Learn mobile app development with these 10 online courses

Learn mobile app development with these 10 online courses

Hardik Gandhi   January 12, 2018

Top 10 online courses to help your learn mobile app development plus some advice from the experts on why app prototyping makes all the difference!

Thinking about becoming a Mobile App Developer? You’re in luck! There’s never been a better time to learn mobile app development. Take a look:

• The market for apps is soaring. Apple’s App Store and Google Play global downloads reached nearly 26 billion and global mobile app revenue was estimated at $77 billion in 2017.
• App Developers are some of the hottest prospects on the current job scene, with the average Senior Mobile App Developer in the US on $80,013/year.
• Looking ahead, the app business is expected to do even better, with global mobile app revenue forecast for 2020 at $189 billion.

For budding developers, it’s time to hop aboard the gravy train. But what’s the first step in learning mobile app development? What courses should you sign up for? Should you teach yourself app development? We’ve got you covered.

And yes, the first step is learning how to prototype a mobile app. Learn why here — plus get our top 10 online courses on mobile app development to get you started right away, no matter where you are!

10 free and paid online courses to help you learn mobile app development

Here are our top 10 online courses to help you learn mobile app development:

1 — Android Development Tips Weekly series on Lynda

Teach yourself app development with this series of Android development tips by David Gassner.

Each week, David shares techniques to help you speed up your coding, improve app functionality or make your apps more reliable and refined.

The tutorials cover developing the app’s user interface, backend processing and open source libraries, to get your coding knowledge off the ground even quicker.

• Level: Beginner — Intermediate
• Commitment: approximately 3h per video
• Price-point: 30-day free trial, from $19.99 thereafter

2 — Mobile App Development for Beginners on Udemy

Dee Aliyu Odumosu’s mobile app development course is ideal if you’re looking to break into iOS.

Learn how to create and customize 10+ iPhone apps (using Swift 3 and Xcode 8) with easy step-by-step instructions. The course begins with implementation of basic elements — UILabel, UIButton, UITextField etc. — Auto Layout and multiple-sized icons, with more advanced classes covering memory issues, storyboarding and displaying rich local notifications.

Note that this course requires you to own and already be familiar with Mac.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: approximately 33 hours
• Price-point: $10.99 (New Year discount, was $50.00)

3 — iOS App Development with Swift Specialization on Coursera

This is the ultimate Swift for iOS development course, brought to you by Parham Aarabi and the University of Toronto.

Using XCode, Parham will teach you how to design elegant interactions and create fully functioning iOS apps, such as the photo editing app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The course also includes best practices to help you become proficient in functional Swift concepts.

Note that this course requires you to own and already be familiar with Mac.

• Level: Intermediate (some previous experience required)
• Commitment: 6 weeks
• Price-point: 7-day free trial, $49 per month thereafter

4 — Introduction to Mobile Application Development using Android on edX

Learn mobile app development and the basics of Android Studio in Jogesh K Muppala’s introduction to the Android platform.

In this 5-week course, you’ll explore the basics of Android application components as well as Activities and their lifecycle, some UI design principles, Multimedia, 2D graphics and networking support for Android.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 6 weeks
• Price-point: free

5 — Full Stack Web and Multiplatform Mobile App Development Specialization on Coursera

If you’re learning mobile application development for Android and found the above course useful, try this course out next.

Here you’ll have the chance to build complete web and hybrid mobile solutions, as well as master front-end web, hybrid mobile app and server-side development.

• Level: Intermediate (some previous experience required)
• Commitment: approximately 20 weeks
• Price-point: 7-day free trial, $39 per month thereafter

6 — iOS 9 and Swift 2: From Beginner to Paid Professional on Skillshare

Mark Price’s online course for iOS Swift is everything you need to know about iOS 9 development.

This is another great set of classes for novice iOS coders. Build 15+ apps for iOS 9, learn swift 2.0 and publish apps to the App Store. Warmups, class projects and exercises will help you keep on top of the workload.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: approximately 37 hours
• Price-point: from $15 a month

7 — The iOS Development Course That Gets You Hired on Career Foundry

Jeffrey Camealy presents the iOS Development course to get your hired.

1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts and real-world projects complement a set of 6 structured modules. The course covers the very basic principles of iOS development and takes you right to the point of submitting an app to the App Store.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 6 months
• Price-point: $4000 (payment plans available)

8 — Get Started With React Native on TutsPlus

Markus Mühlberger’s course for React Native is perfect for anyone who wants to code for multiple mobile platforms.

Learn how to create and customize UI elements, build user interaction, and integrate third-party components into apps for both iOS and Android. Upon completion, you’ll be able to write mobile apps in React Native.

• Level: Intermediate
• Commitment: 1.2 hours
• Price-point: $29 a month

9 — Build a Simple Android App with Java on Treehouse

Ben Deitch’s course will help you build simple mobile apps for Android with Java, without any prior knowledge.

