The Apple iPhone receives much of the attention, as it should since this device has raised the bar and helped propel the current growth of this market. However, reality is that there are hundreds of different phone models, from a wide variety of vendors and service providers. Acsys is ready to work with you to address the mobile challenge and help you answer such questions:
- What mobile devices should I target, iPhone, Andriod, Blackberry, Palm, etc?
- How do I design my application for display on 160X160 to 320X240 to 320 X 480?
- How important is security? Will my data exposed to mobile devices be safe? What steps should I take to protect my data?
- How can I get my development team up to speed?
- What is involved with synchronizing using web services and consuming data using RESTful APIs?
One of the most critical questions to wrestle with regarding mobile development is: Should I create a mobile friendly web site or create device native applications? Before delving into this question, consider the various approaches in more detail.
Native application development
Mobile native applications are software programs created for a specific mobile platform or device. Native applications can use phone's API functions directly from the code and generally have access to most of the device's hardware capabilities: graphic acceleration engine, GPS location, camera, contacts, data storage, network service, and other.
The native application development requires knowledge of the mobile platform development environment, programming language, and hardware model of the phone.
Web app application development
Mobile Web Apps are web pages or websites optimized for a specific mobile browser, such as mobile Safari on iPhone. To develop mobile web apps one can use the Web Application Development tools and techniques, such as DashCode or Dreamweaver. One of the main differences between mobile native and web apps is the development environment and programming languages. The web apps are developed using browser technologies, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and can resemble native applications in appearance.
Hybrid application development
A hybrid mobile application is a combination of mobile native and web app technologies. Hybrid mobile applications run as standalone native applications and leverage web app mobile technology, such as HTML/CSS/JavaScript, when rendering UI controls and interacting with data. Similar to mobile web apps, the hybrid applications can utilize phone's hardware components to some extend but do not offer full hardware support like the native applications.
Choosing the right development platform
So, how would one choose the right development platform when it comes to mobile application development? Should you go with Native, Web App, or Hybrid application development strategy? Well, this answer mostly depends on application requirements.
If application requires reliable interaction with phone's hardware using API functions, it's probably best to go with a native application since this approach allows one to directly call the phone APIs, which will result in best performance. This will also require more development time, testing, QA, and deployment.
If application requires little hardware interaction and mostly used to display static media, then perhaps a web app or a hybrid application can provide required functionality. Any interaction with hardware from the browser will require using the JavaScript layer and may not be supported on some mobile platforms.
So, choosing the right platform depends entirely on the application itself. You need to ask yourself the following questions before making a decision:
- Does the application require data connection and updates? If so, does it require local data storage?
- Does the application require using phone's hardware components, such as a camera, GPS?
- What is the target audience and how do you plan to distribute the app?
- How often do you need to update the application and what would the update mechanism look like? Update native and hybrid applications requires separate builds and installations; whereas the web app can be updated on the server and pushed to user through a browser.
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