Category: Technology News

Most IT pros haven’t ever created mobile apps

The results of a recent survey have shown that even among those that do, they don’t develop many.

A recent survey conducted by a Progress company called Telerik has revealed that the majority of developers haven’t actually developed mobile apps, and among those who do, they usually produce only about one per year.

Among the issues standing in the way of these mobile app developers are UX and process constraints.

Over the last few years, there has been a common mindset that has caused people to believe that the only way ahead is through mobile apps. Another belief is that pretty much every person working in IT is desperately scrambling from the world of PC or traditional server applications in order to step into mobile applications. People seem to think that, unlike PC software, apps for smartphones and tablets can be slapped together in a matter of moments and can be issued as fast as the developer wants. However, the truth of the matter is quite unlike the common belief.

The survey asked 3,000 IT professionals about whether or not they have ever developed mobile apps.

Mobile Apps - App DevelopersThe pros that do end up creating mobile applications are continually facing struggles such as delays from limited resource, stagnating progress, and even the ever changing and fad-focused demands of the market. The user experience (UX) has also become quite the issue, despite the fact that it is greatly misunderstood, and has become one of the primary struggles that are faced by developers.

The Telerik survey showed that 57 percent of all IT professionals have never taken part in the creation of a mobile app. This indicates that despite the fact that the common perception is that virtually all developers are running toward the mobile environment, that ecosystem remains one that is quite specialized.

From among the 43 percent of software developers who have actually taken a focus toward mobile apps, the average output of functional applications in a given year is one. Some of them reported that they hadn’t created any in quite some time. Progress – or the lack thereof – is one of the largest barriers to the ability of developers to create new applications, followed by ever changing tech and practices, a lack of time or tools, and limitations to the budget.

Hydrogen powered smartphone battery could be the tech of the future

A British firm called Intelligent Energy could keep mobile devices charged for a week at a time.

A company named Intelligent Energy, from the United Kingdom, has now created a prototype smartphone battery cell that is small enough that it would be able to fit inside the iPhone 6 body without requiring any type of alterations to the current form and size of the device.

What is truly fascinating about this prototype battery is that it is hydrogen-powered and long lasting.

In fact, the company behind this smartphone battery technology claims that it would allow a mobile device user to go a week between recharges. The version of the iPhone 6 that the company used as a prototype for the hydrogen-powered battery is nearly exactly the same as the smartphone that is currently on the market. It behaves the same, it looks the same, and it feels the same. The one detectable difference is the addition of small vents on the reverse of the device. They allow an undetectable water vapor to be released as the hydrogen battery’s byproduct.

This new smartphone battery functions by bringing oxygen and hydrogen together in a tiny little thin fuel cell.

Hydrogen Powered Smartphone BatteryThis results in electricity. Water vapor and a small amount of heat are the only waste produced by this process. While there are already portable hydrogen cells in existence, such as the Rohm “Mobile Aqua”, the majority of them are too costly and bulky to be practical for the average smartphone user.

In this case, though, the Intelligent Energy hydrogen battery is the same size as the current iPhone, but it is slim enough that it can slip right into the existing body of the device without requiring any notable alterations other than venting.

While this smartphone battery would allow the device to run for a great deal longer between charges – days longer – it does still need to be recharged. That said, the recharging process is not the same as other devices where they can simply be plugged into any outlet. The reason is that it needs to have hydrogen gas topped up. In order to do that, the user would have to hook the mobile device up to a special hydrogen gas recharger that is plugged into the smartphone through an adapted headphone port.