A few thoughts on my first foray in mobile on Android using XE8
A few thoughts on my first foray in mobile on Android using XE8
Originally shared by Andrea Raimondi
Impressions of XE8 for mobile applications.
Ok, so I modified my first mobile example to test a bunch of stuff.
I have to say I am really satisfied with it.
I am not yet using Update 1 which I am told has a few problems for some users, so I decided to try vanilla and see if it would work for me.
The example I loaded is the CameraComponent example.
While I haven't yet figured out how to add new forms in a FireMonkey application, adding a new tab and taking a photo is totally seamless.
The code modification took me 10 minutes tops and the result is way more than I thought it would be.
Deploying it both in debug and release mode was really easy, because my phone was picked up immediately.
I have to say it's a new Samsung, but it's not top of the line, it costs 99 euros, which is affordable for many users. Hence my guess is that it should be ok for most cases. I'd also add that I thought it would take a long time to upload, but that definitely is not my experience as it was done in a short time.
I must also have to point out that this application wasn't really heavily graphic and a debug build stands at about 7MB which is a tad too much. A release build stands at about 6.5MB, so if there were ways to shrink that a bit, I'd love to know how.
All in all, it has been a positive experience: very little fuss to add some code and see it live on the phone. I am planning to try building a standalone app just for the sake of it and see how it goes.
I haven't yet used all of the fancy features such as App Thetering and the application analysis, but that will come at some point.
I am actually very happy with my experience so far and I thought I'd share.
A
Originally shared by Andrea Raimondi
Impressions of XE8 for mobile applications.
Ok, so I modified my first mobile example to test a bunch of stuff.
I have to say I am really satisfied with it.
I am not yet using Update 1 which I am told has a few problems for some users, so I decided to try vanilla and see if it would work for me.
The example I loaded is the CameraComponent example.
While I haven't yet figured out how to add new forms in a FireMonkey application, adding a new tab and taking a photo is totally seamless.
The code modification took me 10 minutes tops and the result is way more than I thought it would be.
Deploying it both in debug and release mode was really easy, because my phone was picked up immediately.
I have to say it's a new Samsung, but it's not top of the line, it costs 99 euros, which is affordable for many users. Hence my guess is that it should be ok for most cases. I'd also add that I thought it would take a long time to upload, but that definitely is not my experience as it was done in a short time.
I must also have to point out that this application wasn't really heavily graphic and a debug build stands at about 7MB which is a tad too much. A release build stands at about 6.5MB, so if there were ways to shrink that a bit, I'd love to know how.
All in all, it has been a positive experience: very little fuss to add some code and see it live on the phone. I am planning to try building a standalone app just for the sake of it and see how it goes.
I haven't yet used all of the fancy features such as App Thetering and the application analysis, but that will come at some point.
I am actually very happy with my experience so far and I thought I'd share.
A
Great. I think Delphi does a pretty good job for a large range of potential mobile applications, particularly database-centric line of business apps. And to be honest, even 10-15 mb still puts it at the low end of the apps I have on my phone.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this Andrea Raimondi. I normally dev small line-of-business types mobile apps with Xamarin, but my current client recently coaxed me into getting XE8 and is keen to do a few bits and pieces on mobile with FireMonkey (he has other Delphi resources he can fall back on further down the line).
ReplyDeleteSo all stories and experiences are useful to me, I'm hoovering-up every bit of information I can find :-)
Delphi XE8 is very well suited for mobile development where you or your customer has control over the client devices on the Android side on which your development will run, as soon as you do not know if your (potential) client will have a device on which the app will be deployable to, you have a problem. IMO they need to tackle this problem and achieve to reach more devices.
ReplyDeleteI experience XE8 to be much more efficient than XCode - and for me it is also much more efficient than Xamarin.
I was able to impress people that can develop quite good themselves with the speed in which I developed solutions they needed. But I have to admit that was very often possible because of third party component providers ;-)
Debugging on Android still gives me quite a hard time sometimes - another thing I would like to see improved (but have to admit, that I did not do a lot of mobile since Update 1 - so maybe that improved).
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE8/en/Mobile_Tutorial:_Taking_and_Sharing_a_Picture,_and_Sharing_Text_(iOS_and_Android)
ReplyDelete