Top 10 Features of Android 7.0 Nougat Update

After months of previews and beta testing, Android 7.0 Nougat is finally here. However, the big news is most of the upgrades are done with an objective to boost the performance and battery life of your smart phone.

Here are some of the noteworthy upgrades:

1. Split-Screen Mode : Multitasking is now easier. Two apps can be run side by side in a split-screen mode.
2. Picture-in-Picture Mode : On Android TV, you can continue to watch video while browsing or changing the settings.
3. Quick Switch : Double tap the overview button to toggle between your two most recently used apps.
4. Vulkan API : It's a real game changer with high-performance 3D graphics.
5. Bundled Notifications : See what's new at a glance with bundled notifications from individual apps. Simply tap to view each alert.
6. Direct Reply : Android catches up to Apple's iOS here. Now you can either reply to a message straight from the alerts when it pops up at the top of the screen or from the bundled notifications.
7. Low Power Mode on-the-Go : Your android device will now go into lower power usage mode when you're on the move, conserving battery.
8. Improved Settings Navigation : Find the right settings faster with an updated navigation menu with customizable quick settings, suggestions and 'Clear all' in overview.
9. Emergency information : Android Nougat facilitates to add emergency information to your lock screen. Go to Settings > Users > Emergency information to add the information can be accessed in case of any emergency such as your blood type, name and address and allergies, if any.In addition to this, the above information will also be visible to anyone who happens to pick up or steal your phone.
10. Emoji : It's great news that Android 7.0 adds 72 new/updated emojis to its 1500+ strong library. 

Takeaway...

Android Nougat is undoubtedly faster and smoother, and your battery should last longer. But with the interface same as before, it falls short of being revolutionary. And it's going to be a while till it's available for an OTA(over-the-air) upgrade across all the android devices.Would be interesting to see how it matches up to the promising and widely released iOS10. 

Do you wish to add anything here? Your feedback is highly appreciated.

How to Measure MVP Success for Mobile App Start-ups

Apple reported that more than 100 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store as of June 2016.Incredible stats!

Mobile is the way forward for all kinds of businesses. To achieve success, the main aim should always be to introduce actionable user responses into the development process as early as possible; MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the right step. However, in addition to that you need to measure the right metrics, optimize and iterate your applications as per your target audiences.

Measuring MVP success

The nature of your application decides the metrics to be used to calculate its MVP success. For example,

●     Preferential User ratings and store placement: User ratings are excellent source of feedback.

●     App Download & Launch rate: Download and launch rates depict users’ preferences on trying out your offering. The lighter your app is, higher the number of downloads.

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): What does it cost to get a new paying user? This metrics helps you to learn whether your marketing efforts are up to the mark or require improvement.

         CAC = Money spent on traction channel / Number of customers acquired  through the channel.

• Active Users’ Percentage: 77% of app users never use an application again, mostly 72 hours after installing it. Hence, download and launch rates are not enough to measure MVP success. You need to study users’ behaviors closely.

• Percentage of Paying Users: Who are the actually paying users? You need to track all the info. How exactly are they using your app? How much time elapsed between the first launch and first purchase?

• Average Revenue per User (ARPU): It's wise to know what your average transaction size. Also don't forget to observe which items bring the most purchases.

         ARPU = Total revenue for the time period / Number of active users

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This shows how much an average time a user spends before he stops using your mobile app.

          CLV = (Profit from a user *App usage duration) – Acquisition cost

• Churn: It’s the percentage of people who uninstall your app or stop using it.

Churn = Number of churn per week (month) / Number of users at the beginning of week (month)

Just the 'Typical' is never good enough for a startup, so your goal is to always iterate.

Points to Consider:

●     If your one time users don't convert into moderate users over time, your MVP is complicated. It’s time to improve your UI.

●     Make sure at least10% of registered users open your application once a day.

●     Review rate for free applications usually is significantly less than 1%.

●     Customer acquisition cost should be 1/3rd or less than the total value a user brings you over a lifetime.

●     If about 1.5% of users buy something from your app, it's typical. You should aim for more.

Have an idea? Get a MVP done as fast as possible... 

Read my previous article MVP vs POC to get a better idea on a Minimum Viable Product. I’d appreciate if can you drop your comments below.

Tips to use ButterKnife - Dependency Injection in Android

What is Dependency Injection? 

It's a design pattern in Android that allows writing codes for low coupling and also makes it possible to change them any time.

Benefits:

• Promotes loose coupling between classes and subsystems
• Easy to use and modify the components
• Testing the functionalities is easy too

Libraries available in Android:

1. ButterKnife
2. Roboguice
3. Android Annotations
4. Dagger 2

Dependency Injection with ButterKnife :

ButterKnife helps to represent the views from an activity or fragment and also helps in handling various events like onClick(), onLongClick() etc. through annotations.

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