Nothing annoys more than an app crash when you expect it to be running flawlessly and be quick with its navigation and search results. While it is not only important to know the underlying reason, efficiency retards making one expect that this does not occur again. What is the reason why iOS faces more crashes than android? So let’s dig into it and check what breaks it and what cooks it?
It is quintessential for iOS app developers to know the right reason behind their app crash. Amongst the varied reasons for app crashes there can be issues like – Calling a method which has not been implemented. It might be declared in .h file but implemented in .m file. The compiler might pass away the issue, but it won’t stop the app from crashing as soon as that piece of code executes.
In a similar distinct situation, if you happen to create an outlet from storyboard / xib and then simultaneously delete it from .m/.h files. There is always an exception or app crash message when the declaration is missing for said component.
No Break Up Analytics
A crash report illustrates the problem area and the condition that causes an iOS application to stop without prior warning. In case iOS developers fail to implement this function during their mobile application development, this can further lead to abrupt crashing of the application at a later stage. It would be wiser to implement this feature in developmental stages.
Issues in Memory Management
Poor memory management is one of the basic reasons behind an App Crash on mobile devices. iOS Application development in a manner such that it will be the only one that will be making use of system’s resources, which is not the ideal case. It should infact behave like a single entity in a large ecosystem. Memory and resource allocation to different applications must be well thought in advance. It is simultaneously important to think about many other resource hungry factors that make use of systems memory. As compared to Android, the presence of Objective C in iOS makes it capable of handling some of the issues related to memory management itself. Memory management exclusively depends upon how well the developers manage memory according the usage of devices by the target audience.
Issues with Network Management
Most of the apps run online and need internet availability to access data and third-party services. Due to varied nature of jobs, users may have access to the slow or fast internet and this has a huge effect on the proper working of the application. Applications have to be essentially tested on various networks due to their high dependency on network resources. If this is combined with slow internet access, it can significantly reduce the responsiveness of an app which can lead to poor performance, instability which can finally lead to crashing of the application. Developers are therefore advised to check and optimize their mobile apps to run on slow networks with bad data coverage.
Un-organized Code
Writing application code in an organized way will keep you awake in case any bug crops up. Managing the code snippets becomes much smoother. Focusing on detecting errors can help in fixing the errors in codes written beforehand.
Problems with Software Lifecycle
It is essential for an iOS application to be updated along with updating the operating system. Instability of Android applications can be related to the instability of their operating system which keeps updating from time to time. New versions of higher power and function are released regularly, but the applications that are to be used with it are not improved frequently. Keeping the iOS application updated won’t let it crash.
Improper Testing
iOS App Development is easy but it is equally important to test the application thoroughly before launching them in the market, owing to the tough competition. Apps need to follow a proper Software Test Life Cycle so that they pass unit, integration as well as user acceptance tests in specific. It should work in all scenarios equally. It is essential for mobile applications to understand the differences between networks, understand their impacts on testing, and how to create effective tests to both simulate different network failures and examine critical aspects along multiple network types.
Error Handling
Errors are inevitable, but it is equally important to handle them diligently. It is simultaneously not possible to control all parameters and variables in some particular situations. Losing internet connection during a file transfer or entering an incorrect value in input field put extra pressure on the app and necessarily lead to a crash. Exception handling mechanisms need to be robust and can make a huge difference. Communicating users about an error or exception in the application can go a long way in maintaining a long term healthy relationship with them.
Winding Up
The crashing of iOS application parallels with another statistic that gleans up from existing diagnostic data is that device failures have begun increasing with the emergence of iPhone 6 in the market. But this issue is not exactly with iPhone 6 being a defective model but was rather due to its success as a product.
These reasons for the crash can be complemented by releasing an already released object. An API that has been deprecated can also be one of the causes of failure of an iOS App. Trying JavaScript functions on web views and calling UI updates on the background thread. Giving a call to API’s (like SMS API) that are not supported on iPad app, for example, can also lead to an exception.
Successive generation of iPhone models has reported fewer failures thus indicating that they were getting qualitatively better. Apple has been hiring iOS app developers who are striving to incrementally shift towards larger plus-sized models over the last few years. Later has not experienced many problems and have reported a sharp decrease in failures associated with standard iPhone models, which indicates that they are improving. Unlike Android, iOS has a standard model and it is not difficult to check the quality variation between makers and models of iPhone.