Category: App Creators

8 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Mobile Application Development Company

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

The online market is one place that businesses couldn’t ignore anymore. There are a lot of mobile app development companies in India currently. But before finalizing one, be sure to ask them several questions like the ones given below, so that you could make the right choice. A Good mobile app development company will provide you with sincere and satisfactory replies.

Must Read:

 The 14 Crucial Steps of Mobile App Development

1. Where Can you Find Examples of Previously Developed Applications?

You can analyse the quality of an app only by having to get a look at it directly. So, do not wait to ask them the links (Apple’s App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Play etc.) to a few of their previously developed apps. Also, try to get apps that have maximum similarity with the functionalities you prefer for your app. You should check how the app works in different environments and conditions. This way, you can determine if the company is capable of developing the type of app that you need.

2. Who are Your Current and Past Clients?

This information is required for you to verify that the mobile app development company that you’ve approached is the real creator of the apps that you found in the digital stores. Fake companies can claim that they have worked on popular apps. When you contact a company’s past clients, you are also getting a chance to enquire other details before working with them, such as reliability and work culture.

3. How do you Communicate with Your Clients?

It is necessary that there is ample communication between you and the company’s executives, so that there is no compromise on the quality of your app and there is no delay or serious issues in the project due to insufficient supervision. You should also ask whether you will be allowed to directly communicate with your developers and designers, and how often you would get the status updates.

4. Who will Own the App?

The popular rule is that a thing should be owned by the person who buys it or invests money in it. However, in order to avoid any future complications, it is necessary that you and the company should sign an agreement declaring the ownership of the finished product. The copyright assignment that you sign should ensure that you have complete freedom to use the product as per your wish.

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5. How is the Testing Done?

You should ask about the testing procedures that the company follows. It is common that a lot of development companies avoid this step all together or give it less importance. Make sure that the company does manual testing where it is important and have a wide range of devices that include new models also. You should make sure that the company can quickly fix bugs that are found during the beta phase.

6. What about Deployment of the App?

After the initial rounds of testing the fully functional app is over, you may submit it on the app store. You should confirm whether the company includes deployment as part of the entire process or not.

7. What do you Charge and How can it be Paid?

You should request for a budget estimate to the company and ask if it needs to be a one-time fee upfront or can be a down payment & several installments. Total payment can be based on an hourly rate or a flat fee. After you agree on the fees and payment terms, you should draft a written agreement detailing the aforementioned.

8. Do you have Expertise in Building Exceptional Features?

If you want to make apps that sell, you need to include attractive features. So, you should get an idea about the expertise the company have in making innovative and remarkable features that grab the user’s attention.

Pokémon Fever is Catching Up Again – Here’s What to Know about “Pokémon Go”

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

There’s been a huge buzz around this new gaming app called “Pokémon Go” for the past few weeks. You would hardly miss people roaming around the streets and playgrounds with their smartphones held up in their hands. If you’ve stumbled upon this new gaming app rather lately and has been curious to dive further into the topic, this article is the right one for you. Let’s get some awareness about this new massive hit.

So, What’s the big deal about Pokémon Go? Why the game is a big hit so suddenly?

Pokémons are pocket monsters, which resemble real world animals and other animate and inanimate things such as rats, birds, onion, eggs and more. They have exotic powers and are tamed by trainers who catch them.
Most of us were Pokémon fans as kids. Now, the 90’s favorite fantasy characters are back with a bang after Nintendo’s first entry into the mobile space.

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Pokémon Go, a gaming app developed by Niantic and Pokemon Company, is already more popular than the dating app Tinder, in the US. Reports say that it engages an average user for more than 43 minutes everyday. The game made Nintendo’s market value rose by $7.5 billion in just two days. Sources reveal that now the game is competing with Twitter in terms of its daily active users.

The trend never went away

The quick popularity and massive acceptance of Pokemon is not something that is bewildering. It all began with the release of the first Pokémon playing cards back in the 1990’s. The cards were followed by Nintendo GameBoy games and Pokémon cartoons. And when yesterday’s kids became adults with smartphones, they were served with the right game at the right time.

Where do I get it?

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game available as a free download for both the Android and iOS platforms. The game will let its players walk around their neighborhood to find and catch virtual Pokémon characters that appear on their phone’s screen– a scavenger hunt game by all its means. The app uses your phone’s GPS to access the location information and your clock to work in real time.

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Cool! So how do you begin to play it and what are the basic rules?

After downloading your game you will be asked to choose your avatar and username. You can then start collecting your wild Pokémons by throwing your Pokéball at them. The more you collect, the more powerful you become.

