The year 2008 was a key year for mobile applications. In that year, Apple released its iOS SDK in March and launched the App Store with the release of iOS 2.0 in July. Let’s call it the start of the Mobile Gold Rush. Now in this mobile gold rush, there are hundreds of thousands of applications and amongst them many are bound to have the same idea and the same purpose. How does one app shine, while others won’t even get visits to their description pages?

Let me tell you about an experience I had. I used to own a smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. I loved the phone when I only used it as a phone, but simply hated it when it came to applications. There were thousands of issues I could have pointed out. The end result is that I am not going to purchase another Windows smartphone. Do you see where I am going with this?

Consumers always rely on their memory associations, whether conscious or unconscious, when it comes to purchasing new products. I would say almost everyone would not go back to using a product they’ve had a bad experience with when there are so many other options around. This goes the same for mobile application developers and development firms. I have uninstalled so many applications from my Nexus One within the first few minutes of their lives. It wasn’t because of the features they didn’t have or how horrid the GUI was. The main reason was they weren’t working the way they were expected to. Some users even kiss applications goodbye altogether according to this survey based on such experiences. Let me put it this way:

“If your code is not flawless, you will lose your market share and never be able to recover it.”

Application developers strive to develop new features giving them the competitive advantage or as my friend and mentor, Bruce Firestone, calls it “Pixie Dust”. This is completely the right thing to do; however, they should focus more on their apps’ perfect functional execution. Having a limited number of features that work exactly as the user expects is better than having more numerous, but buggy features. I know it sounds like a no brainer, but the success of a small number of apps as opposed to the thousand other ones doing the same thing should serve as sufficient evidence that it is easier said than done.

Buggy code hurts the application and the developing company’s brand. Making sure your code is near perfect would be a strategy I would like to call the Pre-Branding Protection Plan. With the abundance of competitors in the mobile gold rush, bad apps will almost permanently prevent market recovery and destroy sales.

One method I use to make sure my brand would be protected is using J2ME static analysis tools. There are various paid and free tools, but I am very happy with the Klocwork Solo, which is geared for J2ME developers. I had never used such tools and only started using them when I joined the company. I don’t know what I would do without them now. In my next posts, I will discuss some of the issues the tool caught that improved my productivity and the efficiency of my code.

In my last post, I talked about some of the reasons why I started developing Android apps. The new Android 2.3 Gingerbread is even better than Froyo. I’m talking about a whole new Nerdy and the Droid factory.

With Gingerbread released and rolled out on the new flagship phone, the Google Nexus S, the developers’ wait is over. Some of the new features and functionalities baked within Gingerbread are:

1.    More power under the hood

My Nexus One lasts me about a day running Froyo. Android is now way smarter in managing its electrons with Gingerbread. With new interface design, smart process management and improved power management, it has increased the battery life significantly.

2.    Near Field Communication

NFC provides high-speed, short-range wireless communication capabilities and is responsible for most of the Gingerbread hype. NFC has introduced many new playgrounds for Android developers such as mobile tickets, mobile payment, identity documents, smart posters, electronic keys and more.

3.    Improved audio and graphics

Gingerbread now supports extra-large screen sizes and resolutions in addition to audio, graphic and input enhancements. This is a red carpet invitation for game developers to knock themselves out!

4.    Session Initiation Protocol VOIP telephony

SIP VOIP allows enhanced video and audio calling. It also supports video conferencing, streaming multimedia distribution, instant messaging, file transfer and online games.

5.    Native sensor support

Gingerbread now natively supports sensors such as the gyroscopes and barometers.

And let’s not forget new features like concurrent garbage collection, multi-touch software keyboard, enhanced support for native code, multi-camera support and new download management.

With all these new building blocks, I can’t wait to see what new apps are going to show up on my App Market!

Happy coding!

The open-source, Linux-based and hardware-independent Android mobile OS, with the new Android 2.3 Gingerbread release is giving mobile developers a whole new ball court to play in. Android is the fastest growing mobile OS among its competitors and with its share in the Smartphone user market growing, Android is attracting more and more enthusiastic developers.

