As mobile technology advances, its use expands. This has increased the demand for mobile developers and a variety of other tech professionals involved in its development. If you’re pursuing or currently working in the mobile development field, you can advance your skills with the mobile development projects provided in this article.
Through these projects, you can develop the skills to transform your business idea into a real-life business. Whether you’re a mobile project manager or you work on a development team, there are essential skills that are required for app development across multiple mobile platforms.
5 Skills That Mobile Development Projects Can Help You Practice
There is a wide range of skills involved in the mobile software development process, all of which are useful for both iPhone and Android development. Below are five skills that you can practice through mobile development projects.
- Cross-Platform Development. This skill refers to the ability to create a single application that’s conducive to multiple platforms. It plays a crucial role in ensuring accessibility to as many users as possible.
- Programming Languages. Mobile developers’ responsibilities revolve around programming. You’ll need to be familiar with Java, C#, Python, Swift, Kotlin, and likely a few others.
- Testing and Debugging. Mobile developers need to be familiar with different types of functional testing and debugging techniques for security, usability, and performance reasons. These skills ensure applications run smoothly and meet all functional requirements.
- User Interface Design. Along with the advancement of mobile software is the advancement of application aesthetics. Users enjoy interacting with an aesthetically pleasing mobile application. This often requires collaborating with the design team.
- Version Control. This skill is required for tracking and managing changes in the source code. When a project team is collaborating on software projects, version control allows them to group changes into discrete versions so that the codebases’ evolution can be tracked and organized.
- Hardware Integration. This skill facilitates an application’s ability to connect with and control hardware. This is seen in smart houses, Bluetooth functions, and any other technology that can be controlled through an application.
Best Mobile Development Project Ideas for Beginners
Showcasing application projects in your professional portfolio demonstrates your capabilities in the mobile app development process. Below are five projects that will allow you to develop mobile development skills. Once completed, these projects can be added to your portfolio.
Contact Book
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: User interface design, authorization
This is a contact book application that you can develop in Android Studio. The application has a simple interface that can be made using Python. You can add buttons to create new contacts, search contacts from the directory, send messages and call selected contacts, and delete contacts. You must first add authorization to access the existing phone directory.
Note Taker
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: User interface design, cross-platform integration
You can make a simple note-taking app by programming in Java on Android Studio. A user can add text notes, tags, record audio clips, and pictures from their gallery or cloud storage. The user interface needs to be intuitive yet aesthetically appealing and must include the option to categorize notes into notebooks to share via email, Bluetooth, or another app.
Attendance Recorder
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: User interface design, programming languages
This app offers benefits to teachers, trainers, and managers for taking attendance of classes, workshops, and meetings. Comments and documents can be added for the absentees, like meeting notes or student accommodations. You can also add features to sync the attendee list with e-invites via Google Calendar or Outlook.
Class Audio Recorder
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Programming languages, cross-platform development
This application allows students to record lectures. They can relisten to recordings and sort them by date or subject. You can add a transcribing feature and enable it to store recordings in different file formats for both Windows and Mac. Users can rename, group, share, and delete audio files.
Movie Guide
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Cross-platform development, version control
This app will give movie suggestions based on the user criteria. Users can select language, era, genre, cast, and director to filter the selections. You can even include a feature that saves your search filters for easy browsing. The app will then be able to store past results and create curated recommendations based on previous criteria.
Best Intermediate Mobile Development Portfolio Ideas
Once you’ve mastered the mobile app development process for beginner projects, you can continue building your skills with intermediate projects. Below are five of the best intermediate projects to advance your skills and add to your portfolio.
Productivity Tracker
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Cross-platform development, user interface design
This app would allow users to track habits, make to-do lists, edit schedules, and sync with apps like Calendars. They can also add weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar goals to enhance productivity. Users can see all of their appointments and tasks in one place, reschedule or delete them, set reminders, share information, print agendas, and sync with other users.
Teams Communication Platform
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Programming, testing and debugging
A communication platform will allow companies to create teams, assign tasks, track progress, send messages, and share documents. This project requires real-time synchronization and a smooth user interface. You can highlight software requirements like setting up meetings, documenting collections between private teams, and rescheduling or canceling appointments.
Health Monitor
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Programming, hardware integration
A healthcare app can collect data from wearable devices or mobile sensors to monitor health. In developing this application, you can display charts to represent the data collected. You can also program it so that users can set health goals and enable daily suggestions and reminders.
