A Comprehensive Comparison Of Android And IOS Security Features

When it comes to security, there are many factors to consider. Android and iOS are two of the most popular mobile platforms on the market, and their security features are also highly respected. Here are a few of the most important differences between the two platforms.

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Android:

Android is a mobile platform that is highly influenced by Linux. This means that it has a high level of security and privacy features. Android is also one of the most widely used mobile platforms on the planet.

iOS:

iOS is a mobile platform that is based on the Apple iOS operating system. This system is known for its high level of security and privacy features. iOS is also one of the most widely used mobile platforms on the planet.

If you are looking for a secure mobile platform, then you should definitely consider Android. This mobile operating system is incredibly secure, and it has a variety of features that make it a great choice for websites and applications that need to be protected from potential threats.

However, there are some things that you should be aware of when choosing Android as your secure mobile platform. One important thing to keep in mind is that Android does not offer as many security features as iOS. In addition, Android is not as user-friendly as iOS, so it can be difficult to learn how to use it.

Nevertheless, if you are looking for a mobile platform that is secure and user-friendly, then Android is a great choice.

There is no doubt that Android and iOS are two of the most popular mobile platforms on the planet. They offer a great user experience and are very secure. However, there are some significant differences between the two platforms that should be taken into account when choosing one over the other.

One of the most significant differences between Android and iOS is the level of security that they offer. Android offers a much greater level of security than iOS, both in terms of the security features that are available and the level of security that is applied to the user’s data.

This is because Android is based on the Android OS, which is a much more secure operating system than the iOS OS. This means that the data that is stored on Android is much more secure than the data that is stored on iOS.

Another significant difference between Android and iOS is the level of security that is available to the app developers. iOS offers a much greater level of security to the app developers than Android, meaning that the app developers are able to store a much greater level of data in their apps.

This is because iOS is based on the Apple App Store, which is a much more secure platform than the Android App Store. This means that the data that is stored on iOS is much more secure than the data that is stored on Android.

In conclusion, Android and iOS are two of the most popular mobile platforms on the planet. They offer a great user experience and are very secure. However, there are some significant differences between the two platforms that should be taken into account when choosing one over the other.

iOS is more secure than Android.

Android has weak security features that can be exploited.

iOS has more secure security features that can be exploited.

Android is more likely to be hacked.

 iOS is more likely to be breached by hackers.

Android is more likely to be used in crime.

iOS is more likely to be used by terrorists.

Android is more likely to be used in child exploitation.

iOS is more likely to be used to track people.

iOS is more likely to be used to spy on people.

Android is more likely to be used in hate crimes.

How To Save Money With Tracfone Coupon Codes

Tracfone is a prepaid cell phone service provider that offers both pay-as-you-go and monthly plans. With Tracfone, there are no contracts and no hidden fees. You simply pay for the minutes, texts, and data that you use.

Tracfone service is available nationwide in the United States. And with Tracfone coupon codes, you can save even more on their already affordable plans. Here are some tips on how to use Tracfone coupon codes to save even more money.

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Look for Tracfone promo codes that offer free minutes.

There are often promo codes available that will give you free minutes when you add a certain amount of minutes to your Tracfone account. For example, you might find a promo code that gives you 50 free minutes when you add 200 minutes to your account.

Look for Tracfone coupon codes that offer discounts on phones.

Tracfone often has promotional codes that offer discounts on specific phones. For example, you might find a code that gives you 10% off the purchase of a new Android phone.

Use Tracfone coupon codes when you renew your service.

Tracfone offers promotional codes that you can use when you renew your service. These codes can give you a discount on your monthly service fee or on the minutes that you add to your account.

Use Tracfone promo codes when you buy minutes in bulk.

Tracfone offers some great discounts when you buy minutes in bulk. For example, you might find a promo code that gives you 10% off the purchase of 1,000 minutes.

Check for Tracfone coupon codes before you buy a new phone.

Tracfone often has promotional codes that you can use when you buy a new phone. For example, you might find a code that gives you 10% off the purchase of a new Android phone.

Use Tracfone promo codes when you add a new line to your account.

Tracfone offers some great discounts when you add a new line to your account. For example, you might find a promo code that gives you 50 free minutes when you add a new line to your account.

Check for Tracfone coupon codes before you add minutes to your account.

