Apps Design

A mobile app is a software application developed especially for small computing devices like smartphones and tablets. The rise of the digital economy has increased the demand for mobile applications in the entertainment, social media, business, and utility sectors. There are basically three app designs in the market based on the technology used to code it.

Native Apps – These applications are made for a single mobile operating platform like Android or IOS. Developers can make Android Native Apps for the Android platform or IOS Native Apps for the IOS mobile device. The app made for the Android platform can’t be used on another platform like IOS or Blackberry.

Technology – The Native apps are coded by using different types of programming languages. Some of the programming languages used to make Native apps are Python, Java, React, Swift, Kotlin and C++.

Advantages – As these apps are made for a singular platform, they function at high speed and are more reliable. It uses the resources of mobile devices in a much better way and gives an optimized experience to the customer using the app. Native app easily connects with the hardware of mobile devices like Bluetooth, camera, phonebook, NFC and more, giving users a lot of enhanced experience.

Disadvantage – Developers need to create different code for every other platform, and it increases the effort and cost of making the app. The Native apps need constant updates, and they take up a lot of space on the mobile device. It also needs to be downloaded on every device to make it functional; this takes up a lot of space on the device.

Web Apps – These apps are similar to Native apps but can be accessed through a web browser on a mobile device. It is not like standalone apps that need to be downloaded on the device to make it functional. Web apps are responsive website that adapts its interface to the device used by the user. At the time of installing the device, simply bookmark the URL of the website on the device.

Technology – These apps are designed using the programming language used for developing websites like JavaScript, HTML 5, CSS, and Ruby.

Advantages – The web apps are web-based, and there is no need to download the app. Developers can develop one web app that can be made functional on many platforms. As it is not downloaded onto the device, it takes no space and has less maintenance cost.

Disadvantage – Web apps are completely dependent on the browser used by the end user and will have different functionalities depending on the type of browser used on the device.

Hybrid Apps – Hybrid apps bring together the benefits of native and online applications. Hybrid Apps are developed on a specific platform and published across several app stores, like Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Hybrid apps are optimal when developing applications that do not need high-performance, full-device access.

Technology – The hybrid applications are developed by utilizing HTML, JavaScript or Cascading Style Sheets.

Advantages – It loads quickly and has less code to maintain. These two qualities make the hybrid app cheaper and faster.

Disadvantage –   Hybrid apps lacks power and efficiency of Native Apps and its certain features are not usable on devices.

Android Native Kotlin:

Android application development is the process of creating a new app for the Android operating system. Applications are usually developed in Java programming language using the Android Software Development Kit. The Android software development kit includes a set of development tools. These tools include a debugger, libraries, documentation, sample code, and tutorials.

Kotlin is an open-source, free programming language designed for the JVM and Android. Its advantage over Java code has made this language popular among more than 60% of modern Android App developers. It supports functional programming in addition to object-oriented programming and offers features like extension functions, coroutines, and lambdas.

• Expressive and concise – Kotlin features allow developers to express their ideas and write less boilerplate code.
• Jetpack compose – The Android user interface toolkit is built on Kotlin, allowing developers to create UI quickly with powerful APIs.
• Safer code – Android apps that use Kotlin as a programming language have a 20% less chance of crashing.
• Structured concurrency – Kotlin coroutines feature streamline asynchronous programming, making tasks like network calls and database updates easy.

Kotlin Multiplatform – This technology is designed to develop multi-platform projects and saves time in writing code for individual platform. It allows developer to write same code for different platform while maintaining the benefits of native programming.

Kotlin multiplatform technology can be used to share same code on different platform like Android and iOS to implement networking, computation, and analytics logic. It help developers share app data between Android, IOS and web applications.

Kotlin Common Code – To run the common code on different platform it provides operating system specific compilers. These compilers help common code convert according to the specific platform. Kotlin/JVM, Kotlin/Native and Kotlin/ JavaScript are platform specific version that played the role of converter.

Kotlin Multiplatform Library – Multiplatform libraries help develop shared parts of the project in one area by providing APIs for common Kotlin code and later sharing it with all the target platforms. The versions of platform-specific libraries provide the libraries that can be used to increase the platform-specific capabilities of the platforms that are targeted.

Advantages –

• After Google announcement of Kotlin as preferred language for Android application many companies and organization have started using it. This has resulted in larger community support for Kotlin.
• Kotlin multiplatform allows sharing of common code between different platforms. The reusability of same code for various operating system saves lot of time and money.
• Code sharing feature of Kotlin makes the application development process quicker and simple. Its features, including null safety, IDE support, and interoperability with Java, make it less complex and fast.
• Cross platform application development tool does not allow to use the capabilities native to iOS and Android devices. Kotlin makes it easy to make your android app work on iOS devices without changing much in code.

Multiplatform App – Multiplatform applications are developed to operate on different operating systems but have shareable and reusable code. It allows developers to write code once and reuse it on multiple platforms, thus saving cost and effort in making the application. Cross-platform app ensures hassle-free implementation with robust functionality for the client. Some of the multiplatform app development frameworks are listed below.

• Xamarin
• Flutter
• React Native

Benefits of Multiplatform Development-:

• Reduced cost of app development
• Single codebase allows for simplified update and fixes.
• Improved productivity and efficiency for developers and companies in the long run.
• A single code can be reused for different platforms.

Compose Desktop App – Compose is a cutting-edge framework developed by JetBrains. It is designed to revolutionize developers approach for cross-platform application development. Compose Multiplatform leverages the power of Kotlin, enabling the creation of unified user interfaces for Android, iOS, and desktop. It allows developers to make apps for desktop platforms like Windows, MacOS, and Linux. The desktop app developed for the MacOS platform using the Compose framework is called the Compose MacOS desktop app.

Advantages of Compose Framework-:

• Accelerated user interface development
• Easy integration with other platform
• Friendly ecosystem for developers

Application components can be used on other platforms.