Personal Resources Hub
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Programming, cross-platform development
For this project, you will help users store their favorite links, documents, images, YouTube videos, and other digital content on the cloud. Users can group the data into folders, convert similar file formats, add tags, and use keywords to search. You could include any other personal resources that you think users would want quick and easy access to.
Books Recommendation System
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Programming, version control
This project involves making a system for book recommendations. The app will provide a list of books to read based on user input, including genre, language, year, and length. To enhance the application, you can add buttons that will take users to a webpage to purchase hard copies or ebooks.
Best Advanced Mobile Development Project Ideas
The mobile development projects below are ideal for current mobile developers or advanced learners. These projects will help you further advance your skills and can be used in your professional portfolio to showcase your extensive abilities.
Teachers’ Planning System
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Hardware integration, testing and debugging
You can create an app for teachers to create lesson plans, give online assignments, take attendance, make to-do lists, and publish presentations. If teachers have multiple courses or sessions, they can organize their plans by class, session, or date.
Ecommerce App for Baby Food
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Cross-platform development, hardware integration
For this project, you’ll develop a location-based app that shows baby food brands and products from nearby retailers. The app will allow users to save their favorite products for discounts or price changes and will notify the user when products are back in stock. You can even add an advanced function that enables scheduled orders and deliveries.
Food Delivery
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Hardware integration, cross-platform development
This location-based food app enables users to find, order, and have their food delivered. The app lists all of the open and delivering restaurants nearby and includes search filters such as type, price, and reviews. You could also allow users to sort by discounts.
Photo-Sharing Platform
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: Cross-platform development, user interface design
This is a social media application where app users make their profiles, upload photos, and share them with followers. The app must include basic image editing, storage, and networking features to connect with users around the globe. Notably, since the project’s purpose is to share photos, the app must support high screen resolution to show good-quality pictures.
Local Businesses Locator
- Mobile Development Skills Practiced: User interface design, cross-platform development
This app allows users to find local businesses based on input. The user can browse and search for local businesses using short descriptions or keywords. You can also add functionalities to sort and filter the lists for enhanced user interaction.
Mobile Development Starter Project Templates
There are a variety of project templates or software development kits (SDK) that have been created and shared by other developers. These templates provide you with the framework for your app idea and allow you to customize it according to your vision. Listed below are some useful mobile development project templates.
- Java Development Kit (JDK). This template helps you build Android apps with the Java programming language.
- iOS SDK. This template aids in building apps for iPhone and iPad devices.
- Microsoft Windows SDK. This template is excellent for developing Windows applications.
- SAP Mobile Development Kit. This helpful template makes applications run on multi-channels.
- Facebook SDK for Android. This project template allows you to connect the Facebook app with Android apps.
- S Pen Remote SDK. This template allows you to interact with an S-pen on android devices.
Next Steps: Start Organizing Your Mobile Development Portfolio
Building a professional portfolio is an effective way of demonstrating your capabilities and skills to employers. Listed below are three tips you should incorporate into the organization of your portfolio to enhance its appeal.
Reflect Your Career Goals
The projects in your portfolio should align with your career goals. Add projects that show your relevant skill set for your desired field. If you are open to cross-platform mobile development, present various projects you have worked on and include the techniques used. This allows employers to gain insight into how you can contribute to their vision.
Highlight Your Capabilities
Your portfolio should highlight your capabilities. Include your best work and make sure there are a variety of skills represented in each one. It’s important to note that while variety in projects is beneficial for employment, you don’t need to include projects that were completed early on in your mobile development journey. Employers should only see what you’re capable of now.
Include Relevant Information
In addition to including information related to each project, you should include information about yourself. You want to focus on information that will provide insight into your mobile app development process and your thought process behind each project. This allows employers to get to know you better and more easily identify how they can situate you in their company.
Mobile Development Projects FAQ
Yes, you can create a mobile app without coding. There is software available to make apps code-free. Shoutem App Builder, AppyPie, Appery.io, and iBuildApp are all excellent for developing an app using simple templates.
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Yes, you can create an app for free. However, there may be a fee to publish your app to Google Play and iOS App Store.
It depends on your professional goals and preferences. The exponential growth in the field of mobile development has created lucrative career opportunities regardless of the exact company or platform.
You can create your portfolio in a variety of ways. Some of the most popular ideas include websites, PDF files, PowerPoint slideshows, and even physical copies. There are also websites and applications that you can use to create your professional portfolio.
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