Tracfone often has promotional codes that you can use when you add minutes to your account. For example, you might find a code that gives you 50 free minutes when you add 200 minutes to your account.

Use Tracfone promo codes when you buy phones or minutes in bulk.

Tracfone offers some great discounts when you buy phones or minutes in bulk. For example, you might find a promo code that gives you 10% off the purchase of a new Android phone.

Check for Tracfone coupon codes before you buy a new phone.

Tracfone often has promotional codes that you can use when you buy a new phone. For example, you might find a code that gives you 10% off the purchase of a new Android phone.

Use Tracfone promo codes when you add a new line to your account.

Tracfone offers some great discounts when you add a new line to your account. For example, you might find a promo code that gives you 50 free minutes when you add a new line to your account.

3 Reasons Why An Android Smartwatch Is The Perfect Addition To Your Tech Collection

An Android smartwatch is the perfect addition to your tech collection for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it keeps you connected to your smartphone without having to actually carry it around with you everywhere you go. Second, it’s a great way to stay on top of your fitness and activity goals, and third, it can be a stylish accessory to help you complete your look.

Here are three reasons why an Android smartwatch is the perfect addition to your tech collection:

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Stay connected to your smartphone

Your Android smartwatch is the perfect way to stay connected to your smartphone without having to actually carry it around with you everywhere you go. It allows you to receive and respond to text messages, answer phone calls, and even access your favorite apps right from your wrist. Plus, with built-in GPS, you can always know exactly where your phone is, even if you’re not carrying it with you.

Track your fitness and activity goals

An Android smartwatch is also a great way to stay on top of your fitness and activity goals. With built-in sensors, it can track your steps, distance, and calories burned. Plus, many Android smartwatches also come with heart rate monitors, so you can always know how hard you’re working out. And with apps like Google Fit, you can keep track of all your progress over time.

Complete your look

In addition to being a great way to stay connected and fit, an Android smartwatch can also be a stylish accessory to help you complete your look. With a variety of styles and materials to choose from, you can find an Android smartwatch that perfectly suits your personal style. Whether you’re looking for a sophisticated leather strap or a sporty silicone band, there’s an Android smartwatch for you.

How To Get The Most Out Of Spotify And Apple Music

Spotify and Apple Music are two of the most popular streaming services out there, and for good reason. They offer a huge selection of songs, ad-free listening, and offline playback. But which one is right for you?

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Here’s a quick rundown of the differences between Spotify and Apple Music:

Spotify

– Has a free, ad-supported tier

– Offers a student discount

– Has a family plan

– Integrates with many third-party apps

– Supports Chromecast

Apple Music

– Has a 3-month free trial

– Offers a student discount

– Has a family plan

– Is only available on Apple devices

– Supports AirPlay

If you’re trying to decide between Spotify and Apple Music, there are a few things to consider. First, think about whether you want a free, ad-supported option or if you’re willing to pay for a subscription. Spotify offers a free tier, but it has ads and some features are locked behind a paywall. Apple Music, on the other hand, does not have a free option – you’ll need to sign up for a subscription to use it.

Next, consider whether you want to be able to use the service on non-Apple devices. Spotify works with many third-party apps and devices, including both Android and iOS devices, as well as smart TVs, gaming consoles, and more. Apple Music, however, is only available on Apple devices.

Finally, think about whether you want to be able to use the service with a voice assistant. Spotify works with both Alexa and Google Assistant, while Apple Music only works with Siri.

No matter which streaming service you choose, you’re sure to enjoy a huge selection of songs and ad-free listening.

How To Use A Personal Finance App To Stay On Track

We all know how important it is to stay on top of our finances, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep track of everything. That’s where a personal finance app can come in handy. By keeping all of your financial information in one place, you can more easily stay on top of your spending and saving.

There are a ton of different personal finance apps out there, so how do you know which one to choose? We’ve rounded up some of the best personal finance apps to help you make the most of your money.

Mint

Mint is a popular personal finance app that helps you track your spending, set budgets, and save money. Mint is free to use and is available on iOS and Android.

YNAB

YNAB, or You Need a Budget, is a personal finance app that helps you create a budget and stick to it. YNAB is available on iOS, Android, and desktop. There is a free trial available, and the app costs $6.99 per month after that.

