What is android development framework

Best Frameworks and Libraries for Android App Development

To discuss your tech and business needs in detail

Android system ranks the first among mobile operating systems due to its vast user base of 2.8 billion people . As of the first quarter of 2021 , Android users were able to choose between 3.48 million apps , making Google Play the app store with the biggest number of available apps.

Based on the vast majority of existing smartphones, Android is often considered to be the best OS when it comes to building custom mobile apps. Since Android is considered a highly customizable operating system with a vast global support community, many developers prefer Android. With the growth of Android frameworks and libraries for developers, it can be difficult to choose which frameworks and libraries to use in a project. In this article, we will help you to choose an Android framework and library for your app development projects.

The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of tools for developing applications for the Android platform, including:

• Required libraries
• Debugger
• Emulator
• Relevant documentation for Android application interfaces (APIs)
• Sample source code
• Tutorials for the Android OS

When a new version of Android is released, developers need to download and install the corresponding SDK for the new version so they can write programs using the latest tools.

A framework is a software platform that defines the structure of a software system. Frameworks facilitate the development and integration of various components of a large software project. Simply, a framework is a working environment that helps developers create a software product swiftly and efficiently without being distracted by details.

SDKs and frameworks are closely correlated with each other. When developing Android apps, the SDK provides the necessary tools, and the framework provides the platform for application development.

A library in programming is a collection of subroutines or objects used for development. In other words, each library is a set of classes, components, or modules used for different tasks.

Programs have many standard elements, such as buttons, video players, queries, and so on. There is no need to write them from scratch because libraries are portable sets of verified code that someone has already written. These are ready-made solutions that programmers can add to their programs and insert in various projects using unique algorithms.

We’ll walk you through the best Android frameworks and libraries that we frequently use here at Orangesoft.

Open-source Frameworks

There is a common belief that you should pay for quality. However, we here at Orangesoft usually work with free environments and open-source libraries that have a good reputation in the developer community.

Realm

Realm database can save you several weeks of app development because it’s a robust open-source Android platform for mobile databases. The Realm database is an alternative to SQLite and Core Data. Due to its design, the Realm database is much faster than ORM and SQLite.

AndroidAnnotations

AndroidAnnotations is an open-source framework that speeds up Android development. This framework allows you to concentrate on what’s really important. By simplifying your code, AndroidAnnotations facilitates your code’s maintenance.

The advantages of AndroidAnnotations include:

1. Code shortening — you no longer need to search views by ID and define listeners for them separately;
2. Implemented work with threads;
3. Convenient and concise storage of the activity/fragment state;
4. Simple work with ListView adapters;
5. And much more

Moxy is a library that helps to use the model–view–presenter (MVP) pattern when you make an Android application that eliminates lifecycle and boilerplate code problems. Below, we have shared a graphic that shows how Moxy works:

What Is MVP?

MVP is a way to divide the responsibilities of application code into three components:

1. Model provides the data for Presenter.
2. View performs two functions. First, View reacts to commands from the user (or from UI elements), passing these events to Presenter and, second, changes the GUI on Presenter’s request.
3. Presenter acts as a link between Model and View. Presenter gets events from View, processes them (using or not using Model), and commands View about how it should change itself.

The solution in Moxy is a slight variation to the MVP pattern. In Moxy, there is another component called ViewState that sits between View and Presenter. Here, ViewState is responsible for ensuring that each View always looks precisely as Presenter wants it to.

Further, the ViewState contains a command queue that was passed from Presenter to View. When a «new» View joins Presenter, the ViewState automatically applies all Presenter’s previous commands to “new” View.

Firebase Crashlytics

Firebase Crashlytics , often referred to as Crashlytics, is a lightweight, real-time crash reporter that helps you track, prioritize, and fix stability issues that deteriorate app quality. Crashlytics is easy to implement, and it doesn’t slow down or overwhelm your app with unnecessary data. Crashlytics offers support for crashes and errors, and this leads us to believe that Crashlytics should be the foundation for all Android apps.

