Introduction:
Many iPhone app developers are afraid of jumping on the Android platform when the same app needs porting or creating an Android app from scratch. Fortunately, today differences between iOS and Android app development experiences are not acute, and many similarities can ease the process. Apple Inc. has first released the iPhone SDK and begun the era of custom mobile app development with the active involvement of third-party developers. Since Apple Inc. is a proprietary platform with huge capacities to support an entire mobile application development ecosystem, it has released technologies, tools and established a marketplace by providing extensive supports and strict monitoring and management to sustain in the long run. In the beginning, being an open-source and open platform, Android was missing the advancements of the iOS platform and used to pass through an evolution phase to achieve the standards akin to iOS has. Therefore, today’s differences between the two platforms are less, and similarities increase in a programming language, coding and designing tools, and marketing approaches. However, mobile app developers with iOS background have to consider some vital aspects while moving to Android app development.You Might Also Like: How to Build Android Ecommerce App for Online Mobile Shopping
Object-oriented Programming
Objective-C and now Swift like iOS programming languages are following OOP concepts, such as- Objects
- Encapsulation
- Polymorphism
- Inheritance
- Self
- Subclasses/superclasses
- Overriding methods
- Delegates
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Tip: iOS developers should refer Wikipedia, which has a list of Java keywords to comprehend the concept of Java code and implement it after referring right context available in Android sample code from Google. |
Comparing Components
For the iOS developers, the most challenging task while migrating or moving from iOS to Android development is figuring out the various components regarding syntax and semantics. We have listed some highly used and profoundly affecting components here. Still, developers can find details from the official Android platform’s official documentation platform, as they are releasing regular updates.| Components | iOS (Objective-C / Swift) | Android |
| Nomenclature | Class prefixes (Objective-C) / Module (Swift) | Name spacing & Package management |
| Getters/Setters | Properties auto @synthesized / Native Properties | getFoo & setFoo methods |
| Null/Nil | no-ops / Options | Need to Null check objects |
| Assets | xcassets asset catalogs | res folder |
| UI Layout Files | A single .storyboard file | A separate XML layout file |
| Project Configuration File | Info.plist | AndroidManifest.xml |
| View Class Component | UIViewControllers | Activities and Fragments |
| Lists | UITableView, UICollectionView | RecyclerView, ListActivity and ListFragment |
| Text Display | UILabel, UITextField, and UITextView | TextView – EditText |
| Loosely Coupled Callbacks | Delegates | Adapters |
| Asynchronous Logic | Grand Central Dispatch, NSOperationQueue | AsyncTasks, Background Services, IntentService |
| Dependency Manager | Cocoapods or Carthage / Package Manager | Gradle |
| Project Hierarchy | Workspace | Project |
| Primitives | int, float, double, char | int, float, char |
| Screen Size Units | Pixels and points | Pixels, density-independent pixels (dp), scale-independent pixels (sp) |
| Resuming a “Killed” App | Starts from scratch and re-launches the app | Maintains a stack of activities |
| Orientation Changes | Auto Layout default support | Several options available including destroying/rebuilding Activities |
IDE (Integrated Development Environment)
There are two different IDE used on both platforms. X-code is for iOS app development, while recently, Android Studio is for Android. However, Eclipse was used before for Android development. There are some differences between the two IDE, such as- UI code is written differently on both platforms.
- X-code uses storyboards and nibs, whereas individual XML files are used on Android Studio.
- The iOS simulator is snappy, while Android emulators are slow when doing debugging processes.
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Fragmentation
Indeed, hardware (Device) and operating system (OS) fragmentation on Android platforms are acute. Most of the iOS developers are afraid of it due to the hard work, time, and resources consumptions involved to beat it. At the initial stage, the iOS platform has uniformities in hardware and software fronts. Still, with the pace, some fragmentation levels also entered into the iOS ecosystem, and iOS developers are now struggling to deal with it. If we look closely, iOS Auto Layout & Size Classes are used to mitigate the fragmentation issues, particularly for different screen sizes. At the same time, XML attributes and layout file structure is familiar for Android developers. Android offers impressive solutions for mobile developers to deal with differences, particularly for developers with an iOS development background because they used to learn match_parent and wrap_content like Android XML Constants. Dealing with SDK and API fragmentation in the Android environment is easy because Android Studio presents a decent feature, “Help Me Choose,” for developers to select targeted Android devices to manage the fragmentation to a greater extent.Testing & Deployment
Indeed, testing is not fun and easy for Android app developers due to inadequate support from the platform and third-party providers. Still, recent efforts through the Developer Console are praiseworthy and cool. In contrast, the Google Play store’s deployment is no more a frustrating experience as found on iOS App Store’s high rejection rate.Conclusion:
The present comparisons and analysis of both platforms reveal that moving to Android app development is now easy for developers from the iOS background. The obvious benefits of coding on both platforms are immense since most of the clients coming with the requirements of mobile apps for both platforms to cover a vast audience available on the Android platform and quality audience available on the iOS platform. Suppose you are a business or an organization striving for quality and native user experiences for your mobile entity. In that case, SysBunny is the right destination with iOS mobile app development and Android mobile app development teams to deliver quick outputs at competitive market rates.About Post Author
