Major challenges faced by Android App Developers

While building applications, an android app developer often faces some major challenges. Overcoming these issues is important to create a flawless app for the platform. 

Android is the most popular platform now for building applications. It has millions of apps for different purposes and innumerable applications get released on it every single day. With the increasing popularity and demand of these apps and with the growing number of android users, the task of creating apps is becoming more challenging. Launching a flawless and high-performing application has become essential to stay on top with the maximum number of users. The application developers must use the latest tools, technologies, and languages and have to overcome every single challenge to end up with ROI-driven results. 

 

An android app developer has listed out the challenges, developers need to cope up with here. Let’s take a look. 

 

Fragmentation:

 

• Software fragmentation:

From Orio to Donut and Cupcake, android has almost seventeen versions till now. And every version comes with different features, enhancements, and are built with different technologies. Moreover, everyone does not use the same version. Different people use different models of android devices, which run on different versions of the OS. Developers have to create and design the apps keeping this in mind. They have to design applications that will run on all these versions and can ensure to offer the same UX as well. This is the first and the most common challenge that every application developer faces and needs to overcome as well. 

 

• Device fragmentation:

Device diversity is always a challenge for developers. There are so many different devices that run on Android and come with different screen resolutions, features, and different functionalities. The hardware features of these devices differ in terms of their buttons, display, formats, resolutions, keywords, authentication system, storage capacity, battery power, etc. Creating applications, which perfectly fit and support all these factors of all the devices is a challenge and needs to be overcome. 

 

• Testing fragmentation:

Every android device supports different testing processes and technologies. With this in mind, the professionals or testers need to use different strategies and tools for testing these applications every time. 

 

Custom UI or Standard UI – choosing the right one:

Android has diverse rules for designing UI. The benefit of OS customisation makes the developers think about whether he or she should go for the standard UI or the Custom UI. Standard UI cannot fulfill each and every requirement of a modern android application. This makes the developers redesign the apps and customise them following the design guidelines. Applications that are designed well and have a unique, attractive, and easy-to-navigate user interface can offer maximum compatibility with different devices with different screen proportions. 

 

Now comes the question- Kotlin or Java:

These two are the most popular programming languages used for android application development. Choosing the right one depending upon your app requirements can be a challenging task. 

 

Kotlin: - Kotlin is the modern programming language and can make use of different Java libraries. With this language, android applications can be developed much faster without any glitches. 

 

Java: - It is an easy programming language, but it needs the bulk of codes to be written and needs more storage as well. It supports the building of both cross-platform and native applications. It has in-built libraries that can be used for app development. 

 

Security issues:

As android is open-source, keeping an eye on the security issues becomes essential. Because of its open-source nature, there is always a chance of threats and malware. This is a challenging task as developers need to end up with bug-free and high-performing applications every time. 

 

Patent & Copyright issues:

The infringements of the laws of patents and copyrights make it a challenging task to offer impeccable security with updates from Google’s copyrights. 

 

Apart from these, there are some more challenges developers often come across during android app development like API incompatibility problems, integration challenges, storage, and battery consumption issues as users always love to download and keep using apps that consume less space on the phone and less battery power, and some scalability issues. Overcoming each one of these is vital to ultimately release an amazing application on the Google Play Store. 

 

Rob Stephen is an expert Android App Developer of a leading app development company in Australia, GetAProgrammer. The author has written this article to help out developers identify the challenges that may come during the development process and overcome the same to build glitch-free and high-performing applications for the platform.