Smartphone App Development
The rapid advances in mobile technology are driving the next phase of economic growth for businesses both large and small. To keep up with all of the changes you must be constantly plugged in. The concept that is fueling quite a bit of this growth and will drive it for many years to come is the extremely useful cross-platform framework. As app developers are forced to deploy on multiple platforms the only way to keep up with demand is to use one of the many options for cross-platform development.
To get a feel for the most important developments you can look to the company who is the market leader in development platforms for enterprise mobility, namely Rhomobile. They continue to lead through innovation and recently announced the release of Rhodes 2.2, the newest version of their cross-platform smartphone app development framework. The latest app framework allows developers to build native apps for all major smartphones (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian), but it also includes support for Bluetooth, Calendar and Android Cloud to Device Messaging. As smartphones become more advanced the apps that run on them also become more advanced – similar to the evolution of software for the desktop platform. With smartphone app development the difficulty lies in building apps for the many different major platforms.
With the Rhodes framework, developers can write native applications for all leading smartphones, which are able to do things like access and create events in the native device calendar. For geolocation applications, for example, end users can add events, places or notifications direct to their device calendar. With the new Bluetooth support, developers can add another layer of connectivity to their Rhodes apps, providing a power efficient communications protocol to transfer data between other smartphones and hand-held devices.
Rhodes 2.2 features support for Android Cloud to Device Messaging – a continuing feature for Blackberry and iPhone but new to the Android OS. Rhodes lets developers write apps using HTML, Javascript and Ruby, and additionally version 2.2 leverages built in support for Android’s cloud-based push. This makes it possible to for the server to send requests and update application and user data on the smartphone application. The best part is that requests can be kept current even when the application is not open, so the data is always updated.
Here are some of the many features that mobile phone developers can take advantage of: Bluetooth Capability, Calendar Support, Support for Android Cloud to Device Messaging, Model View Controller framework, Object Relational Manager (ORM), Support for Push Synchronized Data on all platforms, Hosted build and app provisioning, ability to work with synced local data for rapid access and ease of operation when disconnected or offline, barcode, signature capture and optimized native styling for all devices, full access to device capabilities: GPS, audio and video, PIM contacts, accelerometer, native mapping, camera, and calendar.
There has never been a better time to be a mobile phone developer and it just keeps getting easier. Rhodes is an open source project and is completely free to anyone who desires to use it. Developers only have a few quality options for cross-platform frameworks, and because of its tremendous ease and functionality app developers are adopting Rhodes in greater and greater numbers. With the ever expanding community the only thing you have to lose is not becoming a part of it.
Learn more about mobile apps development on Rhodes 2.2. Sign up for a free download of the award winning mobile app framework and see why developers cannot live without it.
