What are the key differences between Android, iOS and Blackberry OS in terms of level of accessibility by application developers (i.e. access to the video input, sound input, phone functionalities, to which extent, etc.)?
PS: Assume latest version of each OS.
EDIT: Can someone turn this into a wiki so we can compile answers from people that don"t necessarily have experience in all 3 plaforms.
I'm not familiar with BlackBerry, but on Android and iOS you can access just about anything. Until recently iOS had some restrictions about camera access (see this), but I belive those have been solved. Because Android is open-source, you can theoretically go as deep as you want as far as accessing the hardware, but you may or may not be able to get any deeper through the standard Android API than you can through the iOS API.
On Android, you can do a lot more to override default functionality. For example, you can create your own launcher screen or phone application. The iOS approval process wouldn't allow these kinds of applications.
API hardware access really isn't an issue on either platform, the bigger concern is overriding default software (almost never possible in iOS) and what types of applications iOS allows.
Each platform has its own nice and bad parts. I have been working on both Android and BB. I wish I could take only nice parts from both to create a platform of a dev dream! :)
For instance, I could take these features from BB:
The greates feature I like in BB is the simplicity of the application architecture - you can always count on your main UIApplication instance - OS never kills it.
Also I do like the simplicity the Dialog class provides - it is very easy to implement business logic related to user choice - while Dialog screen is shown the code execution just stops and waits for user input.
From Android I'd take the following:
Network communication. On BB this is a real nightmare (BES, BIS, WIFI, Direct TCP without APN, Direct TCP with APN, WAP, WAP2, Unite - who's next? :)).
For file manipulations you just use a native/usual Java API.
Nice looking UI components are available right out of the box.
I should add I'm not happy with GPS related stuff on both platforms, however maybe it is due to GPS hardware limitations rather than API creators.
Thanks!
BlackBerry is a pain, once I made a project for it (the JDE version was 4.7 back then) and it didn't had an ArrayList. WTF?
Related
I know this is way too general, but I have a reason. I am looking forward to make a simple app that can transfer strings from my mobile device to my TV. I wish to transfer this data over Wi-Fi, provided that the TV and my phone are on the same network. Now, the Android Documentation for the P2P Wireless APIs is DEAD. It even uses some deprecated implementations, and to worsen that up, nobody cared to provide an up to date documentation for carrying it out in modern day programming.
All I want, is a reference to a reliable source that might be helpful in understanding this. I added the compose tag, again, so that the info is conveyed that the app is built using a declarative paradigm, unlike the traditional android system. The sources may still be using the old android system (I, however, would prefer a Compose app). If nothing, at least point me to the correct (and updated) documentation, if it at all exists.
Sorry if the title wording is not clear enough. I need to deploy a very simple app on Android and iOS for a partner company (app does not need to be in App Store or Google Play) to control some machinery via bluetooth. Interface needs to be very basic and only contain a couple of buttons and some text labels that display some information (and be able to read a QR code).
We are not a mobile development company, thus I don't have any experience building apps like this, but the required functionality seems simple enough to at least look into what needs to be done.
Now, the problem is that I only know C/C++ and Python (moderate experience with the Qt framework) and am not really willing to learn both Java and Swift. I might consider learning Swift specifically for a simple project like this, seeing as iOS development is very much tied to their platform, but Java is out of the question. I've looked around and there seems to be a way to write both of them in Python and deploy to each platform, but something tells me it's not really worth the incredible amount of problems that could arise. I need your help with some advice on how to handle this project:
Can a cross-platform app be developed with python(or C/C++) and deployed to iOS and Android (thus halving the overall development time) whilst keeping a sufficiently tidy aspect and bluetooth communication?
If not, can I develop an Android app using C/C++ or Python without immense hurdles? I'd prefer Qt as i'm already familiar with the framework, but i suppose anything does it.
When developing an Android app under point 2, is it possible to see how the app looks like without installing it on the phone for every change in code?