Paid Frameworks

Unfortunately, not all outstanding frameworks are available for free. The paid platforms that Orangesoft regularly uses are designed for app analytics. Even though Google Analytics is free, we think that it’s more beneficial when used for websites and that there are better analytics environments for mobile apps.

Flurry Analytics

Yahoo’s Flurry Analytics provides the tools and resources for an in-depth understanding of a user’s actions in the app. You can configure advanced analysis of compound events using metrics, segments, and sequences to better track your users’ habits and performance using Flurry Analytics.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a business analytics service. It tracks user interactions with web and mobile applications and provides tools for targeted communication with users. Mixpanel offers basic functionality for free, but after your audience exceeds 1000 monthly tracked users, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium version. Unlike Google Analytics, Mixpanel tracks events instead of page views.

Libraries

Android Jetpack

Android Jetpack , also known as Jetpack, is a set of libraries, tools and guides that help make app building quick and easy. These components help you follow best practices, release you from writing boilerplate code, and simplify complex tasks so that you can focus on the code you care about.

Jetpack includes the Androidx package libraries, unbundled from the platform APIs. That means that Jetpack offers backward compatibility and is updated more frequently than the Android platform, making sure you always have access to the latest versions of the Jetpack components.

ReactiveX

ReactiveX is a combination of the best ideas from the Observer pattern, the Iterator pattern, and functional programming. RxJava is an open-source Java implementation of ReactiveX. The basic building blocks of reactive code are “Observables” and “Subscribers.”

RxAndroid is an extension of RxJava that allows the scheduler to run code in the main and additional threads of the Android app. RxAndroid also enables the transfer of results from additional threads to the main one for aggregation and interaction with the user interface.

Dependency Injector Library

Dagger 2

Dagger 2 is a library that helps the developer implement the dependency injection pattern, a «specific form of Inversion of Control (IoC).» When applied to dependency management, the process of providing an external dependency to a software component is a specific form of IoC. In full accordance with the principle of a single responsibility, the object gives the responsibility of building the dependencies it requires to an external, specially designed general mechanism, which Dagger 2 can create.

Koin is a pragmatic, lightweight dependency injection framework for Kotlin developers. It is written in pure Kotlin using functional resolution only. Koin involves no proxy, no code generation, and no reflection.

Retrofit 2

Retrofit 2 is a type-safe HTTP client for Android and Java. It is an indispensable tool for working with APIs in client-server applications. Previously, if you wanted to make a network request, you had to run the AsyncTask class and then use HttpsUrlConnection to retrieve data, which didn’t work well while working with APIs that return a large amount of data. Now, Retrofit 2 solves this problem.

Room is a library that helps you save data in Android apps. Room is part of the latest Android Architecture Components , a collection of libraries from Google that supports robust application architecture. Room is offered as an alternative to Realm, ORMLite, and GreenDao.

Room is a high-level interface for low-level SQLite bindings built into Android. It does most of its work at compile-time, creating an API on top of the built-in SQLite API, so you don’t need to work with Cursor or ContentResolver classes.

Glide

Glide is a fast and efficient open-source media management and image loading framework for Android that wraps media decoding, memory and disk caching, and resource pooling into a simple and easy-to-use interface. Glide supports fetching, decoding, and displaying of videos, images, and animated GIFs.

Picasso

Picasso lets you easily upload images to your app, often in a single line of code!

If you need a smaller app with fewer features when uploading an image, then it’s better to use Picasso . However, if you want customization, animated GIFs support, and more efficient memory management, you should use Glide as your image loading library.

Features	Glide	Picasso
Size and Method Count	Has a 3.5 times bigger .jar size and 2678 methods.	Has a 3.5 times smaller .jar size and 849 methods.
Disk Caching	Glide downloads the image from the given URL, resizes it to the size of the image view and stores it to the disk cache.	Picasso downloads the image and stores the full-size image in the cache.
Memory	More memory efficient.	Less memory efficient.
Image Load Time	Loads slower from remote URLs but faster from cache.	Loads faster from remote URLs but slower from cache.
Other Features	Animated GIF support; Thumbnail support; Configurations & customization

As you can see, there are lots of Android app development frameworks and libraries that can help you create apps much faster and cheaper than you probably expected. Knowing the best libraries and frameworks available out there can help us improve the quality of our apps and make us produce more in less time.

