How to make Android App

With the explosion of Smart phones there is huge demand on how to make android app. Android controls today over 70% of the Smart phone market, hence the demand to build Android apps is rising rapidly. Today all types of enterprises Large, SMB and SOHO are looking to enable business process on Android Phones. We will explore the choice of Mobile application tools to make an Android app

Approach - 1: Mobile application tools

The typical choices of Mobile application development tools to make an Android app are as follows

A) Native tool - Android SDK

B) HTML 5.0 tools like Appforge, Sencha etc

Native development tool gives rich and Zappy UI. However the development take a longer time compared to HTML 5.0. The advantage of HTML 5.0 is re use of code for IOS and Windows.

Next question is How to make Android app? You would require a packaging tools to convert it to an APK.For Native development or HTML5 mobile app developer, a developer would need to download the android SDK and use either Eclipse or Android Studio to build and sign the app. Signing is required to publish the app to Play Store and also add new versions of the app to Play Store.

Approach -2 - Excel

Are there easy and alternative mobile application development tools to make an Android app? Yes. We all have been using Excel to build Calculators, Data capture forms, Price list etc. How about, if we can use Excel as a Mobile application tool to make an Android app.                                                 

With xlapp.io service we can use an Excel as a Mobile application tool to make an Android app. The process is as follows 

a) Design the app in Excel using the Excel functions, formulas etc

b) Upload the File to XLapp.io and map the fields

c) Xlapp.io automatically converts the file into mobile application code

d) Xlapp.io also automatically converts the code into an APK file(Android Installable Package)

e) Download or get the link emailed to you to share it publicly or a limited set of users.

Note: Future version of Xlapp.io will have the option of uploading the APK file automaticallo Google Play Store, for now one can upload the downloaded APK file to their Google Play Store account manually. 

Sounds very simple right, without any programming knowledge, we can use Excel as a Mobile application tool to make an Android app.

For advanced user the following options are available 

A) Ability to customize the look and feel using online tools

B) Ability to log - usage and data in cloud or private server

C) User web services to pull/authenticate users with central server.

D) Run the application in offline mode.

E) Publish the app to Facebook/Twitter

Now what are the limitations of Xlapp.io? Macros are not supported and only XLSX file format is supported in the current version. Visit www.xlapp.io for further details and get solution for Excel Templates