and is one of the first frameworks to offer truly qualitative applications. It is still very popular with the community.
The goal is to use the real native components of the platform, Android/iOS. And to master them in JavaScript, which is a language known to web developers. This provides a real gateway for web developers into the mobile world to create applications that approach the performance of native applications.
Should you choose Flutter or React Native? Here are some elements of comparison:
- The performance is close to native, although Flutter is slightly more efficient.
- Hot reloading during development can be trickier than for Flutter.
- Knowing JavaScript is necessary and knowing how to use React allows you to develop the application more quickly, unlike Flutter which requires learning Dart, a language that is not use in other known frameworks.
- The community is very active and offers many libraries to improve the experience, Flutter, younger, took a while to catch up but today they are two very active communities.
- For a developer who already practices React, this is the obvious choice. But in other cases, Flutter can be preferred for its slightly higher quality and its very pleasant development experience.
Cordova, the simple solution
This solution does not allow you to build a real mobile application. The advantage of Cordova is to use the WebView (the HTML rendering engine) to embed the web part of the project. The display of the application is identical to that given by the mobile browser. Namely a responsive website and not a real mobile application.
The code used is the same as the site. To use mobile advantages such as the camera or geolocation. It is necessary to use additional plugins. The performance is significantly lower compare to a native application. The advantage is to have a presence on the AppStore and the Play Store beyond the presence on the web.
However, we remind you that applications are rated by users on their performance and usefulness. A bad overall rating that would be obtain with a low quality application would affect. The credibility of the project and the number of users who would take the time to download it would be rather negligible. The stores are also increasingly severe with app development uae with Cordova and are frequently refused.
