android – Talent500 Blog

4 key steps to become a Google-certified Android developer

Posted on October 31, 2022November 8, 2022 by vallish

As the world’s most used mobile operating system, Android has created an ecosystem for developers to find excellent opportunities. Learning Android app development is a skill that puts you on the path to a fulfilling career. But, with millions of developers already offering services, how do you assert your expertise and knowledge?

Becoming a Google-certified Android developer is an easy way to stand out. Google manages Android and openly supports the community of talented developers by offering them recognition. By clearing the Google Android Assistance Developer exam, you can quickly boost your career as a certified android developer.

This article covers a complete guide to becoming a Google-certified Android developer.

1. Are you skilled enough?

Android development is a vast domain, and to become a Google developer, you must be familiar with several concepts. Begin by referring to the syllabus to know the competency areas and individual competencies against which you will be tested. The entire syllabus is divided into five sections: Android core, user interface, data management, debugging, and testing.

You need to upskill if you are unsure about understanding any of these Android development segments. You get a single attempt for the exam, which is why it is essential to prepare. If you fail, you will have to reapply and pay the fee again. Some important concepts that you must be familiar with are the Android file system, data management, Android core syntax, and debugging. Go through the listed topics, learn, and become comfortable as you will have to implement it in code during the exam.

2. Apply for the certification exam

Visit the Google Developer official certification page to sign up for the Associate Android Developer program certification. Once you click the signup button, you will be redirected to a new page where you will be asked to select either Kotlin or Java exam signup. Choose the appropriate option, and then you will see the official certification exam instructions. In the end, there will be a ‘Purchase The Exam’ button. Next, you will be asked to upload your ID proof and continue with the fee payment of $149 or 6500 INR.

Developers can provide a passport or driving license as valid ID proof in India. If your ID proof is valid and you have paid the fee, you have successfully applied for the Google Associate Android Developer exam.

3. Attempt the exam

Once you complete step 2 successfully, you will see a button to start the exam. When you click on that button, you will be given a project that you will import into Android Studio on your machine. Along with the project, you will be given instructions on what you need to do. Before taking the exam, you must install a custom plugin called the Google Developer’s Certification plugin in Android Studio. The plugin monitors your exam and automatically submits the project after 8 hours.

Usually, you will be asked to add new features to the project, debug, test the application or fix some bugs. You have an 8 hours deadline within which you have to complete the given tasks and submit your project. You must practice coding to be up to speed and complete the assigned tasks within the allotted time.

4. Appear for the online interview

After submitting the project, you will be notified to appear for an online interview if you qualify. It is called an exit interview that lasts for 30 minutes. During the online interview, your concepts of programming and Android, in general, are evaluated. You will also be asked questions regarding the project you submitted. After the exit interview, you will be notified via email for another round of interviews if you qualify for the project and exit interview rounds. If you are eligible for the final interview round, you become a Google Certified Associate Android Developer.

Why become a Google Certified Associate Android Developer?

The certification provides many benefits to developers that they cannot enjoy otherwise. Here are some advantages of being a Google-certified developer:

You get a Google verifiable badge that you can use in your resume, social media profiles, and GitHub.
You increase your chances of getting hired as an Android developer and are offered above-average pay for your skills.
You stand apart from Android developers with no certification as you have authenticity from Google. Freelancers can easily land better-paying gigs as a certified developer.
If you are lucky, as a Google Certified Android Developer, you can get a chance to participate in official summits for Android developers on an all-expenses-paid trip.

Conclusion

A Google Developers Certification gives a significant distinction to your Android developer resume. It’s a testament to your skills and expertise and an indicator of your ability to solve challenges within provided guidelines.

Talent500 is always looking for Google-certified Android developers to join our elite talent pool. We connect you to the highest-paying gigs at Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups. Sign up now.