Personal Capital

Personal Capital is a personal finance app that helps you track your spending, investments, and more. Personal Capital is available on iOS and Android. The app is free to use, but there is also a premium version available for $9.99 per month.

Acorns

Acorns is a personal finance app that helps you invest your spare change. Acorns is available on iOS and Android. The app is free to use, but there is also a premium version available for $1 per month.

So there you have it! These are just a few of the best personal finance apps to help you stay on track. Give one of them a try and see how it works for you.

Tips and Considerations for Creating HTML5 Apps

Here are a few tips and considerations before jumping into your first HTML5 app.

Packaged or Hosted?

App stores like the Firefox Marketplace provide two types of apps: packaged and hosted. Packaged apps are simple: zip up your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and upload the final app to the store. Hosted apps are essentially a web view or browser that display your app from a remote site. Each app type has its advantages. Hosted apps are best for:

  • subscription-based services
  • apps which will frequently change (avoids daily app upgrades)
  • apps which are essentially mobile-wrapped versions of websites

Packaged apps, on the other hand, are best for:

  • standalone games
  • apps which require no internet connection
  • apps which require special device privileges

Ultimately there are no steadfast rules for when to chose either, but weigh your goals with the technology to decide which is best for your app and, more importantly, your users.

Target Device Support

There are a number of devices with different screen sizes to consider these days, and even more, will be thrown at us in the future. When you go to submit your app to the Firefox Marketplace, you’ll be asked if the app will support mobile phone, tablet, and/or desktop. Remember that apps aren’t just for tablets and phones — your traditional desktop can install them as basic apps.

When you consider device support and code to accommodate for multiple platforms, remember that you must consider:

  • Responsive and fluid design: you don’t know the screen size!
  • Avoid explicit pixel dimensions to maintain fluidity
  • Feature detection: always a must!
  • Orientations may change: be prepared to detect a change in orientation!

The more devices you support, the better, as long as you take the time to flexibly design and develop properly.

Be Kind: Please Offline

A classic mistake by app developers, even developers of iOS and Android apps, is assuming that the user always has an internet connection. Packaged apps generally don’t need to worry about these problems, but without an offline strategy, hosted apps become useless.

HTML5 apps can take advantage of the Application Cache (AppCache) API. This API has long made developers groan, but it’s the best option for making HTML5 apps work offline. While the AppCache API may not adequately accommodate for expansive hosted apps, apps with basic to medium architecture will be a good fit.

The Storage APIs are also essential when working with hosted apps offline. Saving data to localStorage and then sending that data to the hosted site when an internet connection becomes available is a common practice, and makes your app appear more fluid and valuable to the user.

Size and Speed Matter

Developers always strive to make their sites as compact and efficient as possible, but this becomes even more important when constructing HTML5 apps. There are a number of reasons for this:

  • Most countries outside of the United States don’t provide unlimited data plans, and customers are charged based on the amount of data used
  • Mobile devices don’t have nearly the amount of storage as desktops
  • More requests can slow down an app immensely over a mobile connection
  • You want good performance with and without a local wifi connection

Don’t become complacent when creating your packaged or hosted HTML5 app. Minify, gzip, concatenate, and do everything you can to ease the monetary and data cost to your app users.

Fill the (phone)Gap

If you’re looking to push your app to Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows phone, you’ll need the help of a utility like PhoneGap. Supporting multiple platforms is a major consideration when creating an HTML5 app, especially if you plan on using Mozilla’s new Web APIs, which doesn’t yet have a PhoneGap port.

In this case, it’s incredibly important that you create checks (via feature detection) for which environment you’re in, and either use the Web API of choice or the PhoneGap equivalent. This means creating callback functions and passing them to either the native or PhoneGap methods.

L10N

In the case of Firefox OS and other HTML5-based mobile OS’, they will most likely debut and be possessed mostly by users who do not speak English. Localization of your app is paramount to early adoption and usability. Packaged apps allow for different locale files which will be loaded as specified by the OS settings, and hosted apps should detect user locale and serve content accordingly.

HTML5 apps are easy to make, but good HTML5 apps take planning, testing, and brilliant execution. Sure, it’s possible to just only create a webapp.manifest file and submit your app to a marketplace, but take the time to consider all the user, device, language, and cost possibilities that factor into an app. It could be the difference between the next big app and one user remove five minutes after installing!