Sorry if the post is too long, am really curios how difficult would a task like this be. I dont want to waste my time learning 2 new languages for just this project nor do i want to end up delaying the partner company with beginner problems caused by my scarce knowledge of a new language.
I really wouldn't suggest cross platform for this kind of project. The bluetooth stacks and APIs are going to be tremendously different, minimizing ability to code share. The UI stacks are completely different. Really using anything but the native tools on iOS can be particularly tricky. Python in particular is hard, because its not meant to interact with either platform. C would be easier, as both Java (via JNI) and Swift (via objective C to C bridges) can call C code. However the UI layers of the two are so different that it would only be useful for business logic, I would still recommend writing the UI in the native platforms.
If you were going to try and do cross platform, I'd suggest react native and javascript, merely because it's the most mature of the cross platform products. That said, their bluetooth stack is likely non-existant or poorly developed because its not the type of thing used by many of the type of apps that choose react native, so you'll likely have to dive into the deep end and learn how to make modules.
Given that this is going to be a company specific app not on an app store- do you actually need to support both OSes? Or can it be done on company devices of a single type? Pushing back on that product requirement might be your best bet.
We want to develop mobile keyboard app - (Third party keyboard) that have some unique features (such translate on the keyboard).
We would like to know if there is a way to developed it once both for IOS and Android, with Flutter, or any other solution?
There's a long and a short answer to this. The short answer is basically no, it's not feasible at this time to do this.
The long answer is that it may be somewhat possible but with a fairly large amount of work for you to do. You're going to have to first create and appropriate project type in android and ios, and then import the dart code & set up the build. You may be able to start with a normal flutter application and modify the xcode/gradle builds to match the specifics for ios/android, but I'd guess that's somewhat unlikely. So you'll probably still have to maintain two separate projects, but which could import the same dart library for the UI.
Because Android and iOS use different APIs for their keyboards, you're going to need to write a Platform Plugin or at least method channels which communicate between your app and the native code, for each of iOS and Android. You'll also probably have to embed the flutter view yourself - see this example as I'd bet the normal FlutterApplication etc won't apply.
I'd guess that on android you could probably get this to work eventually with a lot of work (depending on how familiar you are with android, platform channels, and integrating libraries such as flutter's into the build); on iOS you might have luck but it's somewhat conceivable that iOS blocks certain features that flutter needs in the keyboard for performance or security reasons - just guessing from my experiences developing apps in native iOS although I haven't done a keyboard specifically.
That being said, if you do try this I'd be interested to hear the results, and if you were to go about it in a somewhat generic way that could be re-used it would be of great benefit to the flutter community!
The Desired Functionality:
User A is running your app on an Android or iOS device. User A can automatically find and communicate with other nearby (< 20 meters?) users B and C (Cross-Platform), whether they're running Android or iOS, and without any of the users having an internet connection (Offline).
I believe this is a commonly desired functionality, and having a definitive answer to this question would be a great boon to the mobile development community.
Further requirements/things you'd like to have, in order of importance:
Single Codebase (or at least sharing 90+% of code) for Android and iOS, e.g. through Xamarin or something similar.
Automatically choose the best (perhaps going down a list of preference) signal to use, e.g. choosing WiFi direct or bluetooth (similar to AllJoyn, Multipeer)
Use only Free (or free for certain classes of user) libraries
The Question:
How to achieve the desired functionality?
Sub-question 1
Is it even possible?
Answer: YES. Apps like Firechat and Spaceteam do it, therefore it must be possible.
Rejected Possibilities:
Multipeer: iOS only, doesn't achieve Cross-Platform.
Alljoyn: iOS bindings are Objective-C only, doesn't achieve Single Codebase.
Mono.Zeroconf: Supposedly would require separate platform implementations, so don't achieve Single Codebase?
Open Garden SDK: Would be a great solution, except it doesn't actually exist yet.
I've been researching this topic for several days now, and I haven't been able to find a definitive answer. Part of it is probably that people use so many different terms like mesh networking, ad-hoc networking, zeroconf, DNS-SD, etc., which makes it difficult to search.
