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It's not always about hard work, you have to work smart also.
Does it sound familiar? Being one of them, I know that IT people and MBAs spend their entire course of life trying to figure out the balance between working hard and working smart. And once you enter the real world outside the walls of campus, you realize that learning the smart tactics is significant to achieving something and reacing your goals. An app developer in this era would know this concept the best.
Mobile marketing is penetrating at a faster rate and there are thousands of apps for each search in Google’s Playstore. So, why would a user settle for a ‘just fine’ experience provided by an app? They have the freedom to give reviews on whatever they don’t like or prefer, and every time your app gets a comment saying ‘not worth it’, ‘waste of memory space’, ‘not working’ and ‘crashes a lot’, you lose many potential downloaders who don’t even click on the link because of low ratings.
I know it’s quite disheartening to listen to or experience this, but it is the undeniable rude truth. If you want to be a developer who owns a successful app with ever increasing download records in the Playstore, you need to know the workings of Android primarily.
Remember! An app works differently on every device, even if they have identical OS systems. And trust me if you will just browse a bit, you will get a generous amount of examples of apps that didn’t make it among their target audience and with a little analysis and know-how of the Android system you will be able to decipher the mistakes which you have to avoid. If you haven’t figured it out until now, YES! I am going to make you familiar with everything you are expected to know about Android (and a little more) as a developer.
Android Software
No surprises here! The app you are developing is a software, but there are several ‘other’ softwares in your device too. And, these other software can make yours work in a different (read ‘wrong’) manner. So what will you do to ensure that your app is compatible with every device? Let’s first know what is the major issue faced by developers before we jump to the solutions.
Many developers have blamed Android OS for platform fragmentation, making everything difficult for everybody involved in the ecosystem to match up. But, let me break the news to you – It is not the case! OS does not make things crack (especially for ‘developers’).
OS and Platform Version
Android has launched OS versions one after the other and many developers are a bit clueless about what they should do to catch up with the changing versions on different devices. Adding to it, many of you might be confused about which versions are a must to be checked on and which ones can be skipped. Well we have sorted your problem with some statistical data that will help you make better decisions,
- All the OS versions above 2.3.3 are relevant for testing. This is unlikely to change anytime soon because Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread are still being used by at least a quarter of total Android users.
- 23 percent of the total apps behave differently when a new OS version is updated.
- If you want to target 66 percent of the OS users then testing with Jelly Bean (4.1 to 4.3) and Kit Kat (4.4.x) would do the job.
- If you want to target a higher volume of audience then start testing from API level 15 (version 4.0.3).
Reliance on Other Software
Have you integrated your app with any social media apps and asked your users to connect with Facebook before they can use your app? It’s not a really good idea. Do not ever pre-assume that everybody who owns an Android will have the popular social media apps installed. It will create a problem for you if you make your app’s operations dependant on any other.
We understand that Android technology is in an ever-evolutionary phase. New updates are being launched and new devices are hitting the market almost every month and being a developer this poses a huge challenge for you. Besides all the mentioned points, there is one thing that can be your success formula – Test it on as many devices as possible before plannnig to make it go live in the Playstore.