As noted earlier, the Pokémon characters like Rattatas and Pidgeys can be caught from your surroundings so that you can train them. You may find a Pokémon literally everywhere. There might be one waiting for you right outside your doorstep, or when you have coffee at a coffee shop, or even when you are working at your office desk.

Trainers can join teams, once they reach a certain level in the game. These trained Pokémon characters are then used by trainers while fighting against other teams. As obvious, the trainer team with the strongest Pokémons subsequently wins. This will give them control over areas known as Pokémon Gyms. Pokéstops are found in public places such as libraries and gardens, where you could restock your Pokéball and other game items.

The app encourages it’s players to travel around. There will be newer and more collections of Pokémon characters, if one could travel to various spots during different times. This is one of the major reasons for the popularity of the game. The use of real world environment in the game has made playing it, a much more rewarding experience for many.

5 Steps Towards a Paperless Office

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

The problem of working with and maintaining hard copies in any institutions are many. It is time for corporates and government to ease the burden and go for a paperless office. The technology is evolving and adapting to get imbibed into the office environment and function as a whole unit.

Adopting a paperless office ecosystem can also save space & money. You can survive your daily business need for information transfer by cutting down zero trees.

1. Internal Communication

How often do you get annoyed by a faulty printer or be exhausted with the countless trips to get xerox? Paperless Office has a better way for sharing documents – Apps similar to Google Docs.

Google Docs can help you share your work and important files securely without waiting or turn taking at the printer. The attracting thing is that the service is from a trusted source and is also free.

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Google Docs allows users to work with documents and spreadsheets simultaneously. As it is run through Gmail, colleagues can also use the chat feature, while editing the documents. All the changes are saved automatically from time to time, so that there is no need to worry about unintentional loss of your work. The files that are saved in Google Docs can be viewed and downloaded at any time.

Apart from Google Docs, Microsoft Office and Basecamp are other popular document editing and sharing systems in use today, however, much limited in its function.

2. Online payment and paperless statements

Remember how exactly you made your payments when being “paperless” was an idea which is strange to even the most advanced offices from around the world? You had to store bundles of papers that you dealt with while processing these payments for later use or future reference in your file cabinet – checks, invoices, letters.

But technology came with a better option, viz., online payments and paperless statements. Almost all banks offer this service nowadays and even provide special advantages for its online users. Thus, you will only need to spend lesser hours managing and tracking your expense and payment records.

Expensify, Square Register, Adobe Echosign etc. are top business apps in the industry that can make your office finance work a charm.

3. Storage and file transfer systems

There are many services that provides unlimited cloud storage capabilities to store end-users data away from their local systems. You can use various file sharing systems to sync large files safely from the source device and retrieve them once needed. Dropbox, ShareFile, YouSendIt etc. are well liked data storage services.

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4. Surveys

Every business have to conduct public surveys at one time or the other to ascertain the feasibility and significance of business plans and crucial decisions, before its actual implementation. For e.g. if a business need to make improvements to an existing service or a product, they have to collect public opinion, so that they could make better decisions. SurveyMonkey is a free survey platform, which allows you to conduct surveys and monitor results in real time.

5. Meeting Scheduler

There are several services available like TimeBridge, doodle schedule assistant, Meet-O-Matic etc. for scheduling meetings. More than that an app like LogMeIn or TeamViewer can eliminate the need for handing out printouts. They deliver remote access capability, so that one can access office systems from any other device. This feature can be used for screen sharing during meeting, presentations, teleconferencing etc.

6. Scanners

Turboscan is an in demand document and receipt scanner, which allows you to scan without the help of a stand-alone scanner. Images can be captured with a camera and converted into PDF or JPG files to be stored or send as emails.

Save Yourselves from Human Trafficking with This Smart App

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Human Trafficking is a very serious worldwide issue. Tens of thousands of people get trafficked each year. It is done mainly for prostitution or some form of labor and more recently, human organ trade.

Developed by an organization (Exchange Initiative) that is waging a war against sex trafficking, the TrafficCam app seems to be a very useful app.

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With this app, anyone with a smartphone can fight human trafficking. Just upload the photos of hotel rooms where the trafficked person is being held. As traffickers, especially in the sex trade, post photos in online advertisements, it is easy for investigators to track the victims and find out the perpetrators.

A database of hotel room images are created which makes it easy for investigators to zero down on the posted location

As per UNICEF, every year, 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide. A large percent of these are children between 12-14 years of age.

