Converting an iOS App to Android can be a good option especially when it comes to meeting your application for different screen sizes. That’s why major businesses have chosen to port iOS apps to Android in the last few years. In this digital world, Smartphones play a crucial role in helping businesses easily scale. And with the growing number of smartphone users, there has been a great surge in mobile app development.
According to Statista, As of 2021, the Android operating system (OS) held around 72.84% of the market for mobile devices, making it the most used operating system across the world. While Apple’s iOS mobile operating system covers around 26.34% of the global market for smartphones. Seeing large numbers of Android audiences around the world, it is imperative to convert iOS to Android apps and reach a wider range of audiences.
You must be wondering whether it is possible to port iOS app to Android or if it is the right step to do so? Well, the best answer is YES. In this article, you will learn how to convert iOS app to android and then how to port an application further without any hassle.
Table of contents:
- Reasons To Convert An iOS App To Android
- Steps To Convert an iOS App To Android App
- Challenges Of Porting iOS App To Android App
- Estimated Cost to Convert iPhone App To Android
- Conclusion
Why Convert An iOS App To Android
Let’s take a look at the following features of converting an iOS application to Android:
Wider Audience Reach
As we already discussed, Android held approximately 72.84% of the market share for mobile users, which is pretty much higher than Apple’s iOS market share. Thus, moving to Android from iOS can help you reach a wide range of audiences quickly and more efficiently.
Furthermore, Google Play Store is best known for boosting the number of downloads of your application as compared to Apple Play Store. Therefore, converting an iOS app to Android can help expand your app market and drive better business opportunities.
Competitive Edge
Android gives a competitive edge to make your business easy to reach your target audience and global market in the digital world. And if you are thinking of building a specific platform application or planning to convert an iOS application to Android, it is the right time and right place to gain a competitive advantage and make your business reachable to a wider range of audiences.
Improved Revenue
Converting iPhone App to Android can help grow your app market reach with a large volume of customers. No matter if some of your audience is used to a specific platform, porting to Android from iOS can help gain many benefits with complete flexibility to reach and serve a wide range of audiences covered by the Android platform.
Reduced Cost on Resources
Converting your iOS application to Android can help reduce your budget by eliminating resources and time used for cloning your iOS application to Android. It employs the same design and structure process for converting an iPhone application to Android.
So, there’s no need to spend too much money as well as time by creating a fresh new Application for Android in case you are low on budget.
Add-on Features
Android provides various awesome features in terms of high flexibility, versatility, and scalability as compared to iOS. When it comes to converting iOS applications to Android applications, you get more options to make your applications more flexible and easy to reachable by more Android users.
It allows you to add more features and functionalities based on market needs and customers’ demands as you grow and scale.
There are some things to consider when converting an iOS application to Android:
- App Architecture
- Design Features
- Navigation buttons
- Supported Devices
- Widgets
- Push Notifications
- Android Intents
Library App Upload Policy
Google Play Store allows developers to upload their applications at just $25 as a one-time cost and activate their developer account. After that, you have to upload 15 APKS in the next 24 hours.
While Google Play Store comes with easy and more lenient rules and regulations for uploading applications on Google Play Store as compared to Apple Play Store. Moreover, Google powers more than 3.48 million apps while Apple just has around 2.22 million.
Steps for converting an iOS app to an Android app
Certain elements should be taken care of before you proceed with the iOS app to Android app conversion. It requires a lot of work and document research with proper planning to convert or port an iOS app to Android more successfully. Before converting or porting iOS apps to Android, it is imperative how to start and manage the process.
Following are the steps for converting iOS App to Android App:
Step 1: Design
Design is the very first thing we need to do for converting an iOS app to Android. As both Android & iOS have different operating environments and they work quite differently from each other. Make sure not to copy the design elements while porting your iOS app to Android, or else it will create conflicts. Android can benefit from Material Design.
The true innovation of this interface lies in its simplicity and flexibility (icons, texts, lights, shapes, images). In contrast, iOS uses a flat design.
When converting an iOS app to Android, you need to take note of these key differences in design:
- Square Buttons for Android vs. flat buttons for iOS
- Font Size & Icon are measured in (pt) for Android, while (px) for iOS. There’s a 0.75 ratio of points to pixels.
- Lists of “left-pointing arrows” for Android vs. right-pointing arrows for iPhone
- Bottom “Tabs” vs. top Tabs on screen
- Date/time selectors
- Widgets
- For Navigation, differences between physical buttons for back navigation in Android vs. top back button for the back in iOS
Furthermore, there are many other components such as RadioButton, Lists, Text fields, Checkbox, Bottom Sheets, Switch, and more to consider when porting the designs from iOS to the Android device.
