iOS apps are easier to work with than Android application design?

I think most users would think that the design of smartphone apps is really simple because it's not about the platform, either on iOS or Android. But in fact? In the two-platform developers, it seems that it is easier to design an interface with exquisite and meticulous application on iOS. Hipmunk, a UI designer for AOL travel company, and a developer of iOS Danilo Campos (Danilo Campos), gave us a simple summary: "The simplest answer is that it may be easier to make a nice, attractive application on iOS than it is for Android." ”

Let's see why he came to the conclusion.

First, the "fragmentation" of Android devices is a big problem. When writing code on the iOS platform, developers simply have to deal with very limited screen resolution parameters and hardware configurations, because the iphone and the ipad are few, but now there is no way to count the number of Android models on the market, which leads developers to take care of a lot of device parameters. "Android devices have a variety of shapes, sizes, screen resolutions, and processing speeds-so this is a huge problem for us," Li Hu Linden Lee Linden, co-founder of Karma app, told the Wired website, " We need to test almost 20 models with different resolutions and CPUs, which really slows down the development process. ”

Campos said: "On those high resolution Android devices, the pattern looks very good, but we test on some old models, the result is appalling." "In this situation, developers can only redesign the design elements and consider changing the program code."

Hipmunk, for example, must prepare three sets of designs for an Ann table platform: The older models are one size, the new ones are twice times the size, and a strange 1.5 times-fold pattern is used for other devices. Some developers, however, give up designing designs for those special models, with the consequence that users of those models do not have a good user experience.

Indeed, mobile application development must be carried out at a very fast rate, where the application development teams are often small and underfunded, and if additional time is spent on each design element, that means less innovation time in other areas. All of these reasons have led to applications made by Android developers that are less beautiful.

In addition, the Android field of development tools and development documentation is also slightly inadequate. Apple has made more than 20-year improvements in developer support, almost perfect in software development packages and user interface guidelines, and Google is just getting started. So for Biandro, the iOS platform developers have more tools to do interesting and unique design. "If I have more official and Third-party technical documentation on my hands, then it will be smoother in development." "That's how the Persian development of iOS describes itself." But in the development of the Android platform, things are not that simple. "It's annoying that there are a lot of things that are not clearly stated in development," Campos said. "Our Android developer Ryan has to go deep into the source code to understand some of the XML formatting parts that are not marked, which he can't." ”

On the left is the real estate search engine Trulia iOS version of the application, which has details, photos, maps and other tags, but on the right of the Android version of the application there is no such a clear classification.

Some carefully designed product features are also easier to apply to iOS because iOS has a wide variety of API interfaces and function libraries. "It's difficult to get some nice touch action on the Androping, such as transition effects (transitions) and rounded corners (rounded corners)." Jacobs, Trulia's product manager, said, Steve Yarger. Linden also agrees with this: "The iOS platform does make gesture transitions easier to implement, and the fading, fading, and sliding of elements in the UI are open to developers and are consistent on every iOS device." But there are many different frameworks on the Android platform, which makes it impossible to know what can be used for all devices. ”

Of course, Google will not be indifferent to this situation, after the launch of the Android 4.0 version (ice cream sandwich), Google built the Android developer page on the google++, and opened an Android training class. Now Google has built up a complete set of Android design guidelines, which makes it easier for developers to do the whole design work. However, the "fragmentation" of Android devices is still unresolved, with less than 3% of Android devices running 4.0 systems.

But it's not all good on iOS, although iOS makes it easier to make high-precision designs, but Android gives developers more freedom. "On Android, as long as you're willing to take the time, you can do everything you want to do," says Jacob. "Apple has a lot of constraints on developers, but this is a deal, with less development freedom to make the application look better." ”

Jacob concludes: "If you only want to design a good-looking and qualified application, it's simpler on the iOS platform; the ' ecosystem ' that Apple has created is used to do this. ”

Compiled from the wired site: Why iOS Apps look decoupled Than Android Apps

Author: Christina Bonnington