Mobile Development and Operating Systems

What is Mobile Application Development?

Because of the ever-increasing popularity of personal computers, smartphones, and tablets, mobile application development has become a popular way of creating software. Many companies hire mobile application developers, and these apps have become an essential element of most businesses. Mobile application development is the process of developing mobile and smartphone applications for portable and mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), enterprise digital assistants, and smartphones. These mobile applications will either come as preinstalled apps (during manufacturing) or delivered through any platform (app stores, websites, etc.) by any third-party companies. The creation of mobile application development originates from traditional software development.

Developers make mobile apps for various platforms such as Android, iOS, and other cross-platforms using frameworks and programming languages like Xamarin, Adobe PhoneGap, NodeJs, Flutter, etc. There are various development toolchains used for developing mobile apps such as Android software development kits (SDKs) for android applications and programming languages or frameworks like Intel XDK, JQuery Mobile, Flutter, Swift language, etc. for iOS app development.

Types of Mobile Applications

In this era of smartphones and web applications, enterprises and individuals launch thousands of applications each day. There is an exponential increase in the competition, as the companies are into developing more complex applications. It gave rise to the continuous growth in demand for mobile application development. Generally, there are three major classifications of mobile applications. These are Native applications, Hybrid applications, and Web applications.

· Native applications are developed exclusively for a specific mobile OS. As the name suggests, they are native to a particular device or platform. When developers built these applications for one kind of operating system, they cannot run on another OS of a different kind. The native applications are favorable as they tend to optimize the user experience.Flutter is an open-source web-development toolkit of Google used to develop cross-platform mobile applications, specifically native applications for Android, iOS, and web applications. Flutter app development can efficiently resolve critical development issues.Flutter app development also renders powerful UI to ease mobile application development. Examples of native apps are calculator, angry bird, Pydroid python interpreter, etc.

ADVANTAGES of Native Applications:

§ These apps are fast.

§ These apps get distributed easily, using app stores and other platforms.

§ Extra intuitive and interactive.

· Hybrid Applications:

Hybrid applications are a particular type of mobile application that performs like a native app but runs through web browsers. Developers need to create hybrid applications using HTML5 programming languages along with PHP and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). But hybrid applications are not that reliable or fast as native applications.Most of the social media application development and e-commerce application development makes use of the hybrid application for developing mobile apps. Examples of hybrid apps are LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp, Amazon, Facebook messenger, etc.

ADVANTAGES of Hybrid Applications:

§ These apps are easy to build.

§ It acts as a single app for all platforms.

§ It is much cheaper than a native app. It helps in making cost-effective mobile application development.

§ Developers can access device utilities through API calls.

· Web Applications:

These are mobile applications designed to deliver web pages on web browsers that can run on mobile devices. These kinds of applications are responsive by nature, and hence they are called adaptive web applications. It is because they can scale to fit the various screen sizes and ratios of handheld mobile devices. These applications mostly run on web-hosted servers. Examples of web applications are BookMyShow, OLX, Financial Times, Quora, etc.

ADVANTAGES of Web Applications are

§ Users can access these apps from anywhere.

§ These apps do not require installation.

§ Web application development help reduces business costs.

§ Since these apps run on hosted servers, they remain up-to-date always.

What is an Operating System?

An Operating System is system software that performs the interaction between the end-user and computer hardware. Every system must have at least one operating system on which other applications software will run. The operating system acts as a platform to interact with the machine without knowing how to converse the computer’s language. Application software like word processors, web browsers, entertainment applications run on this system software. An operating system is responsible for performing all the core tasks like managing files, schedule processes, manage memory, etc.

Types of Operating Systems

There are five different types of operating systems. These are

· Batch Operating System:

It does not allow interacting with the machine directly. The user has to prepare the job on punch cards and then provide it to the computer operator. The operator will sort out all the similar jobs having the same requirement and cluster them into batches and hence the name batch operating system. This batching technique helps in speeding up the processing having similar jobs.

· Time-sharing Operating System:

It is a technique used in the operating system that makes its users enable to use of a particular processor at the same time. Each user might reside in different terminals. It also allows for executing various tasks simultaneously yet smoothly. Hence time-sharing is also called the logical extension of multi-tasking. After a specific time interval, the operating system has to switch over to the next task so that all the processes remain ready in the queue to execute. In this type of OS, each process gets equal time and opportunity to run. Developing such operating systems require programming languages like C, C++. Examples of time-sharing operating systems are Multics, Unix, etc.

· Distributed Operating systems:

This type ofoperating system has provided recent advancements in the world of computers. They use multiple processors to serve various processes and real-time applications simultaneously and from different users. The processors in a distributed operating system can communicate with each other over numerous high-speed buses or communication lines. The most popular benefit of this operating system is the failure of one system will not affect the other system and its communication. Also, the delay in processing the data gets reduces. An example of a distributed operating system is LOCUS.

