These days, smartphone users want instantaneous feedback and responsiveness from their apps and experiences. That’s easier said than done, though. It requires more than just clean, frontend code. It requires comprehensive mobile development services that can tie together a good-looking UI with the server-side knowledge that’s needed to make sure that things run smoothly.
The architecture of the app and the backend integration is where things get truly challenging for most applications that you might consider high-level or production-quality. Even with this being the case, many developers will put heavy emphasis on the visible parts of an app as opposed to all of the layers underneath that make up the foundation.
The myth of frontend-only performance
When it comes to in-app performance, there was a good chunk of time where making sure an app had optimized performance was a process that was done by optimizing the UI rendering and ensuring that the APK was managing memory properly. These are still important parts of the development process. However, today’s challenges surrounding performance are not the same as they used to be. They’re more about what’s happening behind the scenes than what users will be seeing in front of their faces.
Upstream bottlenecks, for example, such as inefficient API payloads, poor synchronization strategies, or latency in data fetching, can all be a root cause of poor performance. It’s these underlying problems that are often the major issue if an app is performing slowly. With that said, app developers now have to think about how to make things work properly so that the app can continue to perform optimally without trying to focus so heavily on the device. Instead of dumping a bunch of time into frontend optimization in Kotlin apps, they need to look at things from a different perspective, seeing things as more of a distributed systems problem.
Architectural Bottlenecks and Real-Time Data
One of the main issues that results in apps failing to scale is the bottleneck. Specifically, the poor or unoptimized design of how data moves back and forth between the server and the device that’s requesting that data. Fetching too much data is one example of this. A backend that isn’t designed very well can end up trying to fetch too much data all the time, then send that data to the app on the device. This ends up wasting bandwidth and draining more of the battery life.
Another example is data loss or corruption. Developers have to figure out how to prevent this. This is where a strong Android architecture comes in handy. It can help separate the UI from these data complexities. In doing so, it allows the backend to be scaled up without crushing the app in the process of adding more users.
The Role of Modern Tooling: Kotlin and Jetpack Compose
App developers these days have a wide array of different tools at their disposal that have helped to really revolutionize how the app interface is built. Jetpack Compose is a good example here because it’s Google’s modern toolkit for building native UI. It’s also heavily reliant on state management. The problem that can come up with this is that Jetpack Compose can cause unnecessary recompositions if the backend feeds state inconsistently or if the data layer isn’t efficiently feeding updates, and that can cause dropped frames in the UI, which makes it appear slow or janky to the user. And no one likes slow or janky apps. It can also cause excessive battery drain. This is obviously not good. And it’s why putting a big focus on backend development is such a big deal these days.
Why Expertise Matters: The Nearshore Advantage
Given the complex nature of these potential problems that can pop up, it’s important to consider partnering with a specialized Android software development company that can help shoulder the burden of the entire process and work out solutions.
These days, many US-based teams are seeking partnerships with nearshore mobile app development teams (often located in Latin America) to find ways around these modern challenges. This happens for several reasons, but there are a few main factors. One, nearshore teams are generally located in the same timezone. So, everyone can work together more efficiently. Two, nearshore teams can be cost-efficient and deliver a high level of engineering skill. This way, you get two teams that can work together more efficiently with real-time collaboration at a high level to overcome a variety of potential complex issues.
Basically, developing an Android app now is a much more complex web of pathways to navigate. It involves ensuring complete harmony between the server and the device. Focusing on architectural integrity and utilizing expertise like that of nearshore app development teams is how companies can ensure their apps are functional, stable, and fast. This also helps them to be scalable. Overall, it’s a great method.
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