On an average, a smartphone user today uses around 30 applications with the total number of apps installed on their phone skewing as high as 80 in some markets. And though technology in the recent years has immensely scaled up the amount of memory that mobile devices have while bringing down the cost, it still isn’t free and more importantly, isn’t unlimited.
This problem remains a grave concern for iOS developers due to the strict limitation of memory on iPhones. Android developers too have to take extensive measures to keep performance from dipping down to unacceptable levels due to high memory consumption.
If you look at the market trend- small apps have very few features, thus appealing to fewer customers. The applications with a number of features get too bulky and fail to offer decent performance on most of the devices. Clearly, we are not suggesting you be in the first category just for the sake of reducing the app size but what we are advocating is to reduce the size of your application while preventing the degradation of app performance.
Here are a few steps you can take in achieving the goal:
1. App Thinning
While there are multiple tools and methods for app thinning, the two most popular and most effective are slicing and on-demand capabilities.
Slicing refers to the procedure that, instead of creating a single version that runs on all devices (that is bound to contain additional codes and overheads), creates multiple, lighter versions of each. The best part- you don’t have to worry about version management because all you are required to do is upload the full version of the application on the app store and it will automatically take care of the version and device compatibles.
Another aspect of app thinning is on-demand capability which, instead of stuffing all your media like audio, pictures documents, pdf files in an application package, will keep them online and download as per requirement.
See: The Advantages of iPhone Application Development for Your Business
2. Media Optimization
This is possibly the simplest of them all and yet the most overlooked. Any typical app today contains dozens of pictures and other media content, which if optimized to proper formats, will consume lesser memory yet preventing maintaining high quality.
3. Code Analysis
Be it the Apple’s .ipa files or the Android’s .apk file, a lot of junk files accumulate over the days that inflate the size of an app. From history to cache to previous bug reports, all these files often hide in plain sight such that if you run a simple code analyzer, they can be easily found and deleted.
4. Code Recycling
You can’t and should not expect to develop an app and run it forever as it is. As discussed above, it will collect a lot of garbage as the time passes by and many of its own code sections will start to lose relevance as new technologies emerge. All of this will eventually push the size of your app than what you originally intended. The only way out of this problem is to periodically recycle your code and release a new updated version every now and then.
So, as you must have realized by now that reducing the size doesn’t necessarily mean you have to compromise on your features- a fact that top iPhone application development companies know very all. On the same note, you can also stuff your application with all the features you want without taking a hit on performance, if only you employ some sophisticated optimization techniques- something top Android application development companies are considered to have mastered.
So, in the end, when it comes to creating a successful app, cutting-edge features and engaging interface can only take you far unless you have them all packed in a compact size.
If you are looking to resize your existing app or developing a new mobile app, let’s connect with Offshore Web Developer for quality app solutions.