What do you mean by a framework?

A framework is a software platform that defines the structure of a software system. Frameworks facilitate the development and integration of various components of a large software project.

What are mobile app development frameworks?

A mobile development framework is a software framework that is designed to support mobile app development.

What is the best framework for Android app development?

Among the best Android app development frameworks are Realm, Moxy, AndroidAnnotations, jQuery Mobile.

Источник

14 Best Android Frameworks for App Development in 2021

In the past couple of years, more and more businesses realized that apps are important to their brand experiences, as they can help establish a strong connection with customers. Over 2 million apps were available on the Google Play Store for download, Statista reports.

Today, many companies big and small include mobile applications into their marketing strategies, as the digital space provides a wide array of engagement opportunities.

Installed on the vast majority of existing smartphones, Android is often considered to be the best OS when it comes to building custom mobile apps. Many developers prefer Android as it is highly customizable and has a large community ready to help and provide useful information.

Android also has many integrated tools that help enhance the efficiency of an app while reducing the number of actions that need to be taken to perform a task.

Still, choosing the right Android framework for app development is not easy due to the large number of different options available. To lend you a helping hand, we have created a comprehensive list of the 14 best Android frameworks that can make the app development process fast and easy.

These frameworks help in reducing the effort that developers put in by boosting productivity and offering technology solutions to handle complex tasks.

Top Frameworks for Android App Development

Before we start, it is important to note that we categorize 14 top Android frameworks by their capabilities. Let’s have a closer look at the best frameworks for Android application development and what features they offer.

Best Android App Development Framework: Games Development

Unity

Unity is known as the best Android development framework for the development of multi-platform 2D, 3D, augmented reality, and virtual reality games as well as other simulations. Developed by Unity Technologies , this game engine comes in free and professional editions.

You can work with Unity in C# and UnityScript , the language of Unity that is similar to JavaScript. Unity is a cross-platform framework that and enables game developers to export their games to multiple platforms, like iOS, Web, PlayStation, Windows, Xbox, and more.

Being a physics engine, it can control the behavior of different game objects, lighting rendering, momentum, and graphic elements. Similar to many software development tools, Unity has a built-in editor that enables you to edit images and manage animations from the “Animator” window.

As of 2018, half of new mobile games and 60% of the augmented reality and virtual reality experiences are created with the Unity engine. All in all, It is an easy-to-use platform that allows game developers to create amazing content and a strong connection with the audience. In other words, the platform is a great choice for interactive experiences.

Best Frameworks for Android Development: High Performance

Kotlin

Originated in the minds of JetBrains , Kotlin is a statically-typed, modern programming language solution for Android that combines the features of functional and object-oriented programming. In 2017, Google declared Kotlin as an official IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Android development.

It runs on Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is 100% interoperable with the Java language. In many scenarios, it is considered as a replacement for Java as it significantly streamlines the development process. Many programmers have adopted Kotlin as their primary language for Android.

Application developed with Kotlin also run as fast as the ones created with Java as they share a similar bytecode structure. In the recent Stack Overflow developer survey, Kotlin was ranked as the fourth most loved programming language.

In 2021, many of the large enterprises are planning to move or are in the process of moving to Kotlin. Trello, Pinterest, Basecamp, Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, and Netflix are all migrating to Kotlin for Android application development. Since its launch, Kotlin has proved itself as a highly intuitive platform for Android app development.

Corona SDK

Developed in 2009, Corona SDK is a perfect software development kit for building speedy apps and games. This general-purpose, cross-platform framework enables 10x faster development than other Android app frameworks. Corona achieves this by integrating Lua, a lightweight and multi-paradigm programming language, which is itself layered on top of C++/OpenGL and allows to achieve high speed, usability, and flexibility.

