Cost to port an app from iOS to Android ?

coffeehound

Assuming it's a small, simple iOS app with one in-app purchase, can anyone suggest a ballpark figure for what a programmer would charge to re-code it for Android, please?

Code

Impossible to answer. Android is totally different to IOS from design, code and underlying architecture. A better question is, "here is the exact spec of what I want the app to do, and I want it to run on these versions of Android and these device types (phone, tablet etc)".

Then try and get a quote. You're probably talking several thousand $ depending on what it is. If you clearly define your requirement and give it to a competent coder, they may be able to suggest simpler/easier/cheaper ways to achieve what you want (e.g.: using opensource code to reduce dev time and achieve same result in a different way).

Based on your q, I'd respectfully suggest that you don't have enough tech knowledge to have a comprehensive conversation with someone about what you want. I'd suggest you find a very friendly coder who can also do the requirements & flow capture, or find someone with tech skills and who knows how to manage tech projects and can help you figure out the right approach (hint: it may not even be an Android app, maybe it's a web app etc).

coffeehound

Thanks for your post, Code – useful food for thought there. I'm currently learning to code for iOS so hope to be better placed to put together a technical spec once the iOS version is finished.

Fightsback

coffeehound wrote: »

Assuming it's a small, simple iOS app with one in-app purchase, can anyone suggest a ballpark figure for what a programmer would charge to re-code it for Android, please?

http://www.mobilephonedevelopment.com/porting-ios-to-android

coffeehound

^ thanks, that looks to be a useful article.

AndyPix

I code android apps and have a play developers license.
All I can tell you is that I use eclipse and the java sdk and sometimes cpp


I wouldn't have a clue where to start coding an ios app or what language it is even coded in. And as mentioned above, all the libraries will be totally different etc


You will most likely not find someone who would do a direct port but as also mentioned by code above you would need to show the required results to a developer and ask them to reproduce it.
If it were myself as a freelance job then I would quote you an estimated time it would take to produce and then apply a figure to that time.


If its a small/medium sized job, ie not a game that would also require a team of artists and musicians etc then you would likely be best approaching a freelancer for a quote on one of many sites


You can get coders from China or India quite cheap, but their results aren't usually that dazzling

coffeehound

^ Interesting, thanks. Can I ask what you think would be the minimum number of hours required to produce an Android app?

Apple have made things quite a lot easier for the novice programmer with the latest release of their Swift language. In theory, it'll do anything you need without requiring recourse to other languages or scripts, and it now takes care of more advanced things memory management. Professional coders can still use the other languages if they want though (some versions of C and Python among others IIRC).

AndyPix

Interesting, thanks - I wasnt aware of the swift language ..


As for the minimum required time to develop an app, well that's totally dependant on what you want it to do.
You could knock something simple up in as little as 15 minutes

Code

If you tell us what the app is, or what it does with a bit of detail, we could probably give a better indication...