Top 6 Tips on Designing Eccentric Android Mobile/Tablet Apps

The wide popularity of Android has opened doors for designers and developers who tend to get confused when it comes to choosing a platform for building a remarkable application. With Android mobile platform creating waves in the mobile app development world, it's simple to say that the app development professionals will continue to grow their prospects by delving into Android app development. This blog of mine will turn as an eye-opener for all those developers who aren't familiar with the techniques of designing apps for Android powered mobiles and tablets. So, keep on reading this post to gather six tips on designing remarkable applications for Android mobiles/tablets.

What's the need for designing apps differently, for Android?

Although working on Android puts you in an excellent position of reaching out to a larger audience, all Android hardware devices come in a variety of screen sizes, custom APIs and processor types. Maintaining similar execution and user experience for Android consumers is possible only if you design apps keeping in mind the variations in terms of screen sizes, APIs etc.
And now, some excellent tips on designing apps for Android mobiles/tablets.

Tip#1- Check out whether your app's design already exists in the world of Android apps

With all the major app stores offering statistical numbers/rankings for customers to browse through the top popular apps directly,it has become essential for app designers to check whether the design they intend to work on is already there within this list of top Android apps. So, before actually writing your own Android app, make sure to research the market for already existing apps that provide features planned by you. If any such apps exist, then take notes and question yourself whether you're confident in doing a better job. Else, if no such apps exist, then go ahead and evaluate whether the listed apps bear potentially similar characteristics as the one you're planning to design.

Tip#2- Avoid the use of undocumented APIs

Once you've familiarized yourself with numerous Android apps, you'd definitely want to know how some of the greatest features are done in Google's own apps. For this, you'd have to check out the apps' platform .

codes as well. As an Android app designer,you might be into the habit of using the Reflection method for utilizing the internal Android APIs. As per this method, even if you don't know the object that you're using, you can easily find out the information about it, followed by using the same for calling the related methods. This is an app designing approach that should be avoided as a whole because it doesn't guarantee the expected results.

Tip#3- Pay attention to layout design for device orientation and varying screen sizes

As an Android app designer, you need to take into account the embedded orientation sensors of different Android devices. For this, you need to set up the layout folders with different qualifiers in land and port so that the app system can easily apply the appropriate layout in the auto orientation mode. Here's the code for how it's being done:
    src/
        YourActivity.java
    res/
        drawable/
            icon.png
    layout-land/
        main.xml
    layout-port/
        main.xml
    values/
        strings.xml

Tip#4-Enrich the app with multi-lingual support using Localization

Since Android devices are being used by people residing in different countries across the world, as an Android app designer you must ensure that all the items of the app's user interface are being localized and stored inside separate resource files. Although English is the default language of every Android app, still there are people who expect to access and use the app in a suite of languages spoken by people located in different corners of the world.

Tip#5- Testing the app on hardware devices is a must 

Irrespective of how well you've configured your app to meet the hardware specifications, there are chances that the app could still be different from the reality. Hence, as a mandatory activity, ensure to have your app tested on the most popular hardware devices to get a vibe of how your app looks and perform on them. The internet is jammed with tutorials that teach you the method of setting up a hardware device for testing an Android app. You can choose to go through these tutorials for testing your app flawlessly.

Tip#6-Evaluating app's responsiveness is essential

People tend to get annoyed when their device suddenly hangs or freezes for a hell lot of time. With the “Application Not Responding(ANR)” dialog visible on Android devices, the user experience is ruined as a whole. As an app designer, you must present a dialog box or progress bar in order to keep your users notified about the unwanted application not responding error. You may even opt for Traceview- an excellent tool for evaluating your Android app's responsiveness.

Wrapping Up

So those were the overall design tips that are specially suited for developing Android applications. With a careful consideration of all these tips, you can surely leverage the advantage of serving the Android app market with something that's both innovative as well as a sweet surprise for Android consumers.

Author Signature:
Lucie Kruger is an eminent Senior Content Editor and IT consultant for Mobiers Ltd, a reputed iPhone Apps development company. You can also contact her, if you are looking forward to hire skilled iPhone Application Developer for

Plethora of Features From iOS 7

Since the announcement last June of the upcoming release of iOS 7 this fall of 2013, everybody is on the edge of their seats waiting for the official and final roundup of features this new operating system from Apple has to offer. From the time it was announced, several Beta versions of the said operating system were released. From Beta 1 released last June 10, 2013 to the latest that is Beta 6 which is so far the newest and addresses the issue regarding iTunes, stability and speed improvements. The official and final release of the software this September will however unveil all the amazing features that iOS 7 has to offer.

In the meantime, let us discuss all the features that Apple has mentioned about iOS 7. Indeed, this is the biggest change so far since the beginning of iPhone. And it is not hard to miss all the notable changes in the overall redesigned user interface. The design of the UI is a combination of new icons, layering, translucency, polished typography and a parallax 3D effect giving new dimension and depth to the Home screen.

Check Out Some New in iOS7

According to Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple Inc., there are ten major changes and feature additions that we should look forward to with the new operating system. 

Control Center

This feature provides a quick access to settings such as brightness, AirPlay, AirDrop, media controls, Airplane mode and also a shortcut to apps like calculator, flashlight, compass and camera.

Multitasking

Enables user to switch between apps, updates your content before launching and the capability to preview all running apps.

AirDrop

Sharing documents, photos, videos and contacts made easy with just a tap at the Share button. This technology uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, highly secure because of encrypted transfers so you never have to worry.

Camera

Offers new photo filters and four different shoot modes (panoramic photo, video, square photo and still). The option to preview before applying filter makes it easier if you ever want to change your mind.

Panoramic or Live Wallpapers

This feature is similar to that of Google’s Android screen where your wallpaper moves with a swipe from left to right. It has preload wallpapers like bubbles, ripples, dew drops and many more. The static wallpaper is used based on the gyroscope input, wherein when a panoramic photo is taken with the use of the Camera app it will move while you move from left to right.

Photos

Each photo uses the EXIF data wherein it is sorted by location and date to browse through photos easier and faster.

Safari

The browsing is better with the unified smart search field and going back and forth between tabs is easy with just a swipe. Other changes include parental controls and infinite tabs.

Music and iTunes Radio

Available on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac PC and Apple TV for free, it features streaming radio stations. You can choose from over 200 genre-based stations.

App Store

A collection of popular apps is now easy to reach with Apps Near Me feature. It shows you apps relevant to your current location and update your apps automatically.

Siri 

A redesigned interface that answers questions faster, returns calls, play voicemail, controls iTunes radio, searches Wikipedia and Twitter too. It has male and female voice to choose from and makes it easier to use and understand. Siri says “Your wish is my command!”

Final Words....!

Although these ten major changes or features were the only one users are possibly looking for, other features like Audio-only calling for FaceTime, Find My iPhone, Notification Center syncing and Wi-Fi Hotspot 2.0 might not be mentioned in other new releases but we will have to wait for the final release to finally see all the great features iOS 7 has to offer.

New iOS App : Lets You Record What You Heard Five Mints Ago

Apple company launched their a new and awesome iOS application which can help us to see our 5 mins past :) let's think once Have you ever wished that you could record something that already happened? Yes, now this is possible be'coz iOS launched a new app which will do this task for you. You can easily download this application from Apple store and I think that will really help you to get know about your beyond past life of 5 mins. If someone is actively trying to record you saying something incriminating, this wouldn’t be a very good app for it. It would offer no advantage in that case over iOS’ built-in Voice Memo recorder.