Developing a super app: the complete guide

Posted on October 10, 2022November 10, 2022 by vallish

Smartphones are becoming an integral part of our professional and personal lives. According to Statista, in 2021, Google Play and Apple Store witnessed a combined 230 billion app downloads. This number is exponentially increasing, and businesses are trying to create more apps for their diversified services. But installing multiple apps takes up more storage space on a user’s device and instead they prefer to install a super app that performs multiple functions. People use apps to make payments, shop online, order food, watch movies, play games, connect with others, and many more. But it is getting increasingly difficult for them to manage all the apps. As a solution, they are looking for a single app to do it all, in other words, super apps.

What is a super app?

A super app is an application that has all the features integrated to be a complete solution for every need. You can use a super app to order food, pay bills, buy insurance, book hotels and flights, recharge your phone, etc. A good example is the Tata Neu app, which combines all of Tata group’s services in a single application. It offers “everything from groceries to gadgets, trends to travel, cuisines to coffees, and fitness to finance.”

Given the increasing demands of customers and the rising cost of app development, it is not difficult to anticipate why businesses are vying for super apps. This article looks at how to plan a super app from scratch.

1. It starts with market research

Not every category or type of app can be converted into a super app. Market research is essential to decide the inclusiveness of the super app. You must understand your users across gender, age, interests, requirements, etc., to ensure that the app navigation is suitable for every user. You might also want to partner with other online service providers to make your super app more useful. With the giants like Amazon, Tata Neu, and Paytm, it won’t be easy to compete. You should create a profitable long-term strategy when you partner with growing third-party online services.

As an app developer, you must ensure that the super app has a native feel. This is why UI/UX, design, and content of the presentation planning are essential.

2. Comprehensively define the app features

Features and functionalities are critical for the success of a super app. The requirements you find from the excessive market research should be effectively translated into features during the app development. Define what features and functionalities your app will need. Will it have e-commerce features, payment gateways, messaging and calling features, news feeds, etc.? These considerations will guide you toward taking the right UI/UX approach and technologies stack.

3. UI/UX design considerations

The design requirement for super app development is more complicated than traditional mobile applications. As you will be developing an app for several segments, the UI/UX elements have to be versatile to transform and accommodate the needs of each part. The critical factors to consider while planning super apps are color scheme, typography, effects and transitions, placement of the services, usefulness for users with physical disabilities, and content planning. Well-defined design considerations are essential for a satisfactory user experience.

4. Pick the correct technology stack

Super apps are composed of many online features across several industries. You must consider many technical aspects to integrate different services into your app. While deciding on the technology stack, you will use for app development, focus on the following aspects:

Code space consumption
Code execution time complexity
Development requirements (development time, challenges, upgrades)
Available resources
Budget

Every phase of the super app development will have specific requirements. Based on the most common conditions and architecture of super apps, here is a list of technologies that you can include in any development stack:

https://www.mindinventory.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/technology-stack-ev-charging-station-app.png

5. Quality assurance

Just like any other software, the super app development must also go through a series of test cases to ensure that the code is bug-free and top quality. QA engineers have to write test cases to evaluate the overall user experience at this stage. Any super app should be put through:

Compatibility testing
Functional testing
Installation testing
Localization testing
Manual testing
Performance and load testing
Security testing
Usability testing

The results of these testing approaches will tell the development team about the performance and code quality of the super app.

Conclusion: What to keep in mind when creating super apps?

Given the complexity of a super app, there is a need for cutting-edge IT infrastructure. The server and memory management should be blazing fast. Furthermore, you should optimize the code for faster loading and execution. The API creation for such an app is sophisticated and requires multiple developers to work on the code. And ultimately, the standards and regulations for a super app are complicated as it falls into various categories.

Talent500 is the platform for mobile app developers to explore global opportunities at some of the largest tech companies. Sign up here and become part of our elite pool of talent.

7 best development practices for a successful Android app in 2022

Posted on October 10, 2022November 10, 2022 by vallish

Android is the most widely implemented operating system. Its smartphone OS market share is over 87%, according to Statista. Not just in the smartphone market, but Android is used for several other applications such as smart TVs, car navigation systems, and even laptops. Due to its massive market reach and billions of users, Android development evolves faster.

