Mobile Application Development Tools for Android & iOS

Looking at the booming development in the mobile app industry, most of the companies are planning (or have already planned) to develop a mobile application to serve their business needs. However, since billions of mobile applications are available for users, it becomes highly crucial to distinguish yourself to outshine others. For this, you need a mobile app that offers high-level interactivity and user satisfaction. But what makes an application highly interactive and well-performing? Well, the answer is creative and feature-packed mobile app development tools and a recognized mobile application development company that can help create top-quality mobile apps for your business.

This article will introduce you to the multi-platform (Android and iOS) mobile app development tools to speed up your app development process. But before that, let us take an overview of mobile app development tools.

Mobile application development tools: The unsung heroes behind a successful mobile application

Mobile application development tools are specifically designed software that helps developers in building mobile applications. These tools provide support and features that pace up the development process and fulfil the business requirements a company desires in its mobile app.

Mobile app development tools are of two types:

1. Native mobile app development tools
2. Cross-platform app development tools

Native mobile app development tools are the ones that help in building specialised apps that possess high quality and run on specific platforms. Although the apps made by these tools show top performance, their development cost is high, and they can not run on multiple platforms.

On the contrary, cross-platform mobile app development tools enable you to craft generic applications running on multiple platforms. Moreover, the development cost of cross-platform apps is relatively low compared to that of native apps.

Talking about further classifications, these tools have been split into three more categories. These are:

• Coding platforms
• Low-coding platforms
• No coding platforms

However, this informational piece will only talk about the first category of the cross-platform development tools (Android and iOS), that is, coding platforms. So, let’s discuss some prominent cross-platform app development tools along with their main features.

Coding platforms

These platforms or tools give you complete power over the whole development process. The only disadvantage is that you need proper knowledge of the programming language you will use to develop your app. However, other than that, these tools are the best ones if you look for perfection and want complete control over your mobile app.

Appcelerator

The first tool in the category is Appcelerator which helps in rapid mobile app development with minimum effort and time. Its name resonates with ‘accelerator’, which shows that this tool helps accelerate the entire app building process from development to testing. Moreover, it provides you with real-time mobile analytics to get a time-to-time update about user engagement and overall results. Furthermore, the apps built using Appcelerator store data either in the respective devices or over the cloud.

Xamarin

With Xamarin, you can build native Android, iOS, and Windows mobile apps using a solo .NET codebase. Being an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Xamarin uses Visual Studio tools to develop native-like applications. Its primary features include code editing, debugging, bug-fixing, testing and cloud publishing. Moreover, the platform claims that more than 95% of code created for an application is reusable.

Adobe PhoneGap

PhoneGap enables users to work with a single code base but with a distinctive set of multiple technologies. You can use different web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc., along with web APIs. Moreover, with native APIs, you will get a native feel in the apps developed using PhoneGap. The tool stores the application files either in the local directory or over the cloud storage. The apps access the device features with the help of plugins which makes the applications lightweight. However, the UI quality is somewhat dependent on the web view engine of the OS rendering it.

Ionic

If you are searching for an easily accessible tool that offers your feature of mobile app prototyping and a satisfactory command-line interface, then Ionic can be your choice. With its decent CLI, Ionic enables its users to build elegant mobile applications and PWAs (Progressive Web Apps). It is an open-source, cross-platform app development platform with which developing high-quality mobile apps becomes easy-peasy, and that even with a single codebase.

React Native

It is a JavaScript-based cross-platform app development framework developed by Facebook. With the combined power of React, JavaScript and native APIs, developers can create native-like apps over a single codebase. With advanced features of hot reloading, live reloading, enhanced debugging, deep testing, etc., you can check your mobile application in real-time and make changes accordingly.

Wrapping Up

Mobile phone users are increasing at a great speed, which raises demand for developing mobile applications more rapidly. However, just developing an app can not change your business value; you need to create an app with hi-tech features and interactive UI.

But where will you find the best developers to fulfil these requirements? Well, you can consult a mobile app development company in the UK as the country is well-known as the powerhouse of the global app development market. The experts will analyse your business requirements and use suitable tools to build a robust application for your business.