What’s New in Android and iOS App Development?

Now and then we come across blogs on what’s new in mobile app development and yet, we must read these blogs because every such blog can offer insights on something we could have missed. Moreover, trends change very fast, so mobile app developers must catch up with the latest regularly and try to follow the trends that could improve the effectiveness of app development. 

You must also adopt new technologies and tools and some of these require you to unlearn and learn often. But, that’s the core ingredient of success in this tech-centred app development market. 

So, without wasting time, let’s move to what’s happening in the mobile app development market! 

New Happenings in Android and iOS App Development

Mobile app development is not just one, but a set of so many domains. The tools and technologies for these domains are commonly different, and so are the trends. Consequently, developers also need time to master the vast sub-domains and must practice the specific area to understand its intricacies. Thus, the expert developers are also generally different for each domain. 

So, let’s discuss the prominent areas of mobile app development, bifurcating the blog based on the sub-domains and what’s trending in each of these. 

Jetpack Compose for Android

Users are the prime focus while developing mobile apps. The success of mobile apps is largely dependent on UI and UX that appeal to the users. Unless you make user-friendly apps, you can’t compete in the market. 

Android app developers are trying new technologies and tools that can help them make better UI. However, this could imply complex coding and difficult-to-manage projects. So they need solutions that help make high-quality UI with ease and minimum, clean code. Jetpack Compose is one such solution, becoming the latest trend in Android development. Let’s understand what Jetpack Compose is!

Jetpack Compose is a toolkit mainly for building User Interfaces in Android. It requires Android developers to code less with a very powerful set of tools that aid high-quality development. 

Animation is an essential part of UX now as it engages the users. Jetpack Compose also offers a high-grade API for animation development so the developers can develop eye-catching transitions faster and with ease. 

Here are some more benefits of Jetpack Compose. 

Jetpack Compose also offers seamless integration with Kotlin, which is one of the best general-purpose programming languages well-known for Android development. So, the popularity of Jetpack Compose is growing largely among Kotlin developers.

Well, that reminds us about Kotlin! How can we discuss mobile app development without knowing what’s new in Kotlin development?

Kotlin

Kotlin is a well-known, cross-platform, programming language that is more than often the developers’ choice for Android app development. It is also the officially recommended language for Android app development. So, Android app developers cannot ignore Kotlin! 

Android Studio, the official IDE for Android app development offers a plugin, especially for Kotlin, to enable easy development using this language, making it further feasible and convenient for the developers to choose this language.

Kotlin is growing day by day. All updates bring something better and the recent introduction of Kotlin K2 compiler is the most talked about among Kotlin developers right now. It will yield faster development and better performance with unified architecture for all the platforms supported by Kotlin.

Kotlin is becoming more and more suitable for multi-platform projects so the developers are now getting attracted to this language like never before.

Flutter for Android App Development

Even the best Android developers need the support of frameworks for high-quality app development. One framework that is gaining popularity among mobile app developers is Flutter. It can be used for both Android and iOS app development. It helps developers increase efficiency in development and reduce costs. It is comparatively a new framework so you will find fewer Flutter developers compared to many old frameworks. However, the benefits of using Futter are many, so the expert Android developers try their best to master Flutter.

Flutter can be used for developing single-page to high-featured, complex applications. It provides many customizable widgets and also allows developers to build custom widgets for specific needs. 

The biggest advantage of using Flutter for mobile app development is that you can use a single codebase written in Dart on both Android and iOS platforms. As the developers know, this helps them reduce costs, and save time and resources on development. 

Summary of the Best Languages and Frameworks for Mobile App Development

Good News for iOS

iOS developers are eagerly waiting for Swift 6 which is all set to be released sometime this year. It will bring considerable improvement in developer experience with features such as better concurrency and error handling, advanced pattern matching, and more. However, iOS developers are embracing many more interesting trends in app development. Let’s see what are these!

Users find it cumbersome to download new apps every time for a minimalistic functionality that they want to use. App Clips is a solution for users who can just access specific features of the app without downloading the full app. Developers know that this will enhance performance and help them increase functionality without worrying much about the size of the app. 

This is not all! To survive the competition, all major frameworks and languages must offer ease of integrating AR, VR, AI, and ML. iOS developers will focus on these technologies and iOS users can expect high-quality user experience with rich technology integration in the near future.

Suggested Reading: iOS or Android App Development? Top Differences You Must Know

PWA With Ionic

Progressive Web Apps are the need of the hour and developers are adopting new tools and technologies to support PWAs. Ionic is one such framework popular for developing cross-platform apps and PWAs, though it is equally well-known among hybrid or native app developers. So, what’s trending in Ionic?

The recent developments have enabled Ionic developers to use and import Ionic components as standalone components in an app. The build size can be considerably reduced using this standalone component approach. 

And, not to miss, the most awaited, Ionic 8. It offers high-contrast themes and simplified theme importing. It also allows dynamic font scaling to facilitate text scaling adjustments based on user preferences. The updates in this version will match the iOS 17 design changes to offer a modernized UI and improved development. This will allow disabling action sheet buttons to create a better user experience.

How Can We Forget React Native?

React Native framework is popular among the developers of both Android and iOS, thus making it one of the most talked about frameworks in mobile app development. While a lot is happening in React Native, developers are majorly concerned about what they can expect in the areas that have been trouble zones for them for a long time. For example, server configurations have compelled developers to make extra efforts to incorporate scaling and server management while developing apps in the past. So, the trend is now shifting towards Serverless Architecture that solves this problem.

The React Native developers can now code without worrying about server configuration. The cloud service providers now manage servers, resource allocation, and scaling as and when required without the developers having to do any code modifications due to these. The development is thus smoother, faster, and cost-effective. No, this is not all! There is a lot more happening in React Native that you must know.  

Developers want the framework they choose to make UI better as a lot of focus is now being given to UI for making successful apps. React Native is also a step further in this direction. Fabric, the new UI layer of React Native has made UI operations more efficient. It provides advanced features and better interoperability to facilitate streamlined application development. With Fabric architecture, developers can considerably reduce thread count, which means faster app loading and better user experience.   

React Native is upgrading and now tools are available to make development faster and easier. It is now less cumbersome for developers to debug and maintain the code.

Wrapping Up!

Mobile app development is a vast domain based on various technologies, frameworks, languages, tools, etc. The users are different with varied preferences of devices, operating systems, screen sizes, etc. The developers have to code considering these differences and businesses want to build apps for all types of users. 

The mobile app development trends are also varied, pertaining to these varied areas of development. Through this blog, we have discussed the latest happenings and emerging trends that matter to Android app developers, iOS app developers, Flutter developers, React Native developers, and Kotlin developers. We are sure you are also interested in what’s new in apps, so these matter to you as well!