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Natalya MurphyNatalya Murphy 

Best architecture for mobile app if cellular signal is unreliable

We're in the early stages of planning an app that will run on an Android phone or tablet and would like to know the best option between developing a native Android app, taking a hybrid approach or developing directly in Salesforce1.   There are 2 major considerations for picking the most suitable architecture:
  • Users of the app will be in an area with no wifi and, at best, 3G cellular data.  The cellular network in the area is also liable to go down sporadically.  For this reason, we would need a way to store data from custom objects on the Android device in offline mode until a network connection becomes available again.   Because of the network lack of speed and sporadic availability, we'd also want minimal data volume going between the app and the Salesforce server.
  • Users of the app will be technical newbies, so the user interface will need to be as simple as possible.
Any suggestions on the best approach would be greatly appreciated
Todd Halfpenny MCTodd Halfpenny MC
Hi Natalya,

Sorry if you've moved on from this, I have only just spotted the thread. Firstly you ask some great questions, and you're right that for an app to be successful you need to answer these.

With your requirements you should really be going down the custom route, I don't believe that SF1 will give you the network resilience or custom UI that you're after.

We (MobileCaddy (https://www.mobilecaddy.net)) have an application delivery framework (and appexcahnge app) that not only allows for rapid builds of custom apps that allows for complete control over the UI but also gives full network resiliency in the form of an efficient full offline sync engine.

If you'd like more info please feel free to ping here or contact via our site.