Best Tools for Android App Development

The Retrofit library, developed by Square, is a type-safe REST client for Android, Java, and Kotlin. It provides a powerful framework for authenticating and interacting with APIs, as well as sending network requests with OkHttp. This library makes it easy to download JSON or XML data from a web API.

Features: Supports converters/dynamic URLs/synchronous and asynchronous network requests/request cancellation, enables direct communication with the web service.

Pros: Retrofit is very fast compared to other network libraries and is simple to use and understand. Retrofit streamlines the process of making HTTP requests and responses, preventing errors and crashes by proactively addressing potential issues.

Cons: It’s unable to load images and doesn’t support prioritization.

Price: Free.

Glide

Glide is an easy-to-use and lightning-fast library. Its user-friendly API and powerful one-liners make it a favorite among developers, as they allow you to do more in a single line of code. Additionally, loading times are faster and it requires a minimal amount of memory for caching.

Working with images (bitmaps) in Android can be a real challenge, as applications often experience Out of Memory (OOM) errors. OOM is a major source of frustration for Android developers.

Features: Easy-to-use API, automatic resource pooling, smooth scrolling, extensible resource decoding pipeline, retrieving, decoding, and displaying video stills, images, and animated GIFs.

Pros: Glide is very fast and has a good caching mechanism, actually, the best among all image-loading libraries.

Cons: Big library size.

Price: Free.

Dagger 2

Dagger 2 is the most popular library for dependency injection among tools required for Android app development. It’s based on annotations and code generation. With its help, developers can reduce the amount of boilerplate code and easily manage the dependencies.

Features: Simple unit and integration testing, code generation, compile-time verification, and modular design.

Pros: Dagger 2 has a small size, easy configuration of complex dependencies, and makes access to shared instances easier.

Cons: Debugging might be tricky and is also very complex which can be scary for newcomers.

Price: Free.

Best Android App Development IDEs

An IDE stands for integrated development environment designed to streamline the development process by providing a unified environment for all stages of development. Some of the best app development software for Android are:

Android Studio

Android Studio is the official IDE for Android based on IntelliJ IDEA. In most, if not all cases, using this Android programming software is an absolute necessity. It’s considered to be the best Android development software after it was rolled out by Google and took the popularity of Eclipse IDE. 

The IDE allows developers to create their own applications quickly and easily. 

Features: Instant app run, fast and feature-reach emulator, visual layout editor, intelligence code editor, extensive testing tools.

Pros: User-friendly and intuitive with an extensive array of features. The software's built-in tools for virtual device testing, debugging, and profiling provide a convenient means for developers to test and deploy apps with speed and efficiency.

Cons: It might be challenging to learn at first and has high hardware requirements.

Pricing: Free.

Eclipse

For a long time, Eclipse was considered the best tool for Android app development and remains one of the most popular IDEs for Java. Eclipse is designed to handle large development projects and supports and integrates with many CICD tools, and plugins.

Features: Supports various plugins, a powerful debugger, lightning-fast search functionality, auto-completion, great coding environment.

Pros: Eclipse has a nice-organized structure which is especially great for beginners and easy to learn. 

Cons: Eclipse runs slower than other IDEs, one of the reasons for this is insufficient memory allocation. It hasn’t changed much with time as almost every feature being rolled out is just a minor enhancement.

Pricing: Free.

Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is also among the best Android development tools with straightforward UI and amazing extensibility. 

It supports a wide range of programming languages, including C#, C++, Python, and more, so can be used for projects where one needs to develop apps for iOS, Android, and the web. 

Features: A powerful debugger, source control integration, IntelliSense and code completion features, and a large marketplace of extensions.

Pros: It’s a powerful and versatile Android app development software, especially for devs who work on projects that use different languages and technologies.

Cons: Due to a large number of features might be overwhelming for new users and resource-intensive in particular when running less powerful or older hardware.

Pricing: Free for the first 5 users, $15 for additional users.

Best Android Code Review Tools

Crucible

Atlassian's Crucible is a powerful code review tool that enables users to review their code, discuss changes, share knowledge with colleagues, and detect code issues across a variety of platforms such as Git, SVN, Perforce, Mercurial, and CVS.

Features: Powerful integration features for customizations, easy sharing, and comment features.

