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Five challenges to overcome when developing for iOS and Android


Daniel Blazer - 26th February 2015 - 0 comments

When developing an app there’s one main thing you need to consider, which operating system you want to develop for? Sometimes a company only has the budget or resource to develop for one platform, however, most aim for two – sometimes more depending on resource, budget and user base.

The two main platforms are iOS and Android, combined making up 96.3% of the mobile operating system market, 17.5% being iOS and the 78.2% being Android (source). Therefore, in this article we are going to cover the five challenges we’ve faced when developing for iOS and android.

Operating System versions

Different versions of operating systems, naturally brings about different features; the implementations of new features, along with some of the older functions becoming redundant over time, means that on occassion your app will work on only certain devices. This particular problem is more of an issue on Android rather than iOS and here’s why:

iOS is up to version 8 of their operating system, however, iOS 7 and 8 make up 97% of total iOS devices (source) and they aren’t too different, therefore, it’s not too much hassle to target the two and fit requirements for both. Android on the other hand has a much wider spread of versions. Only 59.5% are on the latest two version, 39.7% on the very latest (source). So get as many different Android devices as possible and test the hell out of them!

Multiple Resolutions

Different devices bring about different resolutions. A couple of years ago, before the era of retina on the iPhone and iPads, this wasn’t really much of an issue for iOS. However, since then, resolutions have been something you need to consider, the same goes for Android. To prevent the imagery of photos looking blurred, stretched or too small it is recommended that you create different resolutions for your imagery; it’s tedious but it makes a difference visually. Both Android and iOS provide guidelines on how to support multiple resolutions.

Mirroring the apps

Another challenging thing is trying to get the app to function and look exactly the same across both platforms, however, there are numerous of reasons (depending on the complexity of the app) as to why you won’t get them to work exactly the same. For example, libraries, both platforms have different libraries to create a specific functionality which ends up looking and feeling slightly different. Android have a ‘back’ button as part of the OS to help users navigate back through the app, iOS doesn’t so the apps tend to rely on breadcrumbs. Android users and iOS users are used to using apps a bit different from each other so it’s not necessarily a bad thing if your iOS app isn’t exactly the same as your Android app.

Supporting Multiple Languages

If you’re making an app to be distributed worldwide then it’ll be in your best interest, and the interest of your users, to support multiple languages. To handle this, both iOS and Android support something called localisation which allows developers to have specific files per language containing the translated words in the files. Files which can even be handled by non-developers to save time and allowing the focus to be in mainly the development.

Approval

One of the benefits of creating an app is utilising their respective app stores as a marketing tool to distribute your product for users to download. Both platforms have strict guidelines for getting apps approved. iOS more so than Android. Android apps will go into the store within a few hours, however, they can be taken down. Whereas with iOS you can wait up to a few weeks before Apple responds to your submission, so plan your release dates with this in mind and pray that your app gets approved!

By Ricco Sobers

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