If you're interested in some of the research I did on stackoverflow and elsewhere, here are some notes and links (I'm limited in the number of links I put directly in this post).
Not sure if this is what you are looking for but I would highly recommend Xamarin with the library ZeroConf which is native and has Xamarin support.
https://github.com/onovotny/Zeroconf
It works great and that gets you close to your unified codebase with a native and uniform way of discovering other ZeroConf devices.
Edit: It looks like the ZeroConf library only supports subscribing to ZeroConf services and not publishing also and I think you will need publishing as well. But it seems other users have requested it so it seems like a feature they will be adding.
As the topic states - is there any technology that would let me write code for a simple commercial 2D game which could be then compiled to work well on Android, iOS and Web browsers or at least two of them (e.g. Android and iOS)? There is so much buzz about cross-platform nowadays that I was wondering if I'm missing something.
My goal (set by my producer) is to make this game for all of these three platforms, and so far I planned to use:
- Web browsers: Adobe Flex,
- Android phones: Java (since my favourite C++ is recommended only for short snippets),
- iPad/iPhone/iPod: Objective-C (are there any alternatives?).
It pretty much means re-writing the same source code three times. Is there any way to speed it up by using a technology that would work on at least both of them?
However, I don't want to use Adobe Flex for all three (though it's possible), because it requires Adobe AIR (works only with Android 2.2 and higher) and not a lot of phones have it (it's totally different with browsers where 98% of people have Flash).
I don't mind adding some platform-specific code for each version, of course.
Also, if you have any suggestions about choosing a fancier technology for any of the platforms (maybe some nice frameworks?), I'd really appreciate that, too.
Take a look at Corona and Moai both are Lua-based frameworks for game development targeting multiple platforms.
I would like to say that Multimedia Fusion was capable of doing this, but it isn't quite ready yet. There are currently a number of runtime exporters for the product which allow you to export your game to multiple target platforms which include flash, java and iOS at the moment. XNA and Android exporters are currently in the works. I should probably mention that I am only affiliated with these guys as a happy consumer of their products. It is probably worth checking it out even if they can't do everything you want yet. If it's not suitable for your needs it is still a very good choice if you wish to rapidly prototype your application.
See:
http://www.clickteam.com
On a side note, personally I would recommend against going down the js+html5 route, particularly if you are targeting mobiles. I should probably stress that it's simply an opinion I have and that there are plenty of people here who will disagree with me. In all javascript games I have played, I have felt the garbage collector. The issue is that without control over garbage collection it is free to run when it feels like, causing infrequent but very obvious pauses in the middle of your game. You can work around this but I don't see why it should be that difficult. I can definitely align with the ideals of being able to write the thing once and run it on all platforms, but I can't see it working just yet.
To offer some advice assuming you find no suitable tools for the job, your aim is to maximise reusability. This means all of your games resources and levels should be well defined as independent resources. For non-critical logic you can make use of embeddable scripting languages such as Lua, which will maximise your code reuse. C (or C++) code will also be reusable on a lot of platforms, and might be a good choice if you are familiar and confident with the language.
I'm personally using Phonegap and Zepto.js. But you may have more luck with jQuery mobile. Phonegap is nice because its website will compile the apps for you.
1) If you write your game in C++ you can use it for iPhone & Android (NDK) as well. Preferably, you write your game engine in C++, than you can use a OS specific layer for UI stuff..
2) Implement your game in HTML & Javascript. iPhone/Android users will have to use a webbrowser to play your game. For iPhone, you can even create a launcher, that looks like an app, but actually is a webview with HTML & Javascript
Unity3D should be able to do this for you, if you purchase some extra sprite addins to handle 2D (like Ex2D or SM2 or Toolkit 2D). Also right now until Apr 8, the iOS and Android license is free.
Game Maker Studio. It has a package that let's you deploy on all of the platforms you outlined.
http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio