Introduction of Mobile Applications

Talking about the mobile applications, the first thing that comes to mind are the apps like Whatsapp, Instagram, swiggy, etc that we use in our everyday life. Ever thought about how these apps are made? Which technology is used? Let’s discuss what technologies or frameworks can be used to develop a mobile application. Mobile apps are majorly developed for 3 Operating System. :

1. Android  
2. IOS
3. Windows

There are 3 different ways to develop Mobile apps: –

1. 1st Party Native App development
2. Progressive web Application
3. Cross-Platform Application

1st Party Native App development: –

These types of apps normally run in the native devices, that is, it runs only in the OS that it is specifically designed for it. 

These apps cannot be used on different devices using a different OS. The apps that are developed for android are normally coded using Java or Kotlin languages. 

The IDE normally used for android app development is Android Studio which provides all features and the apps that are developed for IOS are generally coded in Swift language or Objective-C. 

The IDE suggested for IOS App Development is XCode. 

2. Progressive web Application: –

Progressive web apps are essentially a website which runs locally on your device. The technologies used are Microsoft Blazor, React, Angular JS, Native Script, Iconic.

 These technologies normally used for web development propose. The apps’ UI is developed the same way as they are developed while developing the website. 

This category has many ups and downs let’s start with the advantages of Progressive web apps.

3. Cross-Platform Application: –   

These are frameworks that allow developing total native applications which have access to all the native features of IOS and Android but with the same code base. 

These apps run on both Android and IOS. So normally the development speeds of these apps are very fast and the maintenance cost is low.

 The performance speed is comparatively low to 1st party native apps but faster than PWA. 

Xamarin is Microsoft cross-platform solution that uses the programming languages like .NET, C#, F#. The IDE preferred is Visual Studio. 

The UI/UX is totally native giving access to all features. This technology is having a wide community. And whenever an update is released by Android and IOS the same updates are released by Microsoft through Visual Studio. 

React Native is Facebook’s cross-platform solution which uses the language JavaScript And the preferred IDE is WebStrome & Visual Studio Code. Same like Xamarin React Native has totally native UI/UX and gives access to all features. And the updates are released the same day by Facebook as Android and IOS. 

Flutter is Google’s cross-platform solution which uses the language, Dart. The IDE preferred is Android Studio, IntelliJ IDE, and Visual Studio Code. The UI/UX is bespoke and Flutters has to come up with their new libraries whenever Android and IOS comes up with an update to mimic those update. The community is fast growing.