Services

NATIVE APP DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

Given the growth in usage of mobile applications, many business owners, by going for native iOS and Android development, are willing to bring added value to their customers and make information or services readily available via apps — an effective channel for engaging with users.

Native mobile apps are programs that are designed and configured to be used on particular mobile computing device platforms. That is, the same functionality is coded differently for execution on an iOS platform and on an Android platform. Android and iOS native apps are normally developed by information technology specialists who possess advanced programming skills and solid working expertise in a particular coding language and set of software development tools. As for the languages used, these are Java or Kotlin for Android and Objective C or Swift for iOS. In turn, each of them is complemented with IDEs (Android Studio and Xcode respectively), Android or iOS SDKs and other developer tools.

Then, after being developed, a native app is subject to testing on different devices for usability and finally hosted on either or both Android and Apple app stores for free or paid download. Each of these steps contributes to the extraordinary user experience and brings other non-obvious benefits.

OUR NATIVE MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

Android app development

One of the flagship technologies for Altizone, Android, has been our means of delivering success to clients ever since 2013. We have implemented more than a score of Android projects. Many of them amply illustrate that whatever this technology currently offers can be efficiently used by us to bring your idea to life in fine quality and the most optimal manner.

Altizone’s Android development team consists of university-educated software engineers whose average experience with Android is 3 years. There is no version of Android or type of device they would have failed to successfully work with before.

Our Android native app development process is also distinctive of the broad use of a range of cutting-edge frameworks that allow enhancing the various characteristics of Android apps. In particular, we often use RxJava/RxAndroid to make the apps we develop more easily expandable and convertible. It helps raise the level of abstraction for programmers, and make code generally more clear and improve its simplicity. In order to render our apps more compliant with the IoC principles, and thus easier to maintain, we use Dagger 2. Another great means of ensuring our Android apps’ maintainability and testability is architectural patterns. Specifically, we use the Model-View-Presenter (MVP) and Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns. Wherever possible, our developers employ Android Jetpack. They take advantage of its libraries and tools supporting thus a modern approach to building Android native apps. Besides, we make regular use of battery-saving technologies and, importantly, aim to make the applications we develop less susceptible to a slow Internet connection by allowing them to access a local database.

iOS app development

Altizone has a breadth of experience in implementing iOS projects. Our iOS team is composed of solidly educated software engineers, whose iOS development experience averages 3 years and who are skilled in developing iOS apps for both phones and tablets. We started at the advent of iPhone OS and now, our developers are helping Altizone’s clients achieve their business goals using the latest iOS versions.

The software architecture skills of Altizone’s iOS team date back to the very inception of smartphone memory. Our developers are equally proficient in leveraging good old Objective-C and harnessing the latest Swift Protocol-Oriented approaches to make our clients’ apps truly innovative, robust and visually appealing.

Altizone’s iOS developers make broad use of Cocoa Touch and have all of the native iOS frameworks on their fingertips, from the mainstream Core ones, such as Foundation and UIKit, to custom CoreGraphics layouts and animation and the whole of QuartzCore. In general, our tech team uses not only the standard pattern for Cocoa applications called Model-View-Controller but also Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern. Thus, the former is setting up the scene, whereas the latter, paired with RxSwift/RxCocoa, helps improve code coverage with unit tests, better structure the project, keep it organized and modular; and eventually, it allows providing reliable app performance and seamless user experience.

OUR NATIVE MOBILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The software development cycle is a series of steps that starts from the idea of an app and continues towards its actual realization. To ensure the high quality of the software we are working on, our mobile app developers follow these steps:

1. Analyzing the requirements and specifications
2. Designing the program
3. Writing the code
4. Analyzing and testing the program
5. Supporting and updating the app

BENEFITS OF NATIVE APP DEVELOPMENT FOR BUSINESSES

Smooth performance. Since the native code is platform-specific, native mobile apps run faster. Accordingly, this code is directly translated into better and smoother performance.

Access to advanced features

Native APIs enable accessing information and services on users’ devices outside the application that is being used. Thus, these native APIs employed to access contact lists, calendars, media libraries and more make it easier to integrate new features and eventually, enhance your app.

Full access to hardware

The said APIs enable developers to build apps which can directly access device features such as cameras, GPS aerial, accelerometer, microphones and more. In contrast, OS manufacturers like Apple restrict greatly the availability of hardware features on web apps, which makes them stay several steps behind native app capabilities.

A platform-consistent user interface

Apps that have similarities resulting from the use of APIs are those conforming to a high standard in mobile software. There is a consistent look across devices of a specific family (iOS or Android) in terms of graphics, images, buttons and so on. Therefore, quite a number of users prefer either Android or iOS UI rather than the unified look of cross-platform apps.

A much better user experience

Operating system manufacturers provide clear-cut recommendations as for how to improve the experience for users: Human Interface Guidelines for iOS and Material Design for Android. It provides a high level of consistency across applications — users expect apps to behave in a particular way and native mobile apps normally live up to these expectations.

An ability to work with apps in offline mode

Unlike hybrid and web applications, native mobile apps can work offline, so that the app’s functionality is used with no Internet connection at all. There are a number of different ways in which an app can be configured to use local data synchronizing with the server once the connection is restored.

As a result, the extra effort required to build a native mobile application pays off

In case of issues, software engineers are provided with a tool to fix it up. Besides, native apps are based on an understandable code and the development process is followed by a relatively easy debugging process. In fact, the present constraints help avoid unexpected and unwanted effects and Altizone, as a native app development company, does its best to derive the maximum benefit from native mobile app development technologies while working on the software projects.