Creating a successful Android app is, however, an endeavor that requires in-depth planning and research. But the fast-paced development prospects have led to the creation of some best practices for android development that ensure you build quality apps every time.

This article lists the seven best mobile development practices for the Android platform.

1. Understand the internal Android framework

Experienced mobile developers understand how important it is to know the internal architecture of an operating system to exploit its functionalities fully. The first principle you must focus on is understanding the internal Android framework. As a developer, you should learn its file system, memory allocation, threading, and CPU usage. You must know the possibilities before you can start development. Once you are confident that you understand the Android framework well enough, you can write quality code that eliminates errors.

2. List the features comprehensively

After you understand the Android platform’s scope, you can create a comprehensive list of features. It is essential before you invest your time in designing and coding the application. Apps that struggle with engaging users or end up with bad reviews are often created without proper feature planning. Think of building an Android app as being similar to planning a city; you need to create a map of the infrastructure, amenities, and types of properties.

Ask these questions to create a comprehensive list of features:

What do you want your users to be able to do with the app?
How will the added features be accessible to the users?
What are similar apps available on the market, and how will your app differ from them?

Brainstorming these ideas will help you create an elaborate list of features necessary to make your Android app successful. You will have a better understanding of the design and development requirements. It even provides insights into the marketing aspects of how you can make your app stand out.

3. Design it with users in mind

Your Android app design must be user-focused. Move away from your personal preferences about the design and focus on data and insights. Knowing your target users and how they will use the app is essential. Some critical design considerations are their age group, when they will use the app (home, office, or on the go), requirements (for disabilities, if any), and demands not fulfilled by other apps.

4. Hire the right talent for development

You need the right mobile developers in the team for quality android app development. You can’t build a successful app with a buggy or low-quality code. One crucial Android development practice is not to skimp on hiring great talent. Skilled developers understand how to fully exploit Android’s memory management, CPU usage, and multi-threading which results in high-performance mobile app development.

Some important aspects to look for are:

3 to 5 years of experience in Android development
History of successful app delivery backed by reviews from previous clients
Hourly rate or fixed price for projects
Have they worked on similar apps?
Whether they will work directly with you or through an agency/partner

5. Select the right technology

Today, there are several technologies available for Android app development. It will help if you choose the right stack depending on your app’s purpose and features. Decide whether you need a hybrid, native, or cross-platform mobile app. Based on the answer, you can choose either React Native or Flutter for Android app development or Objective-C, Kotlin, or Java for native app development.

6. Test from an early stage

Testing is as essential as design and development. Start testing your app at an early stage for device compatibility and bugs. The users are too quick to leave negative reviews if they experience problems. It is best to follow an agile process for mobile development that facilitates rapid, iterative testing and feedback. All bugs must be identified early, and regular product updates are released such that your app’s user experience is consistently high.

7. Always follow Android clean coding guidelines

You must follow Android coding guidelines to create scalable and high-performance Android apps. Clean code improves robustness, minimizes errors, and makes it easy to manage updates. When you follow the clean coding guidelines, you can simplify the complicated development process. It also highly optimizes the code, improving the end-user experience. Ultimately, all these features help bring down the development cost and reduce the development time.

Conclusion

Android app development is easy when you follow these best development practices. The focus must be on user-centric design, quality development, and clean code.

Talent500 has a pool of elite mobile developers who are part of tech teams at some of the biggest enterprises. Sign up here to know more.

4 great examples of React Native apps in the market

Posted on October 3, 2022October 3, 2022 by vallish

React Native is the leading JavaScript framework for creating native iOS and Android apps. Based on Facebook’s React library, JavaScript developers are given the freedom to develop a native for both platforms with a single code base. React Native is the world’s second most widely used framework for app development. Many companies have shown what can be achieved with this framework.

This article will list some top React Native apps that deliver excellent services to end users and drive company profits.

Let’s get started.