When to Go Native, Mobile Web or Cross-Platform/Hybrid

First – Why Mobile Should Be On Your Mind

Ever since Luke Wroblewkski coined the phase “mobile first” in 2011, the zeitgeist of software development (at least the vast portions of it that touch mobile devices in some way) has been building towards a critical mass of not only “mobile first”, but – as the CEO of Twitter said – “all-in on mobile.”

I know I don’t need to remind you of how quickly the world has changed. If you’ve been developing software for as little as 2 years, you’ve already witnessed unprecedented shifts in focus and innovation, much of it occurring in a language once considered an also-ran by many – JavaScript. The odds are very high that you – the reader – have access to electricity at home and at work, and you most likely interact with the internet through multiple devices – desktop, notebook, tablet and/or mobile phone. It’s easy, then, to not fully grasp the groundswell of change headed our way. That being the case, let’s step outside of our normal techno-cultural environment for a moment to see the change through the eyes of East Africa (and of course, if you’re reading this from Kenya, asante sana).

When I travelled to Africa in 1998, my luggage was stolen. I spent several hours in an airline office in Nairobi, Kenya – where it took thirty minutes just to get a landline connection to the airline’s office in Uganda. It was busy. Thirty minutes just to get a busy signal! I travelled again to the same areas in 2003 and then 2005 – and I noticed something: the use of mobile phones had exploded. It was fascinating to observe the region skip the period of wired infrastructure (which we’d had for numerous decades where I live) and jump straight to wireless.

Why is this important? In a great piece by Toby Shapshak, he notes some interesting facts about Africa:

  • More people have access to a mobile phone than electricity (i.e. – no home electrical power)
  • “Mobile money” – payment systems that allows you to transfer money to another phone user – is expected “to become a $617 billion industry by 2016”.
  • “80% of the world’s mobile money transactions are happening in East Africa…” (with half of Kenya’s GDP moving through mobile payment services!)
  • In 2012, Google reported that 25% of its weekday searches in South Africa occur on mobile devices – and that figure jumps to 65% on the weekends

Perhaps the most bellweather-like point from Tony’s article is that the Economist noted, in 2011, that “six of the 10 fastest growing economies in the last decade were in Africa”.

“Simply put, Africa is not just a mobile-first continent”, Tony concluded. “It is mobile-only.”

“Great – but I write line of business applications for my company in Europe. I’m not writing payment, radio or apps like Farmerline. How is this relevant?”

If you don’t want to be caught by surprise, or unprepared, it’s relevant. If you – like many developers in the world – desire to further your career and be a part of compelling projects, it’s relevant. The largest players in the development world (and myriads of smaller ones) are heavily investing in mobile innovation, with a particular common theme of open web standards throughout many of the advancements. Mozilla is working on the exciting FirefoxOS (an OS that will be capable of impressive features on even lower-quality phones). Microsoft debuted the ability to write Windows 8 desktop & tablet applications in HTML, JavaScript & CSS. Adobe purchased Nitobi – the company that created Cordova/PhoneGap (more on this in minute, don’t worry) – and are actively developing it. I probably don’t need to mention Apple and Google!

The mobile tsunami is already underway – the question is, what will you do when it reaches you? What are your options, when the time comes that your next project is a mobile application? What does this mean for your team? Will you need to hire new talent? Which mobile platforms should you focus on supporting?

Understanding Your Options

A little learning is a dangerous thing –– Alexander Pope

Knowing is half the battle –– GI Joe

Would it surprise you to learn that there’s more than one way to write an application for an iOS or Android device (not to mention other mobile platforms)? To create an application for a mobile device, you generally have three choices:

