Port iPhone application to Android

Question

What is the most efficient way to port an iPhone app to Android? I know Apple doesn't like 3rd-party, non-Objective C platforms generating code for their platform ... but is there something out there that can take an iPhone app and convert it to Android friendly code?

If not, how have folks out there been creating Android versions of their existing iPhone apps?

Thanks

Solution 1

There's nothing of the sort to port your app. You can use 3rd party tools to create apps that work in both. That's what Titanium and PhoneGap were aiming at. With the new changes to the SDK Agreement, those look like they're not really "legal" or at least violate the agreement.

As for your other question, yes, people do create 2 separate apps. One for Android and one for iPhone. That's the way I currently do it and seems as if Facebook and others do the same.

Solution 2

Yeah, people don't usually love the answer that we have for this one at Appiction. It seems like it should be easy since they are so similar, but they are completely different operating systems with different ways of being used. Sometimes a company will be able to cut a deal with you since the art has already be developed and the basic wireframes have been conceived. At Appiction we created a video to answer this exact question for our clients: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-fdRw1WNYI

Solution 3

Apportable provides a platform to build and deploy existing Objective C apps to Android.

Solution 4

There really isn't a short cut to porting. The best thing you can do is use a company that specializes in porting, like migration.mobi. The cross-platform frameworks have performance problems and really limit what you're able to do.

Games are a different story altogether, so be ready for different answers if you've been a complex real-time game on iPhone and you want it to work on another platform.

Solution 5

There are few alternatives to port an app from one platform to other. like Rhodes Mobile, Titanium and PhoneGap. In fact they did a good job and tried very well to remove fragmentation in smart phone app development.

But according to Apple's SDK Agreement version 4.0, section 3.3.1

app must be developed in C/C++/JAVA script.

At this stage convincing way is to write it separately.

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Comments

[Eric Schweichler]

And honestly, while others may not agree, it's the best way to give your users a first class user experience on whatever playforms you are supporting. Look at something like Evernote for example.

[wgpubs]

Looks like both Titanium and PhoneGap think they are in compliance with Apple's new policy ... my question is, "What are their limitations when compared to developing specifically for a given platform?" In other words, what can I do in XCode that I can't in one of those tools?

[Max Rasguido]

You could also take advantage of Xamarin, they offer MonoTouch and Mono for Android (they both have a cost though), the developing is made on C# and you can share a lot of code but not platform specific code between the apps

[Cal]

Actually, this answer is now out of date. You can automatically convert Objective-C to Java with a tool called O2J. Available here... itunes.apple.com/us/app/o2j-objective-c-to-java-automatic/… . With it you'll be able to leverage your existing Objective-C code while still delivering the "first class user experience" for the Android platform. You'll still need to do some Java work but it does a lot of the "heavy lifting" for you.

[bummi]

Hi Cal, regarding O2J please take a look here