Smart App ideas such as the TrafficCam mobile app are superb examples of technology helping out to tackle social issues.

New Mobile App Launched by Soldiers Mothers to Protect Draftees’ Rights

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Draftee Online, an app founded by the mothers of young men was launched by “Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg” (a non-profit organization that acts against rights violation and abuse faced byyoung men recruited by the Russian Army).

The app provides essential details regarding the most pressing issues of the military draft, and helps them to independently defend their rights.

Draftee Online App has a special feature allowing user to send urgent messages to their beloved ones if they are detained illegally and drafted forcefully into the army.

Draftees can also use the app to get in touch with the organization’s own lawyers through a special contact form.

Currently the app is available on Google Play for Android devices.

A Smartphone for Rs 99 Namotel Acche Din claims to be the ‘World’s Cheapest’

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

After the news-making Freedom 251, another smartphone has now claims to be the world’s cheapest smartphone at just Rs 99/-. This phone is named ‘Acche Din’ and is launched by Namotel.

The company is obviously something we have not heard of before. Is this another fake news? We cannot be sure. But it’d be clever not to spend your money on this.

The phone claims the following specs

  • 4-inch Display
  • 1GB RAM
  • Android 5.1 Lollipop
  • 1.3GHz quadcore processor
  • 1325 mAh battery
  • Camera – 2MP REAR + .3MP FRONT
  • Dual SIM Card

The company has promised the phone to be available for booking from May 17th to 25th May 2016. According to company promoter Madhava Reddy, this could be the cheapest phone ever, and would revolutionise the mobile phone market. Mr.Reddy has previously been working in the Home Loans department for Axis Bank, as a Relationship Manager. It evidently points his inexperience with the smartphone industry.

Looking at the news, its hardly believable. The news raises a lot of suspicion. Lets hope people do not fall for such campaigns.

Six Benefits of Hiring an Experienced iPhone App Development Company

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

In this fast-paced world, we see competition everywhere. It is hard to win and easy to fail. The app development industry is also facing the same situation. There seems to be a lot of pressure and turmoil due to competition in the markets, worldwide.

That being the case, it is needless to say that many ordinary apps’ confrontation with Apple’s set of regulatory rules is not very smooth. A lot of businesses pay hugely for their mistakes and negligence in taking adequate measures to avoid the pertinent challenges in the field that could affect the app’s success. The problem can be solved to a great extent by hiring an experienced iPhone app development company. Let’s see below, the main benefits of hiring one.

1. Expertise is directly related to cost-effectiveness

One of the major benefits of hiring an experienced iPhone app development company is that you get experienced professionals to shape your iPhone app. Technical expertise in designing and coding will make apps that are error free and crash free.

Even though less experienced companies or inexperienced freelancers may seem to fit your pocket well, on second thoughts you could realise that the reality is something different. They will seldom be able to deliver as many features and finesse as an experienced company could deliver for the same price.

For example, an experienced company has clear ideas on how to develop each variety of apps like enterprise apps, educational apps, game apps, etc. Each of them demands variations in the approach towards market study, development, and deployment. Since inexperienced companies lack any appreciable experience, they have to use the trial and error method and depends a lot on sheer luck for success.

2. Updated tools and technologies

All companies have a lot of expenses to deal with, like employee salary, infrastructure maintenance, employee training cost, software cost etc. among the others. At the same time, an inexperienced company might not be getting a reasonable return from their investment. All companies face this situation as start-ups. There will be a period when a company might not be stable economically. Under these circumstances, a large number of start-ups will be forced to do with outdated technologies and tools.

By hiring an experienced iPhone app development company, one can make sure that updated tools and technologies are used for the development of their application. The developers will have in-depth knowledge of major platforms, techniques, technologies and tools.

An experienced company can bear the cost to incorporate all the continuous releases of softwares and hardwares in the market. While testing, for e.g., an experienced company can afford to test over a wide range of Apple devices including the “just released” ones.

3. Reliable communication

Experienced companies permit greater transparency of their identity and services. You can be much more relaxed about their genuineness and there will be better safety for your project.

During the development period and after, you can constantly be in touch with the development team. Further, you will be allowed to know about every progress in your project. This way, you can contribute to the project at all time, by giving your thoughts and suggestions.

4. Dedicated service

“Customer is King” – Certainly, this will be one of the ideals of every successful and experienced iPhone app development company. Most of them look forward to a lifetime relationship with their customers. So they treat and value them well.

The team that is chosen for a particular project rarely works on any side projects. This will boost the dedication developers have on a particular project and reduce distractions. Customer satisfaction will always be the key focus.

