Another Look at Android vs. iPhone Development
If you have ever done mobile application development for Android and iPhone you might have compared the two platforms… and come to the following conclusions.
Ease of Programming
Java is reported to be the most intuitive programming language for mobile software development. The lack of memory management bugs and the garbage collector make an easier task out of Android application development. Some developers have commented that the app model is almost as natural as iPhone’s. The broad range of devices and form factors however causes hours of debugging OS or device-specific bugs.
6 Tips for Developing a Successful iPhone App
What makes an iPhone app popular?
That was the question I was asking myself when I started my research on the topic a couple of weeks ago. To answer my question I compared a group of the top paid apps (in the US App Store) with a control group of randomly chosen paid apps from the same categories – business, finance, medical, navigation, news, productivity, reference and travel.
I compared the two groups using the following app characteristics: number of reviews, average rating, vendor type (one-man show, VC-funded startup, etc), vendor popularity, vendor country, app release PR campaign (number of related press releases, activity on social networks), price, availability of a free edition, update frequency and app name specifics. My objective was to find how strong the correlation between any of these app characteristics and the app’s success/popularity is.
The Invasion of the New Mobile OSes: Windows Phone 7, MeeGo, Bada
There are three serious newcomers rising above the horizon of the mobile OS battlefield which deserve some attention. Let’s have a look at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, Nokia and Intel’s MeeGo and Samsung’s Bada.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7
Our first contender Microsoft is yet to come up with a mobile platform that captivates the imagination of the market, despite having invested seriously in this direction. With a mobile world future so obviously set ‘in phone’ the company must hurry if it is to catch up with the current leaders.
Less is More – Challenges in Designing UI for Mobile Apps
Having spent years designing UIs for desktops we try to apply all learnt tips and tricks in UI design for mobile apps, but here comes trouble. Surely principles in preliminary research and usability are the same, but designing UIs for mobile apps has certain specifics which set some limits.
The handset isn’t a miniature desktop
Usually we emphasize small screens, less memory and less processor power as the properties of mobile devices which differentiate them from desktop computers, but there are other key factors requiring different approach in mobile app UI design. Those can generally be called “mobile user mental models”. Mental models refer to the way users behave in a particular situation, expect things to work or the tasks they attempt to complete.
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