Anyone built an Android App?

Hi all,

Was just thinking about my next project (personal free time project) and I was considering learning how to build android apps.

I started downloading Android Studio, when I decided right now is not a great time and I should finish the site I am currently doing first. But I have been toying with trying it out for some time, and will be doing it next.

So I thought I would ask if anyone else has done this, and if so, what would you estimate is a reasonable time period for getting up to speed with the basics  (I know that is rather subjective but an estimate would be good) , and any tips or advice to efficient learning.

Thanks in advance for any insights,

Best wishes,

Paul.

I've built both android and Iphone apps using phonegap + cordova. Both apps passed the app store inspections and are available for download. I use native functions like getting files, uploading files, and background push notifications.

I can answer questions if you have any with phonegap and cordova.

Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!

Hi,

Phonegap looks really exciting. First time I had heard of it, I had immediately went to the Android SDK but phonegap seems to fill the gap :-)

Will certainly be going with Phonegap, thanks for the heads up, and I may take you up on that offer of help in the future,

Best wishes,

Paul.

PS Would you care to share your app name so I can download it?

Sure thing.

You can find the links to both iPhone and Android apps links on my homepage at https://www.homesync.com/ .

There are some major things to take into consideration when building cordova/phonegap apps. Tweaking for performance was my major barrier, but once you get a hang of it, it's smooth sailing. The apps are powered by a codeigniter backend aswell.

Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!

@albertleao

nice info dude,
I was thinking of studying Meteor.js cause it can do both android and iOS app as well.
But there is a pre-requesite I need to learn angular.js before learning meteor.js

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Also the good news is that the latest version of angular.js which is in Beta,
will also now support both mobile and desktop app.
http://angular.io/

that's really good news.

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@albartleao
Is this the cordova site?
https://cordova.apache.org/

Can I immediately jumping in and learning this site and skip phonegap?

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I did. I build a android app with Framework7 and Cordova. Their is also ionic and other frameworks. As backend I just used CodeIgniter and the CodeIgniter Rest Server library.

I guess cordova is the shortest shortcut?
correct me if I'm wrong.
coz the other js platform will take the longer path.

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I used Cordova because I needed to use crosswalk to guarantee that Framework7 was working the same on every android device.
Crosswalk works also with Phonegap, but I'm not real programmer or IT guy so I could not fix the errors the terminal was thrown at me. I gave Cordova a try and didn't get the errors.
You should use Phonegap. Cordova and phonegap are like how Chromium(Cordova)and Chrome(phonegap) are related to each other. With Phonegap it is much easier to build apks.
Phonegap makes it possible to build apps with html, css and javascript and use the smartphone features like the gps, camera etc.

Phonegap is more like a wrapper around your html and css and let you app communicate with the smartphone features. You should use Framework7, ionic, Angular etc for the html, css and javascript part of your app.