Mobile apps are everywhere. There are two main platforms for mobile apps that are dominating the mobile market: Android and iOS. It is a common requirement to develop an app for both the platforms. This typically means using different tools, frameworks, and programming languages. If you want to build a mobile app for iOS, you should probably use the Xcode development environment from Apple and use Swift or Objective-C as the programming language. Android development requires different tools. For Android, you would typically use a tool such as Android Studio from Google and the Java programming language. These are two different worlds that speak different languages. If you want to build your app for both, this means having two different sets of skills and, in practice, two different teams of developers. Mobile app development gets more and more fragmented. One can be an iOS developer, and somebody else can specialize in Android.
A mobile app is quite often more than just what you download from an app store and install in your phone or tablet. There must be a mobile backend deployed in the cloud that a mobile app is communicating with. This adds another dimension to mobile development landscape. One can be a frontend and one can be a backend mobile developer. There is a growing segmentation in the market and you might think that mobile app development is not for individuals anymore. Fear not! With Delphi, you can become a mobile developer superhero and gain unmatched productivity powers to build complete mobile apps using just one tool, one framework, and one programming language to create mobile apps for iOS, Android, and desktop applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux. With Delphi, you can also build scalable REST API backends that will power your mobile apps on all platforms.
This book is logically divided into two parts. In the beginning, we are going to build a complete, simple game that will be fun to play and will illustrate the basic concepts of architecting user interfaces for both 2D and 3D. In the second part, we will go deeper into understanding the inner workings of the FireMonkey visual library. We will see how to work with the different aspects of mobile operating system hardware and sensors, store data in an embedded database, and integrate with REST API backend using Delphi WebBroker and RAD Server frameworks. We will also cover all you need to know about putting your app on the Apple iOS App Store and Android Google Play.
Get ready! Boarding is complete, and we are just about to take off for the fascinating journey through the world of Delphi mobile app development!