Improving network tolerance in your mobile application
by Eshwar Natarajan in General
More than half of the world population is now connected with the internet and about 2/3 of these reside in developing nations. The growing app user base especially in emerging markets of India and South East Asia offer immense opportunities to technology companies. But clipping the wings of organizations from harnessing the potential of this opportunity is the poor network infrastructure in these countries. This poor quality infrastructure results in slower load times and poor user experience. This limits the potential of mobile application functionalities thus affecting the user experience.
Limitations due to low network connectivity
The developers must analyze poor network connectivity effects on different aspects of the mobile application. The most commonly seen limitations of mobile applications in areas with poor connectivity are:
- Data accessibility and storage: Poor connectivity or when the mobile system is offline can make it a difficult process for the application to access data. This is why there is a need to design an offline data gathering and storage strategy. Such a strategy will help users to access the application when offline and when the system is back on online mode, data is automatically moved to online servers with user permission
- Overloaded servers: Low connectivity in addressing the request to connect, results in stacking of requests leading to high latency and in some cases the server crashes
- Images, animations and video: Developers have to often manage and work with different media features such as images used in applications to enhance user experience. But higher resolution images or video consume more time to load causing poor performance especially in low connectivity
Strategies have to be adopted during the development phase to minimize limitations and issues caused due to poor network connectivity.
Development Strategies
Following are a few development strategies to enable higher network tolerance and ensure excellent app functionality in diverse network environments:
- Caching: This is one of the best strategies to maintain app performance against an unstable network. While the device goes offline, a part of local storage is used to save cache data to help the app remain stable. Once the device gets back online, bulk upload requests can be sent back to servers
- Server strategies: Android with its recent launch released server functionality, which allows permission-based access. When using cache mechanisms, the app can send data requests only when it is running at the foreground and background thus optimizing performance
- Use alternative formats to optimize images: Even though higher resolution images provide a rich experience, but it affects the app loading speed and creates a bad user experience. Instead, WebP images can be used, which are considerably lower in size without noticeable visual differences. And when offline, WebP images can be replaced with a lower resolution image stored in the app itself
- Network testing: Designing Apps such that the quality of connectivity is checked before every call to the server allows you to inform the user about the connectivity issues. It also allows you to take alternative actions to maintain as much of the user experience and functionality as possible
- Designing a light app with core features: Testing the mobile app on different network environments can help determine the features that consume more power and network bandwidth. Based on analysis, a light version of the app can be built to include core functionality that provides optimized performance for low connectivity environments
From the simple image and video streaming applications to the offline navigation systems, the potential of these applications that operate on low connectivity is endless. But developing these applications is tedious, as it requires a thorough understanding of applications platform, frameworks and rigorous testing. Nuage can help you build a stable network tolerant app by collaborating with your team and understanding your application requirement. We will work with you to provide a customized dynamic application. To know more about how we can help contact us at info@nuagebiz.tech