  • Write the app in the native platform/language for the device. For iOS, this means writing it in Objective C using a Mac + XCode, etc. For Android, this means writing it in Java using Eclipse/Or-Insert-favorite-IDE + the Android SDK on Windows/Mac/Linux/BeOS (just kidding about BeOS). For Windows Phone 8, this means writing it in C#/XAML on a Windows 8 machine + Visual Studio 2012, etc.
  • Write a mobile web site. Your application is a web app – hosted on the web and accessed by the device’s browser.
  • Use a “Cross-Platform Tool (CPT).” To quote VisionMobile, “CPTs can be used to develop native, hybrid and web apps and come in several technology flavours: JavaScript frameworks, App factories, Web-to-native wrappers, Runtimes and Source code translators.” One of the most common approaches along these lines is the hybrid mobile app. In this case, your application is effectively a web app, but hosted inside a native-to-the-device application container. It’s installed, launched and used like any native app, and can access device APIs (with some exceptions/hurdles) – but it’s written in HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The most popular approach is to use Apache Cordova – often referred to as PhoneGap, though that is the Adobe-branded re-distribution of Cordova. Both Telerik and Adobe have Cordova-based options for hybrid mobile applications, for example. Other popular CPT approaches exist as well, including Appcelerator’s Titanium and Xamarin.

As you might already suspect, there are a host of trade-offs you will confront in choosing any one of the above options. These trade-offs are critical for the decision makers in your organization to understand. My goal in this article is to help jumpstart the discussion around these trade-offs, and help you begin to form the rails on which to guide and direct your energies as you assess which approach makes sense for you and your team. We can’t possibly cover every aspect of how these options compare, nor can we anticipate the widely-varying needs of each team, application, company, etc. – all very important drivers in a decision. But I can tell you now that – no matter what the “native-only-or-you’re-doing-it-wrong” or the “hybrid-is-just-as-good-as-mobile-all-the-time” pundits say – there is no single right answer in this debate.

Comparing Trade-Offs

Let’s start with a high-level view of pros and cons:

Approach Pros Cons
Native
  • Full Access to Device/Platform/APIs
  • Best Performance (esp. with UI concerns)
  • App Store Discoverability
  • Different skills/languages/tools for each target platform
  • Tend to be most expensive-to-develop, with thin margin
  • Client code not re-usable between platforms (of course)
Mobile Web
  • Arguably the broadest reach
  • Can re-use existing, responsively designed sites
  • Code base is re-usable between platforms
  • Finding necessary skills isn’t difficult
  • Extremely limited access to device APIs
  • Limited discoverability (no app store presence)
  • Tend to be more difficult to monetize
Hybrid (CPT)
  • Natively-installed & run, but built with JavaScript, HTML & CSS
  • Code base is re-usable between supported platforms
  • App Store Discoverability
  • Access to many device APIs (& extendable via plugins)
  • UI Performance affected by native webview implementation & (potentially) poorly written JavaScript/HTML
  • Differing webview implementations per platform
Cross-Compiled (CPT)
  • Can re-use existing skills if source language matches team skills
  • Code base is re-usable between supported platforms
  • Access to many (if not all) device APIs
  • App Store Discoverability
  • May not support all target platforms
  • Can be d

Why Not Just Go Native?

Let’s be honest – as I oversimplify for a moment – if money isn’t an issue and your company can afford to venture into multiple native platforms (i.e. – hiring talent experienced in each platform, etc.) and you need app-store discoverability, then native might be the ideal option for you. Developing a native application means you will not be constrained by any “lowest common denominator” forced on you by a hybrid/cross-compiled approach. It also means that you won’t be sacrificing performance and you’ll have access to device-differentiating features that may not be readily accessible to hybrid containers.

Then why do the other options exist? It turns out the developing native applications comes at a price. Literally.

Native App Means Native Cost

This is just a peek into the economic factors of writing mobile applications, but it already paints a clear picture: the margins are razor-thin, a large portion of companies don’t break even, and your chances improve if you can target mutliple platforms. That is why the other options exist, and why their siren call – the reach of multiple platforms without the expense of multiple teams – appeals to many. The question of “when should I go native?” is often best answered with “When you can afford to support each target platform – including hiring developers, designers, QA & analysts as well as purchasing/maintaining any infrastructure required to build for the native target”.

When Native Isn’t an Option

How will I know when it’s love? –– Van Halen

Now what?! –– Bloat, Finding Nemo

If going native is off the table as an option, how do you know which alternative to choose?There’s no silver bullet, but there are questions you can ask that will help determine your options:

  • Do you need to have an app store presence? If yes, then mobile web is out. If “no” or “not necessarily”, then mobile web is an option.
  • Are you OK with no app store presence, you need the ability to frequently update the application and you’re not nessarily concerned with heavy monetization of the app? (Believe it or not, this happens – particularly when an established company is expanding its reach to mobile to establish presence before other mobile initiatives.) If yes to all 3, then mobile web could be your answer (assuming you don’t need heavy device API availability).
  • Do you need to be able to access device APIs (accelerometer, camera, GPS, key chain, use push notifications, etc.)? Then mobile-web is out.

