How to port an iOS app?

If you're going through this, you most likely to have an iOS or Android app that you're thinking about porting to another platform .If you're looking for a developer or just searching for the topic, we hope this blog will help you find the answers you're looking for.

These are four things you need to consider when porting an iOS app to Android or porting an Android app to iOS

Requirement gathering

 Requirements gathering is the fastest part of the process of porting to a new OS. The clients don’t need to worry about preparing specifications documents, making of Skype calls, and spending weeks writing emails. Since there is already an existing application, we can use it as a guide when developing for the second OS.

Development

Porting an Android app to iOS is not about converting Android code to iOS code. Whether to port an iPhone app to Android or vice versa, This process is actually about developing a product from scratch in mobile app development process

Developing an application for a specific platform needs much  knowledge of platform. Porting an iOS app to Android (or vice versa) cannot be done by merely replicating code in a different language. Designing an app for multiple platforms ,have to deal with different hardware configurations, OS support, and customization.

1) Hardware Configurations.

Even though iOS devices are produced exclusively by Apple, there are still various types of iPhones and iPads. Android devices are shipped by a large number of manufacturers. For a developer, the hardware configurations including screen resolution, memory capacity ,processor architecture,  fingerprint readers, buttons, and more will vary among devices.

Usually iOSapp development services providers develop an iOS app, they make it compatible with the recent and the previous versions of the iPhone (e.g. iPhone 5, 6, 6S and 7). When it comes to Android, they choose the most popular devices including those that their client prefers and those that are popular in a given market.

Choosing the right hardware is crucial for mobile app development. Mobile apps use a device’s firmware provided by the manufacturer. Basic apps - such as camera, gallery, widgets and contact book - rely on underlying firmware that can vary by manufacturer. In other words, the way this functionality is implemented under the hood is not always the same. Android manufacturers can customize the look and feel of their firmware, which produces a large segmentation in the area of GUI design and may lead to usability issues. For instance, different producers of Android devices work differently with the  Exchangeable image file format. This is the reason why certain cameras invert photos.

To make an app look good on any device the mobile app development companies also need to work with different sizes, fonts, and screen resolutions.They apply adaptive UI or even alternative UI if the layout has certain limitations. For example, a custom font in the action-bar in one of our apps didn’t show up on some other android smartphones and even caused crashes. We used a standard font for this particular device.

2) Support for OS.

iOS devices receive updates on regular basis from Apple. The update cycle for Android devices varies widely. Other than with Nexus devices, it takes  time for device manufacturers to upgrade to the latest version of Android.