Any news on Android App?

[GurrenLagann]

Just curious if there are news about this.

[LadyStardust]

I haven't heard anything yet on one. Would be nice if we could get it too. Not everyone has an iPhone.

[Nura]

Actually more People use Android Then Apple nowdays Funny even in japane there are more Android devices as Apple, but it is easier to code for Apple devices due to there restrictions etc.

[Arcaloid]

"Good news" is that even now iPhone app has been released for a while, there is still not much use of that...

[Britta]

I have been wondering this myself, since I use a droid. Hopefully one will be released within the next month.

[Warlyx]

meh the app is "ok" , a official DB in your phone ....nothing u cant find with a google search in 2s

[busta]

Actually more People use Android Then Apple nowdays Funny even in japane there are more Android devices as Apple, but it is easier to code for Apple devices due to there restrictions etc.

Mobile OS Marketshare Approx:

80% Android
10% iOS
10% Windows

There's no excuse for developing things specifically for iOS. And no, it's just as easy to develop for Android devices. The only problem comes with ensuring compatibility on every Android device out there whereas Apple only has a handful of devices. Apple does the same thing with their x86 based computers.

[GurrenLagann]

Bumping this.

[Makeda]

Mobile OS Marketshare Approx:

80% Android
10% iOS
10% Windows

There's no excuse for developing things specifically for iOS.

I very roughly know iOS (took a class on it). It uses Objective-C; a pretty easy language to code in. BUT its all unique code to iOS... iOS and Mac use the same underlying programming language, Objective-C, but different code libraries. Just different enough to give you a real headache in moving around. Worse is that iPhone and iPad are something like 99.9% identical, and that 0.1% is sure to always trip you up somewhere you did not expect... especially as when testing it all out in xCode, the required IDE (development tool), things will work. Then you pop them on their respective devices and something will trip up.

I've not looked into developing for Android... but it looks like its mostly in Java, and that at least is a widely used language. However the real key is in the libraries unique to the devices. Libraries can make or break overhead for development.

However... these two things, Objective-C and Java, and their different libraries... mean an app made for one will not be easily ported to the other. Its not even as "easy" as making a program for Windows and Macintosh... Apple Mac may prefer Objective-C when it makes things in-house for Mac, but you don't have to... For iOS though, good luck not making your code 100% from the ground up for iOS.

Porting means completely re-writing, as if it was a brand new project. All you get to keep is your raw text copy, images / animations / sounds, and your notes/flowcharts from the user-interface, art, & design team...

People code for iOS first because its more newsworthy, and its smaller userbase is more commercially 'activated'.

.

[Kafeen]

Global Android usage is higher but from what I've seen in Japan iOS is more popular, iOS is also a lot bigger in the US than Android though Android has a slight edge in Europe.

Apps on the other hand generally have a much higher user base on iOS, this is mainly the case for paid for apps (iOS users are more likely to spend money on apps than Android users, either through IAP or paid for apps) though this isn't really a factor for the FFXIV app.

While what Makeda says about Objective-C and Java are correct there are cross-platform libraries available, Android can use the NDK to develop in C/C++ and Objective-C is built on top of C++ and can still be used for most of the coding. There are also other options available such as using Actionscript 3 through Adobe AIR or another framework such as Marmalade, though the time between releases leads me to believe that these weren't used unless all the time is being spend on refactoring to support Android wide variety of screen resolutions. The iOS app didn't even support iPad natively so it's clear that not a lot of effort is being spent on the app at the moment. A failure to take things like this into account from the start has also likely been a cause for the slow release of the Android version.