What’s the fuss about app store presence? Many companies may not already have existing customer accounts. Being in an app store provides the ability to reach & bill customers, as well as a means of distribution and discoverability for lesser-known companies/apps. If monetizing your app is critical, and you don’t already have solid channels via which you can reach your customers, then having an app store presence is something you shouldn’t ignore!

From the above questions, you can begin to see the logic behind answering “When should I go mobile web?”. In many cases, this is best answered with: “When you don’t need an app store presence, aren’t really using device APIs, aren’t as concerned about app monetization, and want to potentially take advantage of re-using a responsively-designed desktop site”. Don’t underestimate what’s possible here. Both Time.com and darksky.net are good examples of what’s possible with this approach. (It’s worth noting that some device-level APIs are available to mobile web applications – good examples being geolocation, media capture, contacts and others.)

Cross Platform Tools – Democratizing Mobile Development

Since hybrid mobile applications utilize many of the exact same skills necessary to create a mobile web site, this can be an attractive option – especially given the likelihood that you may already have a web development team and can leverage those skills immediately. Developers that had previously been kept out of a platform due to the walled-garden nature of developing for it can now create applications that usually look and feel like native apps. However, it’s not as simple as writing your web application and hosting it inside the native container app provided by, for example, Apache Cordova. You can (and probably will) run into road blocks – and it’s important to be aware of where that might happen.

Apache Cordova/PhoneGap

Cordova-based options are among the most popular hybrid mobile approaches (you will often hear “PhoneGap” used interchangably with “Cordova” – see this for more explanation). The native ‘webview’ of the device is used to run the application you create in HTML/JavaScript/CSS – effectively within a full-screen, chrome-less browser window. As a baseline, it’s relatively safe these days to assume that most, if not all, of these APIs will be available to you:

Accelerometer Camera Compass Contacts
File Geolocation Media Network
Notification – Alert Notification – Sound Notification -Vibration Storage

As far as devices, Apache Cordova/PhoneGap supports, to some degree or another, the following platforms:

Android Bada Blackberry iOS
Symbian Tizen webOS Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 8 Windows 8

Not bad for platform coverage. But what do you do when access to a native API doesn’t exist? You can write a Cordova Plugin to open up a native API to your JavaScript. This is both a strength and weakness of this type of hybrid approach. Many Cordova plugins already exist (with generous open source licenses), which is a positive. However, if you need the functionality on (for example) iOS, Android and Blackberry – this entails writing a version for each platform. So now we’re back to needing other skills like Java and Objective C. The silver lining, though, is that the need for these skills is focused on the plugin only – and it’s reasonable to outsource the creation of these plugins to experienced contractors if you don’t have the skills in-house.

If you decide to go the Cordova/PhoneGap route, three of the biggest challeneges you need to prepare for are:

1.) UI Performance

It’s not rocket science – running an app inside a container can have performance concerns. Cordova/PhoneGap has gotten a bad rap in some cases due to slow webview implementations (looking at you, Android 2.x), as well as popular (ahem) UI frameworks that excel at causing reflow due to how they manage the DOM. Desktop browsers often cover up inefficient DOM and JavaScript due to the sheer brute force processing power available. You can’t assume the same level of power will be available on mobile devices. This means that even your experienced web team needs to pay close attention to things that can help or harm performance. I recommend starting with this post by Andrew Trice. The performance of webview implementations has improved to the point to where hybrid approaches work well for line-of-business style applications that don’t need game-intensive UI performance.

2.) Debugging

Not all mobile devices support remote debugging like iOS 6 (for shame). Weinre is the next best option (currently) for remote debugging, but it can be a painful, buggy experience. You will find that running your hybrid app in a dekstop browser simulator (Telerik’s Icenium and Apache Ripple both provide simulators like this) will help a great deal – given the maturity of debugging tools in browsers like Chrome. Of course, if you write Cordova plugins, you will need to become familiar with each platform/SDK’s debugging toolsets as well.