Highly popular among game developers, Corona is free and available both Mac OS X and Windows, with real-time testing support.

I n addition, the framework has native UI support, over 500 APIs, and a dynamic advertising platform built for developers. Its API suite features are feature-rich, with graphics, networking, widgets, particle effects, and more. Simple to understand and integrate into Android, Corona SDK has gained notable popularity among Android app developers.

Sencha Touch

Perceived as one of the best Android development frameworks by Android’s development community, Sencha Touch is an enterprise-first framework built for native mobile application development. It is based on JavaScript and HTML5, which allows for creating universal applications for Android.

Sencha Touch comes with nearly 50 built-in UI components and native themes, enabling developers to create engrossing and eye-catching apps. The framework utilizes hardware acceleration techniques, so the apps created with its help exhibit high performance.

Big companies choose Sencha Touch due to its high-level compatibility and flexibility, responsive touch features, and fast execution. Apps built using Sencha Touch are rich in fluid animations, smooth scrolling, and are highly adaptive. Its huge collection of themes, enriched UI, integrated MVC system, and vast data package make Sencha Touch the leading Android application development framework.

TheAppBuilder

Powered by HTML5, TheAppBuilder is an app-building framework that supports a codeless user interface, which means users do not need to know how to code in any language to create a solid app.

Plus, with its drag-and-drop interface, developers can build applications really quickly. The framework comes with pre-built blocks which include features like feedback, content updates, polls, push notifications, and much more.

Android app development framework also got traction from users because it allows them to submit their apps directly to Google Play and boasts social network integration. Plus, it generates analytics reports, so users could identify the issues that slow down their apps. In most cases, businesses use TheAppBuilder to cut costs.

SproutCore

SproutCore is an open-source JavaScript framework used for developing blazing fast applications with advanced features. Developed by Apple , this HTML5-driven framework offers users a clear MVC design that enables performance optimization and scalability for applications. Unlike other JavaScript libraries, SproutCore comes with a complete set of tools required to build a desktop-like application in a browser, including routing, UI components, testing, and deployment tools.

With more than 50,000 items in the toolset, maintainable application code, and well thought out business logic behind it, SproutCore has become a top framework for Android app development. These features, when combined, provide a rock-solid foundation for building feature-packed, high-performance applications.

Best Android Frameworks: Native Apps Development

React Native

Backed by Facebook , React Native is a powerful open-source framework that offers ample support to other development tools and their IDEs. It is based on React, a JS library for web solutions. Companies like Instagram, Walmart, Airbnb, Tesla, as well as many other Fortune 500 companies, use the framework to develop native mobile apps.

As most of the React Native APIs are cross-platform, developers can write code once and then run it anywhere, which improves development speed and helps cut costs.

React Native uses building blocks similar to the ones employed in most Android development frameworks. With the hot-reload option in React Native, developers can link updated files while retaining the current state of the app. The developer community of React Native has been growing much faster than Facebook’s expectations.

Google Trends indicates that the framework has been gaining more and more traction in the past few years. As of today, around 1600 developers have used this framework.

Xamarin

Owned by Microsoft, and one of the top Android development frameworks, Xamarin offers an advanced toolset that enables developers to build native apps for multiple mobile platforms on a shared C# codebase. With Microsoft’s cloud testing service, the apps built using Xamarin can be tested on numerous devices. Moreover, its code-sharing feature makes it developers’ favorite as it reduces coding time and the number of bugs in the software development process.

Compared to other Android frameworks, Xamarin is one of the oldest cross-platform frameworks and is already used by 1.4 million developers across 120 countries.

Xamarin became a part of Visual Studio IDE, which made large companies in industries like healthcare, and energy shift to using this framework. Xamarin has been around for a while, but the number of developers using it has increased a lot over the years as compared to other frameworks for Android.