Best-suited to budding Android developers, this course will explore programming in Android and some very basic concepts of the Android SDK. By the end of the course, you’ll have a working knowledge of how a basic app works.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 1.5 hours
• Price-point: from $25 a month

10 — Try iOS on Code School

Gregg Pollack’s tutorials on iOS app development from the ground up and requires only basic coding experience.

Write your first iPhone app code and learn about different UI elements, such as buttons, labels, tabs and images. Upon completion, you’ll be able to connect to the internet to fetch data, build out table views and navigate between different areas of your app.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 6–8 hours
• Price-point: $29 a month

It’s an exciting time for mobile app developers. And as you can see, there are plenty of resources out there to help get your career off the ground. But don’t forget to look at the big picture.

Prototyping is an integral part of the mobile app life cycle. Download Justinmind now and explore a prototyping tool that’s made with the entire product team in mind.

My 2017 Homescreen — iPad Edition

My 2017 Homescreen — iPad Edition

Hardik Gandhi   January 08, 2018

Each year, I post a screenshot of the homescreen of my iPhone to end the year. It’s something I often get asked about — though I suspect people are always sightly disappointed with the outcome. Because there aren’t a lot of new/undiscovered apps to be found there. Instead, I find the general trends of what apps I’m using (and which ones I no longer am) interesting. The same is true of the iPad. And while I don’t do this every year, given that my usage of the device continues to increase (I use it far more than my MacBook these days for the vast majority of my computing tasks), I thought I’d post it again.

The last time I post my iPad homescreen was 2015. As you can see, quite a bit has changed in the past couple of years. First and foremost, iOS itself has changed quite a bit on the iPad. Whereas you used to be able to fit 6 apps in the dock, now you can fit — well actually I’m not sure how many you can fit. But it’s a lot. I currently keep 7 apps there — mainly because of the 3 slots taken by the recently-used apps to the right of those (not pictured). A 10-app dock feels like a good size, especially on a 10.5-inch iPad Pro.¹

So my iPad dock is similar to what it was a couple years ago, with Mail replacing Inbox (just as on my iPhone) and Slack replacing Facebook Messenger (just as on my iPhone). Bear and 1Password are new additions to the dock, simply because I’m using them both all of the time, and it’s great to have them right there at a swipe-up no matter where you are. Medium is still on my homescreen, but it didn’t feel necessary to be in the dock, as it was. Twitter, Pocket, and Safari, unsurprisingly, remain.

Elsewhere on the iPad, Videos has morphed into ‘TV’  — a name which makes very little sense since the content housed within is far more than television content. In fact, I have far more movie content in there. This whole branding confounds me. It’s the new iTunes (an app which now, of course, does far more than deliver music).

My actual TV app of choice is YouTube TV. I’ve tried a lot of these new, skinny bundles over the years, and I definitely like YouTube’s offering the most — the app is really well done. Can’t wait for the Apple TV version (soon, hopefully?).

While Newsstand the app (container?) is long gone, I still create my own version of it in folder-form (just as I did two years ago). As you might imagine, I use the iPad most often for reading. So I keep various magazine apps that I subscribe to in there (though these apps are still less than ideal, to say the least) as well as iBooks/Kindle. I’m a Kindle guy, myself, but have a few things on iBooks (and I still prefer the interface of iBooks — Amazon continues to need help when it comes to app design and interface, though their new Kindle icon is brilliant). I also have my RSS reader of choice, Reeder, in here — remember RSS? Anyone?

I also added a new folder for Entertainment apps — Netflix, HBO Now, Amazon Prime Video, etc. This is also where I house the Podcasts and Audible apps (which I use less on my iPad than I do on my iPhone).

Just as on my iPhone, Apple’s own News app has a place on my iPad homescreen. As does The New York Times (The Economist is in the Newsstand because I mainly listen to it on the iPhone, while reading along with the print version — true story!)

iA Writer has a slot as I do a ton of writing on my iPad (two years ago, I was mainly using Byword for this — still a great app, I just switch things up from time to time). Firefox Focus, my favorite fast browser/search app, is there as well, just as on my iPhone (replacing the Google app).

In terms of what’s gone, Foursquare is now on the second screen alongside Flipboard and Periscope. Facebook, for better or worse, endures…

So that’s my iPad homescreen and workflow right now. Nothing too exciting, but I feel pretty comfortable with it these days — again, this is the machine on which I do the majority of my reading and writing (yes, I use a keyboard: Apple’s keyboard cover). Not to mention watching, which I increasingly do on the road. My iPad is increasingly full of bundles. Funny that.

Just in case you wanted to see portrait mode as well…

My 2017 Homescreen
Additions, subtractions, and shuffling of apps500ish.com

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¹ I have both the the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (first generation) and an iPad mini (4th generation) as well. The former I got mainly as a curiosity a couple years ago, but rarely use. The latter I love but is so slow now with iOS 11. Apple suggests it’s not related to the battery/throttling issue, but I’m not so sure…