5. Happy employees deliver better output

Established companies can provide better work spaces for their employees, which will directly influence their loyalty towards the company and its clients. The facilities, ambience, employee treatment, team spirit, etc. that exist in such companies will have a positive effect on its employees, which will increase their work efficiency.

6. Professionals can save you time and money

Professional app developers have the capacity to meet any type of challenges that may come up in between a project. For e.g., they can deal with a major alteration in the app’s design without compromising user experience and can handle consequences created when you experiment your creativity.

The management in a well established company can commit to the priorities better and can generate more realistic timelines in the first place. They are efficient in taking crucial decisions that are master strokes. They can forecast market changes, possible threats, and prevent you from loosing your money unnecessarily.

5 Reasons to Outsource to a Mobile App Development Company

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

A lot of businesses are at the advantage of setting up their own mobile app development team and starting off with application development. But there are several possible stumbling blocks that you may have to face when building your apps in-house. In such cases you might have to consider outsourcing.

Companies that are providing full time development services may also have to consider outsourcing at a certain point of time. For e.g., imagine that you are an app development company focusing primarily on Android and iOS development and one of your existing project needs a Windows phone based app. In situations like these, it is better for you to opt outsourcing, rather than hiring windows app developers.

Here are those key reasons that you should consider outsourcing for:

Lack of experience in the field

Even though you are a very successful business owner and have good experience managing various business processes, or is somehow related to the application development industry, there are high chances that you might fail at your venture, if you step into mobile app development without any prior experience.

Read also: The 14 Crucial Steps of Mobile App Development

All mobile application development companies invest a lot of their time in self evaluation and assessing the risks and favours from the outside environment, that contributed to their successes or failures. They learn from their mistakes and re-draw their plans and strategies based on the experience from each of their individual projects.

You can’t provide enough work force

At times, you can have an overwhelming number of projects in hand and will not be able to allot your resources including your work force to all of them. These cases demand that several of your less important projects should be handed over to other companies in order to maintain the velocity of work.

Improvements to existing projects

Often, you may need to make improvements to your existing projects; be it adding an additional feature on to your app or be it building an improved UI design. You might have allotted all your resources and your employees might be in the middle of a crucial project. It is not advisable for you to assemble a new team for this purpose. If you outsource such works, you could save cost and invest your time and energy in more fruitful and newer projects.

Recommended read: First Steps to Successful Mobile App Development – Define a Purpose and Validate Your Idea

Global economic differences

The average income for a particular job in developing countries will be far below that of any developed country. You will be able to hire an entire team in countries like India and China with the amount of money you hire two or three developers in countries like America or Germany. So, picking an outsource company’s service can earn you benefits in this sense.

Outsourcing for expertise

Your project can be faced with development limitations at times by the inability to acquire the required talent from your local area. For example, you may need to incorporate a new technology into your project, and at the same time that particular technology may not be popular in your area. Or maybe, you might have already tried developing, but failed to reach its completion. Further, several companies might not have all the aspects of mobile app development such as testing, marketing etc.

By outsourcing you are extending your search globally to meet the right candidate for your specific job. Outsourcing will also help you to complete the projects on time and on budget.

 Prioritization of tasks

In order to increase work efficiency and managing time for the major activities of your business, you may sometimes need to do prioritization of various tasks. Several steps like marketing and other management processes could become crucial to your businesse’s success. Under such circumstances, it will be imperative to seek outsourcing.

12 Reasons You Should Convert Books To Mobile Apps

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

The rate at which information gets shared in the present day is outrageous. You don’t lazily sip a cup of tea and go through the newspaper every morning. Newspaper news is stale to you as you’ve already read it from your smartphone.

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As a publisher, your present might be dull, and the future, even more so. But you have a way out – convert books to mobile apps. Why should you do it? Here are 12 reasons for you:-

Offer Fresh Content to the Digital Generation: – You have to be where your customer is. And currently the biggest consumers of digital content is the digital generation. A number of them wouldn’t have read books. And they do have a voracious appetite for new content.

So, your traditional books would be new content to them, and chances are they would love it. Most of them are more comfortable with digital content than traditional books.

No Printing Cost – Unlike doing a new edition, creating a mobile app does not involve the cost of printing. One of the major investment you require for traditional books is printing cost. So, creating an app would cost you a lot lesser.

Storage Space Required – With an app, you need next to no physical storage space. So, that godown you used to have earlier to store books are not required anymore.

No Transportation cost – If you do not have anything to print and store, you don’t have anything to transport as well. So, no transportation cost – another reason for you to convert books to apps.

