What Mobile Architecture Suits Your Application Needs?

Looking for an appropriate architecture to suit your mobile app development needs? Know how a mobile app architecture acts as a breather for efficient mobile app development!

Whether it is mobile web, native or hybrid app – be careful to adequately research and confirm your assumptions. A common gotcha for a mobile web app developer (especially newbies) is to enquire whether the code for a desktop browser will work "as is" in a mobile browser? It would also be prudent to remember to verify the functionality you’re looking for is supported across the device landscape that your customers are likely to be using, in advance.

As of 2019, Google Play has approximately 2.8 million apps and the Apple App Store has around 2.2 million apps. It’s amazing to know how dedicatedly these app marketplaces continue to be flooded. This seldom implies that such apps stay on users' phones forever. Downloading the application does not always create the urge to install it. Gaining exposure and popularity in the app marketplace is a challenge. A well-structured mobile app architecture will bring your app one step closer to the Top Charts in the app stores.

Mobile app development creates some similar challenges like cross-browser compatibility, inconsistent HTML and CSS in mobile browsers. Some particular frameworks are lightweight and designed specifically to improve the look and feel of the website.

Major Constituents of Mobile App Architecture

Mobile app architecture is a set of patterns and techniques followed by developers to create a mobile application that is fully structured. The particular elements of the architecture are chosen based on the requirement and features of the application. It consists of three main layers:

1. Presentation or View Layer

This layer consists of UI and UI Process components. It is the interface between the app and the user and consists of themes, fonts, colors, and backgrounds, etc.

2. Navigation Layer/Business Layer

This layer acts as a bridge between the internal processes of the app and different views within the app. It is composed of workflows, business entities, and components. This also predicts how data flows between various views.

3. Services Layer/Data Layer

This layer is comprised of data access components, server communication, storage, and logic. It comprises data utilities, data access components, and service agents, defines a common set of application operations and it’s designed to be reused throughout the app.

Image Source: https://www.heliossolutions.co/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/multilayer-architecture.jpg

Image Source: https://magora-systems.com/uploads/pages/443/YTqznpbzSodd--Qzy02kNEv9jPDWYc2u.png

Elements to be Considered While Constructing Mobile App Architecture

Just the right architectural foundation acts as a panacea for every kind of mobile app and enables flawless work. But it can be equally challenging to architect an app for maintainability and performance. All of the architectural decisions will have lasting consequences. Consider these while choosing mobile app architecture:

• Bandwidth Consistency: the Mobile application must be constructed keeping all the network scenarios in mind. The app must be designed to cache its data and state so that it can adjust to intermittent or slow internet connections.
• Notifications and Updates in Real-Time: Designing real-time notifications and updates
• Navigation: Options to navigate requires expertise in front-end and back-end development – single view, scroll view, stacked navigation bar, gesture-based, tab controller, search drove, Stacked navigation bar, Tag driver, Modular controller, Single view, Scroll view, Gesture-based navigation and Search driven navigation
• User-Interface: An interactive, feature-rich but the simple user interface

Determine the device type: For screen resolution, screen size, CPU features, storage space, memory, availability of the development framework, etc.

In Conclusion

A decent mobile architecture forms the basic building block of well-designed software. But a persistent conflict persists when it comes to mobile application platforms. Google does not support or recommends a specific architecture for Android. Apple suggests MVC architecture for UIKit, but it is not distant from various controversies.

A bad architecture can create myriad problems in the developed software, like:

• The app will be difficult to develop, difficult to maintain and error-prone.
• The code will be less readable.
• It will be difficult to test.

Good mobile application architecture is the usable one; will help enforce assumptions and good programming patterns like simplicity, SOLID and ensure that components have multiple responsibility layers. Meeting all the required conditions might lead to accelerating development, thus making testing and maintenance easier. This helps resolve issues with efforts and money estimation. A wisely-selected architecture together with a decent platform technology (like Java or Kotlin for Android and Swift or Objective C for iOS) can effectively resolve complex business problems and can become the key to reducing the context and extent of errors. While there can be a substantial difference between ios app architecture and android app architecture due to application requirements, but the right mobile app architecture can help develop and maintain the application while a bad architecture can always increase the cost of development.

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