1. Instagram

Instagram is the most downloaded app on the Google Play Store and App Store. It is developed in React Native and uses the same code for Android and iOS operating systems. The app essentially has three components – Feed, Explore, and Profile. With over a billion downloads and multi-billion users worldwide, it is astonishing to know that Instagram was built entirely with a handful of developers in under nine months. Such is the efficiency and scope of React Native. But today, it is not such a surprising feat anymore as some companies have developed their apps in shorter duration.

React Native is exceptionally scalable; that’s how Instagram can handle 500 million daily active users. Also, the app takes 1 billion daily searches, more than Bing, Google, and Yahoo combined. Without a doubt, Instagram is a live example of what can be achieved by leveraging the features of React Native for app development.

2. Shopify

Shopify’s leading eCommerce SaaS platform uses React Native framework for its iOS and Android applications. The engineering team at Shopify recognized the framework’s potential early on and created multiple apps for their retail customers based on React Native.

Shopify refuses to convert its native app into a React Native application because it lacks first-class Android support.

Shopify uses React Native for three applications: Arrive, Point of Sale, and Compass. Shopify could maintain smaller teams for the three applications, as over 80% of the code was shared between Android and iOS versions of the applications. Also, engineering teams could maintain a lower CPU threshold for the applications using React Native, which makes these apps faster. Shopify is actively using React Native to build high-performing applications to meet the requirements of retail merchants.

3. UberEats

UberEats is a highly popular application that lets you order food from restaurants in the nearby area. It tracks your order in real time while it is delivered to you. After delivery, you can rate the driver and food quality. The app is built using React Native for the front end, while it uses multiple platforms for the backend services.

With over 11 million downloads, UberEats is highly rated for customer experience among restaurant delivery apps. UberEats’ engineering team was not confident about using any 3rd party tools for creating apps that could expose them to bad user experience and delayed updates. They chose React Native as Facebook engineers, and the open-source community supports it. Also, React Native is easy to add to any platform that further extends its scope.

4. Skype

Nobody needs an introduction to Skype. Being one of the most popular VOIP calling applications, it was the leader before other web apps started supporting internet calling. Skype mobile app is built using React Native and has over 1 billion downloads. The success of Skype’s consistent experience with both Android and iOS is driven by the cross-platform compatibility of React Native framework. Again, it has witnessed great success due to the framework’s scalability. The Skype app has to handle 25 million users making calls every day. On average, there are 300 minutes of video and voice calling per second on Skype,

Skype needed a robust framework that could drive the success of its applications across both mobile platforms without the need to maintain separate code bases. React Native was the obvious answer as it has a proven record of empowering scalable enterprise-level app development.

Conclusion

You don’t need too many developers to create apps with this framework. As you can use the same code for both Android and iOS apps, you don’t need native developers. It also supports JavaScript out-of-the-box, which implies it can easily integrate with any existing backend service. Furthermore, with React Native, you don’t have to wait for an app to be built and installed on an app for testing; the framework provides instant feedback as compared to other mobile SDKs. These are some reasons why you should consider React Native for your next app development project.

Talent500 is a global remote team-building platform that Fortune 500 companies and innovative startups trust to hire engineering talent. Join our elite pool of talent to discover career-redefining opportunities.

Top 6 mobile app development frameworks in 2022

Posted on September 28, 2022 by vallish

Mobile presence has become vital for businesses, playing an essential role in their business transformation. With the increased penetration of smartphones among the masses, the new focus is on becoming a mobile-first company for business success. Creating a mobile app won’t suffice to capture mobility’s edge. It takes in-depth research, planning, strategy building, and accessing the mobile ecosystem within the industry to develop mobile apps that translate into success for a business.

Native mobile apps offer outstanding aesthetics and functionality, but they are costly, given the diversity of the devices and platforms. Mobile app frameworks are available that allow the creation of web, hybrid, and cross-platform applications.

This article will list the best mobile app development frameworks that offer quick development processes, efficiency, and cross-platform compatibility.

