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Android is a high ranking mobile operating system that powers the highest numbers of Smartphones across the world! Being an open source mobile OS, Android has successfully created a massive user base. Enterprises irrespective of their size and nature find it quite flexible and beneficial to target the platform aiming to circulate the brand in the virtual world and get closer to the mobile users.
This has proved to be effective and high resulting for the enterprises! Developing business dedicated applications for Android is considered to be essential for the enterprises. Android is ruling the mobile market and thus targeting this platform would allow the enterprises to access massive numbers of users and stay competitive in the market.
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With the trend of advancing technology, a number of tech tools and frameworks have been invented that are widely helpful in developing stunning android apps with rich-functional features! These all work together towards making the process of mobile app development faster and more effective. Below stated are few of the Android development tools that are widely useful for the app developers in developing the best apps!
9 Magnificent Tools for Android Developers:
Library Methods Count
The Android libraries are indeed great tools which help in avoiding the dreadful 64K method limits of the DEX file format. Developers need to pay for this tool but it’s worth it! This refers to a plugin, which enables you to have information on the number of methods on Android libraries. It also provides support for Android Studio.
Stetho
Stetho is an excellent debug bridge for the Android applications that are created by Facebook. This tool integrated with the developer tools of Chrome Desktop browser. It is quite easier to inspect the application as well as the network traffic with this tool. This also allows inspecting and editing the SQLite databases along with the shared preferences within the app in an easier way. It is essential to note down that Stetho must be enabled for debug build and not for the release build variant.
With Stetho, you can complete the following functions:
- Check the complete View hierarchy
- Perform all other actions related to app development with ease
- Inspect your SQLite database
- Monitor network operations
Android Debug Database
The Android Debug Database is an incredibly powerful library yet a simple tool for debugging databases along the shared preferences in the Android applications. This tool can simply be used for viewing the databases as well as the shared preferences in a direct way on the web browser.
Android Asset Studio
Android Asset Studio is considered as the one-stop shop for different project asset needs! This tool offers multiple options to the developers which start from generating the icons to include styling the actionbar. This tool ultimately simplifies the app development process in an amazing way!
APK Method Count
APK Method Count is a tool that helps for counting the numbers of the methods which are moving into the APK. This tool helps in presenting the per-package method counts.
Buck
Buck is a very helpful build system that is developed as well as used by Facebook. This tool encourages and supports in creating small and reusable modules that consist codes and resources. This tool supports multiple languages on different platforms. This tool helps the developers in speeding up the builds, adding reproducibility to the builds and gets error free incremental builds.
ProGuard
ProGuard is a tool that is used on different Android app development projects for shrinking and obfuscating the packaged code which ultimately reduces the method count.
Gradle, Please
Gradle, Please is a tool that is used by the best Android app developers which help them in finding the best libraries as per their requirements. Getting this combined with Android Studio, the developers can reap out the best benefits!
This tool is one of the most popular development tools when it comes to creating large-scale applications using Java.
A bonus tip with Gradle is for you to use it alongside Android Studio. That way, it’s very easy for you to add external libraries by using a single line of code.
Here are other benefits you can enjoy when using Gradle:
- It’s easy to navigate from an existing maven/ant project to Gradle
- It’s expressive, declarative, and maintainable
- It’s easy to integrate existing maven/ant projects with Gradle
- It supports dependency management
- It supports a project structure with more than one project to build deliverables
Because it’s easy for you to combine different functions with Gradle, this contributes to the ease and success of developing mobile apps for free.
GenyMotion
GenyMotion is an Android Emulator that helps developers test Android applications. Using this tool, developers can test and preview applications on over 3,000 device sensors. Unlike other emulators, GenyMotion boots up fast! GenyMotion easily integrates with Android Studio and Eclipse. This tool supports a wide number of devices that are powered by different Android versions. With this, app developers can test the Android apps on varying screen sizes.GenyMotion also comes with pre-installed Android graphics and images. These make it even more effective to go through the testing process. More so, the testing speed is faster than it would’ve been on a real Android device.
Final Words
These tools above will get you started now on coding like a pro. As the use and demand of Android devices continue to go up, this also sparked the need for high-quality Android apps. For app developers, this is a challenge for them to stay productive, so they can come up with good quality apps. Apart from quality, they’re also facing the challenge of time. These tools all work to be very effective in meeting that challenge. If you’re a coder or app developer, go ahead and try any of them out.
About the Guest author:
Vivek Shah is the founder and CEO of Capermint Technologies Pvt. Ltd.: AR & VR Game Development Company. As a CEO, he likes to help other brands to transform their game app ideas into reality.