Pros: Clear and easy-to-use interface, integrates really well with other Atlassian products.

Cons: It has some limitations when it comes to big changes.

Price: Starts at $10.

Gerrit

Gerrit is a very extensible and configurable online code review tool, which is integrated with Git and is built on top of the Git version control system. It allows merging changes to the Git repository once you are finished with code validation.

Features: The user interface of this tool is formed on Google Web Toolkit, a lightweight framework for reviewing every commit. It acts as a repository, which allows developers to push the code and create the review for each commit.

Pros: Access control for Git repositories, web FE for code review, no additional command line tools required to push the code, supported by Eclipse.

Cons: Can’t work without Git, a relatively slow tool, a user can’t change the sort order for the change list.

Pricing: Free

Android Lint

Android Lint is a great programming app for Android that offers IDE independence and the ability to detect a variety of potential issues. It can detect missing or unused translations, layout and icon inconsistencies, array size mismatches, accessibility and internationalization problems, and more. Additionally, it allows developers to configure it to detect specific types of problems, providing suggestions for improvement during the coding process to save time and prevent the need for redoing a project from scratch.

Features: Performance analysis, resource leak detection, security analysis, compatibility analysis, code style analysis, and custom rules.

Pros: Android Lint is built into Android Studio, making it easy for developers to use and integrate into their development process. It also allows developers to define custom rules, providing more flexibility to check for issues that are specific to their app or use case.

Cons: While Android Lint is a powerful tool, it has some limitations in terms of the issues it can identify and the depth of analysis it provides compared to other tools.

Pricing: Free.

Best Android Game Development Tools

Unity

Unity is one of the top Android development tools that allow engineers to accomplish various types of tasks that are related to the game production process. It provides game developers with both 2D and 3D platforms to create video games. 

Features: This particular Android developer software is considered to be simple to use and allows developers to “delegate” some tasks to the tool itself, like physics, 3D rendering, or collision detection. Physics is already built within Unity, so engineers don’t need to take care of every little detail. Developers can use Asset Store to upload their own creations and download ones created by other members of the Unity community. 

Instead of creating your own effect, you can simply find a ready one like fire, or grass motion, which will allow you to save some time and focus on other elements of the development process.

Pros: This tool suits developers of all skill levels, Asset Store is where you can find ready solutions for your game.

Cons: Some might find Unity graphics less advanced in comparison to other solutions available on the market.

Pricing: 4 license plans available:

• Personal – free plan
• Plus - $399/yr per seat
• Pro - $2,040/yr per seat
• Enterprise plan – tailored solution for large teams

Android Game Development Kit

Android Game Development Kit is a collection of libraries, extensions, and tools that allow for easier development of Android Games, especially using languages like C and C++.

Features: Integrated workflows – AGDK seamlessly integrates with your existing workflows, which enables a cross-platform development environment that uses the best features of Android. C/C++ game libraries – Google helps game developers by providing C game libraries to use, which significantly reduces the usage of Java and Java Native Interface (JNI). Performance optimization – AGDK helps users to identify performance and stability issues during development and accurately monitor performance once the product is launched.

Pros: Code built for game development, reduced fragmentation, built by Android for Android

Cons: Relatively new tool (introduced less than 2 years ago).

Pricing: Free

Solar 2D (formerly Corona SDK)

Solar2D is a Lua-based cross-platform framework that is mainly focused on ease of iterations and usage. This framework is considered to be one of the best software for building Android apps and for the rapid creation of games for mobile and desktop platforms. 

Features: Build fast – Solar 2D comes with an instant-update Simulator, where you can immediately see the changes to your code. Plugins for all needs – you can select from a broad set of available plugins to extend the Solar 2D core for features like analytics, in-app advertising, media, and many others. Cross-platform – using only one code base you can develop for desktop, mobile, and even connected TV devices.

Pros: Completely free core, easy to use, supports various platforms (iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, macOS, Windows, Linux, or HTML5).

Cons: Making a device build requires an internet connection, and some third-party plugins are paid for.

Pricing: Free (except for some third-party plugins).

Conclusion

There are literally hundreds of other useful software to make Android apps. The choice depends on the developer’s personal preferences and the specific requirements of the project. 

However, the above-mentioned Android application development software features some of the most popular and effective options.

Which one do you consider to be the best platform for Android app development?