3.) Platform Requirements & Maturity

In 2012, Vision Mobile’s Cross Platform Developer Tools report indicated that while PhoneGap had a high adoption rate, 27% were abandoning it – likely due to frustrations with the development & debugging experience, coupled with lack of desired native APIs. (Appcelerator Titanium had a slightly higher abandonment rate of 33%.) As predicted, vendors have improved their tooling quite a bit in the last year, though it still has a long way to go. Both Adobe and Telerik are making headway in this area by providing cloud-based build tools alonside other differentiating features. Removing the burden of locally-installed SDKs, improving the debugging experience and reducing the pain of including custom Cordova plugins will likely go a long way towards retaining developers.

There Can’t Be Only One

I would be foolish to not at least mention two of the alternatives to Cordova: Appcelerator Titanium and Xamarin. Titanium provides a cross-platform JavaScript API (giving you some code re-use), while it also focuses on leveraging performant native UI widgets. Xamarin allows you to develop iOS, Android & Mac applications in C# – and even provides the “Xamarin Component Store” which includes UI controls, themes, services, graphs and more. Vision Mobile’s Cross Platform Developer Tools 2012 report indicated that both PhoneGap/Cordova and Titanium could substantially improve retention if they address debugging and development features, and that Xamarin appeared to be climbing in popularity as well.

So – this begs the question: “When do I go with a cross-platform tool?”

  • Do you need to support multiple platforms but don’t have the skills or budget in-house to go native?
  • Is an app store presence a must-have?
  • Do you have existing web skills (or C#, in the case of CPTs like Xamarin) that you want/need to leverage for your mobile application?
  • Is maintaining one code base (and thus synchronizing releases across platforms) a goal?

Answering yes to the questions above (especially the first one) is a good indicator that using a CPT might be your best bet. As to the question of which CPT to use, it depends so heavily on details unique to your circumstance that it’s not easily predictable. Obviously, a heavy .NET shop might favor Xamarin. Companies with available web talent may favor Cordova. The tools provided by vendors can drive things as well. If you target iOS and Android primarily and want to sidestep SDK requirements, easier testing & simulation and a simpler publishing-to-app-store experience, using Icenium is a good option. If you have a custom build tool chain, need to support multiple platforms, want to use Cordova and graft it into your build setup, then PhoneGap Build might be an option. The different alternatives exist because the needs of different apps and companies can vary widely!

Where To Go From Here

In 2011, Marc Andreessen said that “software is eating the world”. It’s clear from current trends that a vast portion of the software to which he refers will be on mobile devices. If you are evaluating alteratives currently, I recommend a small pilot project in 2 or 3 of your top choices to get in-the-trenches experience with them. Once you set a course, find and follow the top voices for that platform or CPT – and become a voice as well.

The Latest Android Version for Upgraded Features on Your Smarphone

Android has been known as having a quite rapid improvements, for it always has its own competitor, the iOS. The first Android system to be launched in 2007 is the Android 1.0 or Android Alpha. After 2 years of seeking the goods and flaws of the 1.0 version, Google released Android 1.5 in 2009, or we know it as Android Cupcake. As Android loves to use sweets name for the system and according to the alphabet, you will meet Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, IceCream Sandwich, Jellybean, Kitkat, Lollipop, and our latest Android version, Marhsmallow.

Marshmallow is Android 6.1 system that launched on October 5th 2015. This cute and chewy naming is actually an improvement and extension of previous Android system, Lollipop. Marshmallow comes with a purpose to help user faster in doing their activity and business using their smartphones. Now on Tap will help you switch to another applications or windows without leaving or altering what you are doing at that moment. Now on Tap allows you to do multi-tasking and help you to be faster! This latest Android version has a smart batteries which will help you to save your smartphone’s energy. There will be a limitation of time for a standby app and Doze will turn your phone to a sleep state when it is at rest mode. No need to worry about your privacy since Marshmallow allows you to control of what and when you want to share your activities or work with others. Moreover, fingerprint security system offers a high level of protection to your smartphone, since the key is in your hand!

To upgrade your smartphone to the latest Android version, you need to ready a compatible smartphone or tablet. If you are good, you can continue to the Setting and open About Device menu and start the software update. Remember pals, you better have a good internet connection for this upgrade!