Step 2: Android Application Architecture
It is important to set the right version limit based on the features of the app and the target audience when conducting the conversion exercise. The most recent version of Android, which will be supported by the app, should be defined as the most compatible version.
When converting an iPhone app to an Android app, it is important to consider both the architectural aspects as well as the peculiarities and differences. You do this by analyzing the features and architecture of the applications in either OS version. On Android, shortcuts are available, while on iOS, Touch 3D is available, as well as content switching, notification settings, and interaction with different applications.
Step 3: Coding
When it comes to porting an iOS app to an Android one, the team of dedicated developers rewrites the entire code from scratch. And therefore, you need to make a list of time-consuming elements of the applications. However, most developers use the basic version of C while coding at the time of porting iOS to the Android app.
This way, it becomes pretty easy to convert the iPhone app to Android quickly and more efficiently without much hassle and with improved performance. In addition to this, you can use Xamarin or PhoneGap for creating cross-platform applications in case you are writing the code from scratch.
In order to make your converting process easier, below we have outlined the top components needed to convert an iOS app to an Android application or any other platform.
Mobile app developers often consider specific external tools and libraries while creating an app. In order to convert an iOS app to an Android app seamlessly, a proactive check is necessary to ensure compatibility.
Apart from that, it is important to do third-party service integrations without any conflicts;
Payment Systems: Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, etc.
Analytics: Google Analytics, Fabric, Crashlytics, Mixpanel
Social Platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.
Step 4: Testing and Release
Once successfully done with all the above steps, it is the final and most important step to do by the development team. Developers need to perform in-depth quality checks to ensure a successful iOS port to Android. The testing process should cover in-depth quality testing of the application during and after the development process.
The following steps should be covered in the testing phase;
- Software module integration tests (individually or in groups)
- Validation testing: To ensure if the final product meets business needs or not.
- User scenario testing.
- Beta testing with real-time data analysis (both by users and a client) before the final stage.
- As a result, real-world testing will allow development teams to test apps efficiently.
- Then, submit your app to Google Play, and once it has been tested and proven to be successful. And that’s it!!
Major Challenges: Porting iOS App To Android App
When porting iOS To Android App, you will face some common challenges, which are:
Code Migration
Android uses Kotlin & Java for programming, whereas Swift and Objective C are used by iOS devices whereas Kotlin & Java are used by android developers. And every programming language uses a different syntax.
So, it becomes a challenging job to convert one language to another and the time required for building the same feature application depends on the platform. However, both Android & iOS app platforms are designed to provide high-quality applications.
Different Architecture
Both Android and iOS platforms constantly release and update their new versions to support their new features. So, it might be the case that features supported in the old version may not support the latest version. And this is where it becomes a bit complicated to make your applications work on the most updated version.
Different Screen Sizes
One of the biggest and most common challenges that Android developers face is building Android Apps with iOS UI while converting iOS to an Android application. Android devices are built in various screen sizes by varied companies, whereas iOS has its fixed screen size.
As each device has its own screen size and resolution and when it comes to converting iOS screen size with different Android screens, is like a hard nut to crack.
Framework & Libraries
Many frameworks and libraries are available in the market today and it’s very important to determine which frameworks and libraries support both Android and iOS operating systems and make the application functionality easy to replicate.
However, it’s simple to add visuals, alter templates, communication platforms, and set rules with third-party libraries.
Navigation
Each operating system comes with a different look and feel. Android provides various UI components such as toggles, buttons, and tabs that give a square look. While iOS UI components provide a roundish shape with smooth edges. And when it comes to user experiences, it becomes more critical to ensure users navigate app components as quickly as possible in the same way they used to before.
Estimated cost to Port iOS App to Android
The cost of converting an iOS app to an Android depends on several factors such as application size, features, and complexity. However, the budget may go somewhere from $5k to 15k depending on various app features, but remember it is just a rough estimate that may reduce or increase based on app needs and the number of features. Again the exact cost may only be determined based on the following factors:
- Programming Languages
- User Interface (UI) Design
- Software Development Kids (SDKs)
- Programming Languages
- System Frameworks
- App Interaction with the device hardware
- Types of Android version and devices supported
Conclusion:
Thus, converting an iPhone app to Android requires huge steps and a detailed approach to make the job done easier and flawlessly. By following a systematic approach, you will be able to produce a solution that is nearly identical to its previous version, but no less inferior in terms of accessibility, functionality, and performance.
To make the process simple and easier to use, you can hire our dedicated experts to help you port iOS app to Android or vice versa quickly and more seamlessly. Apart from this, if you want to create fresh, innovative, and feature-reach native iOS apps or Android apps you need to contact our highly experienced developers.
