Leading Android App Development SDKs, Libraries, and Frameworks

May 7, 2021

Reading time about 6 minutes

Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system holding 1.5 billion downloads every month. As per various experts, android is the best OS for creating mobile applications and the market share is estimated to increase to more than 87% by 2022. With digital solutions continuing to play a crucial role in the upcoming years, there’s always a fair scope for Android Applications leading the way!

Talking about the current situation, according to Statista, android holds 71.9% of the mobile operating system market share worldwide and of course, the number could speed up in the coming years. Android is considered the most time-taking development process, the reason could be its extensive range of android-powered devices. The advanced techniques and the modern frameworks, libraries, and SDKs can facilitate in reducing the complexity of development, speed up the process and optimize application performance. Here’s a guide on the top frameworks, SDKs, and Libraries a business can consider-

Top Android Frameworks

Before jumping on the best frameworks, let’s know what exactly a framework is. It is a software toolkit allowing developers to piece together a finished app. it further allows the developers to work on the functionality, special features, animation, and graphics.

  • Flutter

Leading the charts is the newest android framework- Flutter. Though it is relatively new but has gained a strong position in such less tenure. It is an open-source mobile UI SDK framework and eases up the multi-platform development process for building outstanding native interfaces on iOS and Android platforms. What’s so good about flutter? Much though, the best part being it allows the developers to make great UI experiences through its composable and declarative approach which simply works on Android, iOS, and Web all smooth. Also, flutter relies on a single code-base, and the application built on the framework compiles completely to native code via Google’s 2D rendering engine.

  • React Native

Came into light in 2015, react native is a cross-platform and open-source framework powered by Facebook. Many surveys prove that react native is the most popular framework currently. Making use of React, React Native creates applications for both iOS and Android. As it is a cross-platform framework, it makes it easier for developers to write code once and implement it almost everywhere. This feature makes react native the best-chosen cost-effective option along with the super speed. React-Native comes in with pre-built UI components and APIs through which the look, feel and performance of the app can increase, adding in a hot-reload allowing developers to update files without affecting the app’s status. To more surprise, a few leading names including Tesla, Airbnb, Instagram, etc. are currently using react-native.

  • Ionic

Apart from the last two top trending frameworks, Ionic is also a choice for many! Being there in the industry since 2021, Ionic is a known framework certified by MIT. It facilitates the developers with both modern hybrid applications through front-technologies including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. offering a wide spectrum of software tools, animations, and gestures, it constitutes to develop high-quality desktop, mobile, and progressive web applications making use of the same code base. Ionic is also a leading choice of most android app development companies due to its flexibility and simple CLI. It’s easy to integrate the framework with AngularJS, Cordova, and other libraries. Ionic is also used by the top brands including Pacifica, Airbus, and McLaren.

Leading Android SDKs

SDK is a software development kit composed of multiple lines of code. It’s an easy download software package that comprises the required tools you need to build on a platform. The popular ones include the following-

  • Google Firebase

Google Firebase is the leading name amongst mobile apps using backend SDKs. It is basically a web and mobile application development platform SDK allowing mobile developers to develop applications fast without being worried about the infrastructure. It offers robust functionalities for databases, analytics, messaging as well as crash reporting which in turn allows the developers to move speedily and prioritize their users.

  • Braintree

Consider Braintree like a PayPal service. It’s a full-stack payment gateway solution or can be defined as an all-in-one Android SDK solution helping both enterprises and small businesses to set up their payment process. Well, it’s not just that, apart from providing a stunning drop-in UI it also allows one to customize the payment UI, recurring billing detection, and fraud protection.

  • Amazon AWS

Known enough Amazon AWS is quite a popular SDK allowing mobile developers to provision and manage the backend of their application in the best possible and speedy manner. This software development kit offers an on-demand cloud platform in the form of a subscription service.

Top Android Libraries to Consider

Discussing libraries can be defined as the most crucial component of software development, irrespective of the technology stack or the platform. The major work of these libraries is empowering the developers to make their process speedy and highly effective as well as minimizing boilerplate codes. Here are a few popular names in the industry-

  • Retrofit

It is a secure HTTP application allowing one to configure the REST API as an interface. Through using it, one can conveniently specify query parameters, body, and headers and make use of annotations for managing the API request. One can also use Retrofit for making asynchronous and synchronous API calls.

  • Glide

Glide is known for providing animated GIF support and loading images. It further extends support for functions such as displaying video calls, decoding, and fetching. The best part of using glide is plugging it into any network stack conveniently. While developers majorly use this for smoothening the scrolling process for multiple images.

  • Dagger

Count on Dagger for being one of the safest choices for dependency injection, the library allows a developer to write Java source code in the smoothest possible way. The basic reason why Dagger is amongst the top choices is that it compiles time that estimates and analyzes dependencies.

Wrapping Up

With every year passing by, the competition between Frameworks, SDKs, and Libraries will keep on intensifying in the app market. Though choosing one is a complex process, it is imperative to know the possible pros and cons before finalizing on one. Consider what’s your key purpose for selecting any of the options and turning an idea into a successful business. Hire Android App Developers who’re best at their work and get started with your full-stack android application. If budget is also a concern, do estimate the app cost through an app cost calculator and stay updated.