Easily Portable – The process of setting up your own account in the popular app stores such as Google Play and Apple App Store are no big deal. Probably your mobile app developer himself would get it done for you. There is no need to carry it around by any means of transportation.

Recommended read: 5 Smart Tips for Parents to Buy Learning Apps for Kids

Easy to Market and Distribute – Its very simple to distribute as well. With the right App Store Optimization (Why Use App Store Optimization Services?) and digital marketing techniques, you can reach out to a massive number of audience. Distributing is simple as sharing the link to the app.

Customizable – Unlike physical books, e-books in apps can be easily customized and updated. So, adding a few design changes or correcting a few pages or typos wouldn’t be a big deal. You can change the fonts, colors, etc and just upload the update

Environmental Benefits – Obviously, paper is not required for publishing your content as mobile apps. Leading to lesser trees being cut down, which is a huge positive for the environment.

User Benefits of Converting Books To Mobile Apps

Can Be Interactive – Traditional books are not much interactive. They are just plain, fixed text. So, it is that much more difficult to keep modern readers engaged. But in the case of apps, you can show a variety of content, such as videos, social media integration, ability to search, annotate, etc.

Easily Accessible Alternate Resources – As mentioned above, apps can be interactive, which offers you an opportunity to cross link between your resources, allowing them more exposure.

You can link to other e-books, videos or even a product you want to sell. This offers a good experience to the readers as well. Because, unlike with a traditional book, they don’t have to search for a book mentioned in the bibliography among stacks of library books.

Easy access and simple to use – Apps are very easy to install. They are just a click away, in fact. People don’t have to neither go to book store nor wait for it to arrive after ordering.

Search Feature – The modern generation is so accustomed to Google, that they expect the search feature in everything. And traditional books cannot beat the ability of e-books or apps to search. It makes finding particular information very simple.

First Steps to Successful Mobile App Development – Define a Purpose and Validate Your Idea

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

” What’s the purpose of your app? ” This should be the first and foremost question that should creep into your mind when you think mobile app development. There should be a solidly defined purpose for every app created. Candy Crush is for entertainment, Skype is for communication, and eBay is for shopping online. Developing an app without a purpose would only be a waste of money and time.

Okay, now that you’ve got a purpose for app creation, you can move on to the next step – Finalizing the app idea.

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There is every reason for you to be excited once you get hold of an apparently plausible list of app ideas. You will be eager to continue with the initial steps of mobile app development by choosing the most promising one among them. But, before jumping heads first into the development process, it is worth validating the concepts you have in hand, in order to know whether they could stand a chance in the competitive market and gain enough ROI.

The mobile app development process is quite expensive. Validation helps to save your money, time, and effort. There is a trend of copying the already successful apps in the market. But you should remember that, something that works for others may not work for you every time.

Proper planning and research is important in app development like in every other business. You should take effort to generate maximum feedback from the public. But that’s not an easy job. How could you generate any feedback for an unfinished app that is still in its conception phase? This topic gives you information about the different ways that you can use to validate your app.

Research Your Market Well

It is very important that you thoroughly check if your app can satisfy an existing demand in the market or create a new one. Google has got its own tools to determine the number of searches made all over the world. Keyword tool, Google trends, etc. will help you to analyze where the public demand heads. It also gives a more focused, niche based search option that allows you to obtain the preferences of people concentrated over a particular geographical area.

Recommended read: How do Mobile Applications Benefit the Education Sector?

The best app idea to choose could be the one that returns a total number of searches and that could come inside of a low competition area. The total searches made should be somewhat consistent round the year.

Study App Stats from App Charts

Use websites such as App Annie that track app market statistics to get an idea about the top apps and download stats of particular genre of apps. Also, do not forget to browse in popular app stores and get a record of the popular apps in them. This will help you to know about the possible competitors and will give you a glance into the existing market gap for different products.

Build Your Own Landing Page

Right when you have finally decided to stick on with an idea, you could start creating a landing page for your app. The landing pages should be simple with easy to grasp information and digestible designs. It should give the viewers a general idea about what your app exactly is, complete with graphics and the main functions.

This is a sure way of generating a much realistic estimation on the possibility of your app’s success. As a general rule, the number of clicks that you get will be directly proportional to the conversion rates. If whatever you get is a bit unsatisfactory, you should consider revising the design, text, color and other features of your app.

Apart from these major three, there are still other ways that could give you a chance to know if your app will hold up well. These includes social media campaigns through twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., creating promotional videos, blogging and so on.