Being a Java developer I jumped right into Android development about a year ago. There is a whole list of reasons why I chose to develop Android apps over other platforms and here are some of them:

1.    Low development costs and high returns

There is almost no cost to develop an Android app. There are no required licenses, specific IDEs or limited distribution channels. You may end up spending money on development and testing expertise, use of specific app stores and the purchase test devices, but the sum of all that is still a fraction of what you would pay to develop on other popular mobile platforms.

2.    Open and free

The two words every developer wants to hear are ‘Open’ and ‘Free’. Now you can have that on your mobile! This baby is license and royalty free because its underlying SDK architecture remains open source. The entire environment is available for customization, and developers and organizations can provide as detailed feedback as they want to the Android development team and watch as their issues get addressed in frequent new releases.

3.    Various distribution channels

Developers are not limited to the Android app market or any other channels to get their apps on consumers’ phones. Apps can be legally downloaded and installed from any unknown sources.

4.    The good old Java

Being Java based, Android uses a rich pool of libraries that provide extreme flexibility and room for uncapped creativity. Android’s topnotch documentation means virtually anyone with a working knowledge of Java can get Android applications off the ground.

5.    Flash Love!

Before Android gathered its well deserved power and popularity, Flash was thought to be a dying technology since it wasn’t supported by other mobile industry giants. There is obviously a ‘but’ here! The green robot embraced flash and took mobile web surfing to a whole new level.

6.    A little piece of the cloud

Android is heavily meshed with the cloud and it carries superior Google connectivity solutions. Google’s cloud tools are already soaring on the popularity list and they come right to the palms of the users’ hands with Android. One can also take advantage of browser connectivity solutions for Chrome and Firefox. In addition, Android provides open Bluetooth communication, something that is missing on some other popular platforms. Versions 2.2 Froyo and later allow the phone to become a portable hotspot. Now that is cool!

The awesome obviously doesn’t stop here. In my next post, I’ll talk about Android 2.3 Gingerbread features and what there is for us mobile app developers to play with!

Happy coding!

We are starting to see a large amount of Android phones such as the Droid and Xperia X10 (see a review here) and the (soon-to-be-released) first Google phone, Nexus One. With this, expect the number of apps to increase significantly.

Droid vs. iPhone

So with the increased number of apps, do these developers have the right tools to find and fix bugs? Take a look at the leader of phone applications-iPhone. There have been several posts (here and here) that recommend using the Clang static analyzer. Apple has taken it one step further, apparently rejecting iPhone apps that access private APIs. But Clang won’t help you with Java apps.

So what do the Android developers have? Android is just Java, so there are lots of tools, right? Certainly there are static analysis tools, profilers, unit testing tools and many more. But are these tools really taking into account the Android specifics?

Let’s take an example of a resource leak. Resources such as streams, connections and graphic objects must be explicitly closed; otherwise, you run the risk of throwing exceptions depending on the open resource.




For example:

1 static final String propertyFile = "my_config.ini";
2
3 static String getProperyFromConfigFile(String name)throws IOException {
4    Properties prop = new Properties();
5    FileInputStream st = new FileInputStream(propertyFile);
6    prop.load(st);
7    return prop.getProperty(name);
8 }

Here, a resource leak should be identified since line 5 opens up a FileInputStream, but is never closed before exiting the method. Now, this is all well and good and valuable to be found in any Android specific code, but what happens if I’m using built-in classes from the Android SDK?

For example:

1 public boolean onKeyDown(final int keyCode, final KeyEvent event) {
2    if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER) {
3          final MediaPlayer player = MediaPlayer.create(this, ringtoneUri);
4          player.start();
5    }
6    return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event);
7 }

Here, you have a situation where a MediaPlayer resource is created at line 3, but never closed on exit. Without the knowledge that MediaPlayer is a resource that should be closed, you will miss this type of issue. This extends to many resources and different issues. You can also have Android-specific null pointer exceptions and use of free issues.

Let me know if you’re doing Android development. I want to hear what you are doing to find these kinds of bugs.