Building a business application is intriguing, but chances are high to make blunders along the way. Mobile app development mistakes indeed cost you ten times over your hard work.

You are not alone; everyone has been there too, but an important thing is that you learn from certain mistakes, and this post is created to tell you what those errors were so that you can create an Android application that is stable & performs the way you planned.

A slight negligence in the initial stages can have major repercussions later. The best Android apps for developers are those that are free of pesky bugs, run flawlessly, and do not cost you a dime.

Eventually, each platform, i.e. Apple and Android applications, has its set of unique challenges. It is crucial to employ best practices that steer your application toward success and get rid of critical errors during the development process.

Do you know out of a total of 5 million applications in application stores, only  32k applications have attained the milestone of 1 million downloads? Why so?

The reason is applications that lag often fail to offer a seamless experience, resulting in rapid user abandonment. Whereas top-notch applications learn from setbacks, adapt accordingly, and evolve to achieve great results.

In this post, we have underlined key mistakes businesses should be conscious of & avoid in Android development, ensuring a swift development process.

Failure in Specifying the Need

This is a mistake you often undermine but has severe repercussions. In a rush of excitement, you often overlook the necessity for need analysis before commencing the development process. It is like catering ham to vegans. This analogy is used to show the total disharmony of needs and expectations.

Indeed, you have an extraordinary application idea. For that, you deserve a pat on your back, but doing thorough market research is certainly the ideal way to go about it.

Whenever there is a huge investment involved, it is advisable to take things steadily and slowly. It is important to test them and take care of what the user needs.

That would validate your idea, lending you the confidence that it has the power to connect with the dedicated user base.

There is always a roadmap to successful app building, and it is important to follow that route.

Being Unaware or Having little Knowledge of Android Studios’ competence

Android Studio is an official integrated development environment (IDE) for developing Android applications.

Android Studio is a gem for both Pro and beginner app developers, infused with powerful features that boost app function and quality.

Think of it as a powerful developer tool that offers everything app developers need to debug, create, and test their apps.

Using iOS Design Practices

This is one of the most common blunders committed by developers, specifically if they have honed their skills in working on iOS projects and are applying iOS design practices to Android application development.

While this strategy seems harmless or innocuous, it can have a horrendous influence on the user experience, ultimately hampering how users interact within and perceive your application.

Undermining Intents

Intents are one of the most important mechanisms in Android programming. This helps you to swap and reuse components. However, you must use them adequately because misunderstood intent can hamper your app’s security.

Intents are objects that facilitate communication between different applications or components.

Think of them as useful text that declares an intent to do something, such as start an activity, broadcast a message, or use any updating service.

Avoiding Fragments

Simply put, a fragment is a modular part representing a component of your app user interface.

It’s like a small activity within your application’s main activity. It has its own life cycle, layouts, user interface, logic, and elements.

Fragments are important for creating self-contained user interface elements that can be easily reused and re-stack as the situation demands.

This is important for achieving adaptable, responsive user interfaces.

Failing to use fragments can lead to code duplication, interrupted user interface, navigation issues, and tight coupling, eventually making it arduous to maintain and update the code.

Taxing the Main Thread

The main thread serves as the central hub of your application, directing the implementation of several components in your app.

However, a typical error developers encounter is overburdening or taxing the main thread with lengthy operations. This can extremely hamper thread, bringing your application to a halt or hang.

To prevent this, It’s important to delegate & relocate computationally intensive & extreme tasks to secondary threads, ensuring a favourable user experience.

Unable to Utilize Data Binding

Data binding is a method used in software development to connect & synchronize data between the user interface and the underlying data model. It is for automating UI updates, reducing boilerplate code, & eliminating memory leaks.

Your application ends up being cumbersome, clunky, and visually unattractive, and it does not have data binding. Lacking data binding can compromise stability and can make it sluggish. Data binding helps you detect errors early and save you from catastrophic app crashes.

Failing to Make Most of Android Libraries

Building everything from scratch rather than accessing Android libraries is a common mistake that hinders development efficiency.

Android libraries offer pre-built functions such as simplifying codes, reducing codebase, image loading, & improving app performance.

Examples are Volley for network request management & Glide for image optimization because managing an app network is a strenuous task that every Android developer has to do.

Therefore, these arrays of tools offered by libraries are handy to make the process easy.

Custom code can lead to bugs, maintenance issues, and security. Not harnessing the power of libraries can slow down the development process, causing missed deadlines and a slowdown.

Libraries provide updates and maintenance because custom code can be outdated & exposed to risks, ensuring code remains secure, current and tested. Some important names in Android libraries include:

  • Glide for Image loading
  • Retrofit for Networking
  • OkHttp for networking
  • Picasso is used for image loading, and Butterknife is used for view binding.
  • With the help of Android libraries, one can streamline development, cut down on errors, and refine app performance.
  • Not using any of the above to develop Android apps will steer your app toward failure and make it time-consuming.

Bitmap Mismanagement

Tackling bitmaps is a demanding task for developers, primarily due to their intensive memory.

Absurdly handling bitmaps can lead to performance issues or app crashes due to memory constraints.

A 10-megapixel photo can contain 40 MB of memory to eliminate this use, or it is highly advisable to use image libraries like GLIDE, which optimize images and prevent unused maps from dominating memory space.

Deep View Hierarchy

A deep view hierarchy can influence Android app performance in an alarming sense when layouts are updated, causing high loading times and potential hangs or freezes.

Luckily, using lint, a static code analysis, can help one identify and optimize these issues without needing code execution.

Wrapping Up

Designing an Android application demands more than just technical proficiency. It requires a deep understanding of the platform, its constraints, & the errors that can derail even the most well-competent projects.

That’s why we at  Solid App Maker have adept app developers on board to help businesses design outstanding Android applications that outshine expectations, delivering practical results without breaking a sweat.

This post is a great source for identifying mobile app development pitfalls to avoid.

By saving yourself from committing costly mistakes underlined in the post, developers can significantly improve stability, user experience, and quality.