Sunday, January 29, 2012

Review: Andromo App Maker

Andromo App Maker is an online tool designed to help people to create their own Android app, with no programming. We tried out their Free version, and their Gold package ($99 per App per Year). Here are our thoughts.



The sign up process was easy, and required little effort. When you were registered you could start a project (an App). This was easy and was accomplished by pressing the large New Project button on the right hand side. There you were presented with a page where you could edit your app. All of the settings were organised into groups, and these were accessed with tabs along the top.

Settings - Editing App Info
You could add a Description of your app, enter the Version number (Though, we would have liked it if this updated each time the app was built) and add your Title. You also could pick a category, though it does not really matter unless you are going to add your app to the Android Market.

Settings - Editing the Activities
To make you app do something, you can pick from a set of built in activities. These can accomplish almost anything, including a Photo Gallery, an RSS Feed, a Website link, an loads more. There was also a option to add a Custom page, which could contain HTML or text, which was edited through a built in WYSIWYG Editor. You could also add a HTML Archive, which means you could, in theory, put in a website! We loved this feature, and it certainly makes it stand out from the opposition.

Settings - Add your Style!
 Now, this is one of the things we really liked! Andromo has the ability to change the style, depending on what your app background is like. You can pick from either Light or Dark, which sets up the little things so you don't have to change them yourself. You could then change the colours of different parts using the # number (e.g. #ffffff is white) or you could use the 'Eyedropper' tool.

Settings - Advertising and Revenue

Your app, if it is the Free package, will contain ads. You can however, claim 50% of the Ad Revenue if you have a (Free) Admob account. This was one of the features that really puts it ahead of all of its competitors. With other online tools to make Android apps, the advert revenue will all go to the company. It is amazing that they will spilt the money 50/50 when even Amazon splits the money from its Kindle Blog service 30/70. If you have a Gold upgrade, you can either have all of the revenue, or you can remove ads altogether. You can also add in a Google Analytics account, but that also requires a Gold upgrade.

You can upgrade your app to Gold, for one year, for $99. This only upgrades a single app, and does not upgrade all of your apps. At the moment, Andromo is still on the beta stage, so it is cheaper. When it is out of the beta stage it will be $199 per app. We think that that is a little expensive and your should upgrade your entire account for $99 so all of your apps have the Gold upgrade or charge about $50 per app per year.

Concluding our review, the Andromo app maker does what it says on the tin very well, though it is expensive to upgrade your app. The online interface is good, and allows you to modify colours and styles very well. It is a good tool to use, and the ads are less intrusive than other tools. We would have liked to be able to add a splashscreen to the app as well.

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