Comparing the Windows Mobile and Android Development Platform

Software giants like Google are Travel Knowledge disrupting the otherwise safe and established mobile application development business players. Newcomers like Android have led to significant structural changes in the future of mobile application development by imposing their rules. This changed environment not only brings additional opportunities but also adds certain constraints. Developers today need to assess their options and determine how they can benefit from this changing environment.

While mobile computing has caught the attention of application developers, there has been very little work done to examine the programming ease of these technologies. Here, we will look at two of the most widely available mobile development environments – Android and Windows Mobile and explore and assess these options from a developer’s perspective.

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Android

Google released Android in 2007 as an open-source platform for mobile software development for smartphones. The Android platform was released as part of the Open Handset Alliance. The primary aim of this alliance was to set up open standards for smartphones. Android is a Linux-based, open-source operating system for mobiles. As a mobile operating system, it allows developers to create managed codes in Java using Java libraries developed by Google. Android provides a mobile operating system, including a development environment. Still, it also offers a custom virtual machine known as the Dalvik Virtual Machine for running applications and acts as the middleware between the operating system and the code. Regarding application development, Android facilitates the usage of 2D and 3D graphic libraries, advanced network capabilities such as 3G, Edge, and WLAN, and a customized SQL engine for continual storage of Globeinform.

Windows Mobile

Developed by Microsoft, Windows Mobile is an operating system for mobile devices. Based on Microsoft Windows CE 5.0, Windows Mobile operates on many smartphones, PDAs, and touchscreen devices. Windows Mobile facilitates the creation of custom-written applications in managed and native codes. The Application Programming Interface (API) in Windows Mobile is extensible and has rich features and a programmable layer. Besides that, Windows Mobile also takes advantage of the capabilities provided by the Microsoft.Net environment.

We will compare these platforms and closely examine their strengths and weaknesses. The media will be reached based on implementation, performance, and developer support. We have chosen these criteria for the comparison as they represent the most critical aspects of mobile software developers.

Implementation

We will use persistent storage as the basis for comparing the implementation aspect. The technology used for persistent storage in mobile technology varies between various mobile development environments. Both Windows Mobile and Android can use an on-device database that facilitates easier data manipulation and extraction. Also, both environments support memory cards for additional storage space regarding local file storage. However, the difference lies in the way the storage space is exploited. While Android cannot install applications on memory cards, Windows Mobile allows it. Both Android and Windows Mobile platforms have a relational database. Also, in both the media, the libraries have several helpful persistence features. Once the libraries have been initialized, access to the database is available via an object-oriented interface that developers can easily access.

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