1. Flutter

Google creates Flutter to allow developers to create native Android and iOS apps with a single codebase. It’s an open-source mobile app framework that has gained massive popularity among developers who create cross-platform apps. The unique feature of Flutter is its ability to allow developers to develop highly reliable UI interfaces utilizing the native platform features, whether it’s Android or iOS. Some prominent apps built using Flutter include Google, Alibaba, and Spotify.

Features:

A complete framework
Built-in material design
Strong widget support
Rich motion APIs
Includes a rendering engine
Built-in Cupertino (iOS-flavor) widgets
It supports both iOS & Android
High-performance application

2. Native Script

Another open-source mobile app framework, Native Script, is used when there is a requirement for creating blazing fast applications based on TypeScript, CSS, JavaScript, Vue, and Angular. It is a preferred framework to reduce the code and time of the app loads. If you are planning to build robust applications to be used on multiple platforms, you can rely on Native Script. It offers many benefits that include:

Native user interface without WebViews
Support and access to all Android and iOS APIs
Support for cross-platform app development
Robust backend support
Optimized for app development out-of-the-box

3. React Native

React Native is created by Facebook as an extension of the popular JavaScript library, React. Soon after its release, React Native became the preferred mobile app framework for cross-platform app interface development.

Using this open-source mobile app development framework, developers can create apps for both Android and iOS. Due to its highly accelerated and intuitive development flow, React Native has become a framework of choice despite being a newcomer in the industry. Instagram, Tesla, Amazon Prime Videos, and Skype are some popular apps built on React Native.

Features:

Reusable code across platforms
Support for third-party plugins
Reusable components for maximum efficiency
Rapid deployment ecosystem
Simple maintainability of code

4. Xamarin

A Microsoft product, Xamarin is another cross-platform mobile app framework. It is suitable for C# developers who want an efficient and faster mobile app framework for creating Android or iOS apps. As C# is a much more efficient programming language, Xamarin uses fewer lines of code to offer the same level of robustness and functionality as other mobile app frameworks on the list. Also, the app development is much faster without compromising on app design or performance. On top of that, Xamarin allows the swift transfer of scripts across multiple platforms, such as between Windows and macOS.

After Microsoft acquired Xamarin, it added a feature to connect Visual Studio with the framework, further improving its capacity in terms of quality and performance.

Features:

UI support and native API access
Regular updates and fixes from Microsoft
Targets all mobile platforms
Easier API integration
Faster app development with VS Code

5. Ionic

Ionic is one of the most efficient mobile app frameworks for building interactive hybrid and Progressive Web Applications and not just cross-platform applications. Also, an open-source framework, Ionic, is used by famous enterprises such as MarketWatch, Diesel, McLaren Automotive, and Honeyfi. Developers can build mobile, web, and cross-platform applications using the same framework. You can build apps with Ionic using HTML, CSS3, and JavaScript technologies. It is the reason why this mobile app framework is extensively used to create HTML5 hybrid applications and Progressive Web Applications. It offers consistent app designs, performance boost, and multiple device support, among other things.

Features:

Faster mobile app development
Supports Cordova plugins
UI components come pre-installed
Platform independent
Angular and React versions are available

6. Swiftic

Swiftic is a do-it-yourself mobile app framework that anyone can use to build unique apps. You do not have to be a developer, but if you are, you can exploit its features to create robust mobile applications. Of all the listed mobile app frameworks here, Swiftic is the most flexible option as it has a more straightforward interface and is beginner-friendly. It offers several mobile app development features out-of-the-box like push notifications, social network feeds, and app advertising.

Features:

Easy-to-use interface
Cross-platform compatible
Supports third-party integrations
In-built one-click feature deployment

Conclusion

Considering several factors like ease of development, cross-platform support, faster coding, and operating systems, these are the top 6 mobile app development frameworks of 2022.

Talent500 is the platform for mobile app developers to connect with global companies looking for the right talent. Sign up here and be ready to discover career-redefining options.