· Network Operating Systems:

It is a unique form of an operating system that runs on a server but can easily manage users and groups, data and processes, security, application software, and other networking operations. The design of this operating system allows shared accessing of files among multiple computers. The connection and file sharing takes place using a Local Area Network (LAN). These operating systems are advantageous as their servers are centralized and stable, the server is responsible for handling the security-related operations, and users can easily integrate new hardware in such systems. Some common examples of network operating systems are Novell NetWare, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.

· Mobile Operating systems:

It is another type of operating system designed specifically for portable handheld devices like smartphones, tablets, PDAs, etc. These OSs are lighter and run on mobile devices. Mobile operating systems are accountable for providing different functions, process management, and features available on handheld devices. There are two popular types of Mobile OS. These are:

o Android OS is a modified version of the Linux kernel along with the other open-source software. This OS officially debuted in 2008. The developers of Open Handset Alliance started developing this OS for modern smartphones and Google commercially sponsored them.The latest version of Android is Android 10.0.It is the world’s most used OS.Most of the smartphone development companies like Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Panasonic, etc. use Android to run those mobile.

o Apple uses iOS (formerly called iPhone OS) as its operating system for iPhones and iPads. iOS has become an absolute success because of its popular User Interface (UI). Apple released it in 2007 for the first generation of iPhones. These days it is not only used in iPhones but also iPads, Apple TV, smartwatches, etc. It is the second-most widely used mobile operating system. The latest iOS version is iOS is 14.0.1.

· Real-time operating systems:

It is another popular type of operating system where the time interval for the response to input is very minute. Organizations and users use a real-time operating system where there is a rigid time requirement for processing an operation. Humans use this operating system in medical imaging systems, scientific experiments, traffic management and control, weapon systems, industrial control systems, etc.

What is a Programming Language?

For centuries, language has been a fundamental means of communication and human interaction. The same way, to interact with the computer and to develop applications that the computer can understand and benefit us, we use computer languages. A programming language is a way of writing instructions for a computer to do a particular task and return an output. They are the tools used to implement algorithms. Programmers write the logic in the form of code, and the compiler or interpreter converts these codes into meaningful machine instructions. Some of the best programming languages are C, C++, Java, Python, PHP, etc. Programming languages help programmers develop mobile apps and operating systems.

Types of Programming Language

· Machine Level Language:

is closest to the computer hardware. Humans cannot easily understand this language as its representation is in a binary number system. It uses binary digits: Ones and Zeroes. This language does not require any translator as the machine can easily understand the binary representation. This programming language is the first generation of programming language.

· The assembly language

is the next level of programming language that comes on top of machine level language. It is also a little closer to the machines, but humans can easily read, write, understand, and maintain the code. It uses simple English language, and the assembler is responsible for converting the assembly code into machine/binary code. Hence it is also called low-level language. It is the second generation of programming languages. Assembly languages are more memory efficient.

· The high-level language

is the latest and most widely used form of computer languages. It is not as close to machines but very close to humans as humans can easily understand the language. It uses English constructs and wordings for creating the instructions within the language. In this programming language, programmers pay their complete attention to the problem-solving logic. Scientists develop the high-level languages to subdue the limitations and uneasiness of the low-level languages. High-level languages are less memory efficient. Examples of high-level languages are JavaScript, C, C++, Java, Python, etc.There is a unique subcategory of the high-level language used for mobile application development.

o Mobile app development languages:

This is a type of high-level language that helps in making the mobile application. They follow the constructs of the English language and uses all the characteristics of a high-level language. Almost every mobile app development framework uses any programming language to develop the core logic of the app. Let us now take a look at what languages a developer should use if he/she wants to create an app for Android or iOS.

§ Android app developers should use Java or Kotlin. Kotlin is a new programming language developed from the inspiration of Java. Kotlin is relatively easy to use, clean, and takes less time in application deployment. Kotlin was used to create mobile applications like Pinterest, Twidere for Twitter, Evernote, and Trello.Java, on the other hand, is a native programming language used by Android and was developed by Sun Microsystems. Developers can run the Java application on multiple platforms and practically on any device, server, or operating system. It is a robust and opensource language.Popular apps like Spotify, Twitter, Signal, Cash App, etc. use Java as their programming language.

§ For iOS app developers, Objective-C or Swift is the programming language they should use. Objective-C is an object-oriented, general-purpose programming language. It was the primary programming language for Apple in developing iOS apps and implement additional APIs like Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.Swift, on the other hand, is an intuitive, fast, and powerful programming language that is compatible with Objective-C when developing apps in the Cocoa framework. Developers use Swift for developing apps for iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, etc.

Programmers and developers usually write the Operating Systems (OS) using a specific type of high-level language. They are System programming languages. These languages are useful in writing system software like the kernel of the operating system and other driver software. Some typical examples of such high-level programming languages are C and C++.

Conclusion

The process of developing mobile apps has become a new trend in the software development market. Many startups are also implementing mobile apps to provide their services. Hence, mobile application developers need to know about the various programming languages and frameworks they can use for developing applications for different mobile operating systems.