Appcelerator Titanium

The best Android framework according to some developers, Appcelerator Titanium is an open-source platform for building native apps with a single JavaScript codebase. Titanium became popular as it allows for creating multi-platform mobile apps using around 60%-90% of the existing code. The framework employs the JavaScript programming language to ensure the high performance of applications.

Titanium can be used to develop solid games, while mobile apps built with Appcelerator Titanium can utilize hardware-specific features like Android menu buttons, OS-centric controls, and platform-appropriate notifications. Currently, over 345,577,760 apps run through this Android application framework. Also, it provides many other useful features like automated testing on mobile devices, application monitoring, and performance regulation.

Best Android Frameworks: Hybrid Apps Development

Ionic

Ionic is a free and open-source framework certified by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and allows developers to build progressive hybrid apps with the help of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Ionic has become one of the most famous frameworks for Android development due to its cross-platform functionalities and the ability to integrate AngularJS.

It hosts a simple CLI (Command-line Interface ) that facilitates features like emulators, live reload, and logging. As it is Cordova and Angular based, Ionic has a large community. Around 4 million Ionic-based apps were built, with more than 5 million developers in around 200 countries worldwide using the framework. Moreover, it integrates with many services, including Google Play, Instagram, and many more.

Flutter

Designed and maintained by Google , Flutter is a multi-platform mobile app SDK that can be used to build applications, but in a way that is different from other Android app frameworks. It simplifies the cross-platform development process and is written in the Dart language. When it comes to selecting a framework, Flutter is the best choice for hybrid app development.

Google’s Flutter framework uses a 2D rendering engine called Skia for visuals that are similar to material design and the Cupertino style. Flutter also serves as a solid testing framework, enabling developers to perform UI, unit, and functionality tests. Moreover, Flutter has best-in-class hot-reload functionality, which allows for seamless testing without the need to restart the application.

Cordova

Cordova is a free open-source Android framework that allows developers to build multi-platform apps using a single code base like Appcelerator Titanium. It is a hybrid framework that enables app development based on standard web technologies, including JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. Cordova serves as a bridge between a mobile application and a web application.

Also, it can access native device APIs, making it hard to identify whether the app has been developed using a native language or not. Primarily designed to develop online apps, Cordova also provides support for offline scenarios, making it a perfect platform for developing desktop apps as well.

PhoneGap

Supported by Adobe and Apache , PhoneGap is an open-source Android app framework that allows software engineers to build apps using web development technologies (HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript). With PhoneGap, developers can instantly see changes during the development of the apps. Commonly used for developing hybrid mobile applications, PhoneGap provides best-in-class performance as well as the freedom to work without hardware-specific limitations.

In addition to Android, the platform helps developing apps for several other operating systems. The latest version of this cross-platform framework comes with a built-in Cordova WebView for integrating PhoneGap code into larger native apps. Its extended plugin library, third-party software tools, and growing community make it stand out among other Android app development frameworks

NativeScript

Listed as a top framework for hybrid app development, NativeScript is a free open-source framework that enables developers to create applications using Vue, TypeScript , and Angular . This Android framework is backed by a Bulgarian software company Telerik . From Gradle to CocoaPods, developers can easily reuse a wide array of plugins from directly in the projects with NativeScript.

The framework enables web developers who are well-versed in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, as well as Native UI markup, can build outstanding progressive apps with NativeScript. One of the biggest reasons to choose NativeScript for Android app development is that it offers UIs with the native platform’s offering engine, which is results in native-like UIs and performance. With JS running on the UI thread, NativeScriptenables high-performance on all native platform APIs.

Wrapping Up

Selecting the right Android framework for app development is a complicated process. If you are looking for a one-shot solution for app development, you should know that, since every business and project has different requirements, what works best for one company might not work for another.

First, you should consider the capabilities of each of these frameworks, then focus on your project objectives, and after, pick out the platform from the ones mentioned above — based on your business needs. That is the way you can guarantee your choice will have a positive impact.

If you have some questions left, don’t hesitate to contact our experts to get additional information about mobile app development.

Источник