Expand your reach to the rest of the mobile market without having to change your code! Simply drop your solution into LiveCode for FM and open up a brand new opportunity with users of Android devices.

Replacing devices is a huge expense for companies that rely on them to do business. LiveCode for FM will allow you to run your solution on lower cost Android devices saving you hundreds, thousands or even millions of dollars in capital expenditure.

You don’t need to learn any new programming skills. Get in touch with us to find out how easy it will be to adapt your existing FileMaker Solution into a fully working Android app that still talks to your FileMaker Database.

It’s increasingly common for staff to bring their own device to the workplace, and many of these users will have Android devices. LiveCode for FM can delight your staff by allowing them to use your FileMaker apps on their own devices regardless of the platform.

Getting an APK onto your device is simple. You can easily share it with your clients or users with or without putting it into the Google Play Store.

There are some differences between getting your app into the iOS app store vs Google Play. Apple curates the iOS app store quite stringently, and there are quite a few certificates to be downloaded, App ID’s to set up, rules to comply with plus for general distribution you must go through their store. You cannot put an iOS app on a webpage for the general public to download. You can however use Ad Hoc distribution for testing and small deployments. To do this you need the device ID’s of each end user, which may be practical in some client situations.

Distributing an Android app is a bit less tricky. It is relatively easy to get into the Google Play store, plus you can do your own distribution if you wish. LCFM provides a handy one click test facility so you don’t need to jump through any hoops to get your Android app straight onto your phone for testing and iteration. We provide comprehensive lessons on getting set up for deployment with both iOS and Android.

If you’ve never looked at deploying to Android before, you’ll probably need to start by obtaining a device to try it out on. But what kind of device? Those of you coming from a Mac/iOS world will likely be bewildered by the array of Android devices on the market, of all sizes, shapes and prices. Here are some things to take into account when getting your test device/s.

What will your clients be using? This is probably the most important consideration. If your clients are employees in a big company that purchases devices for them you may have the luxury of specifying an end device or minimum specs that it must conform to. In this situation we’d recommend getting (and specifying) the best device you can so that your end users have the best possible experience. If, on the other hand, your customers are going to be downloading your app from an app store, you have much less control over the kind of devices that will be used and you need to look at a lower end device to ensure your app is going to run well for everybody.

A good way to select a device based on its performance is the Geekbench list. To get a good experience when compiling an LCFM Native app we recommend a score of 300 or above on this list. Higher end devices will give an even better result. Very low end devices scoring 100 or less are likely to run your app slowly, be very jerky, or not have enough memory to run it at all (depending of course on how big your app is).

Another thing to take into account is what kind of app you are creating. Is your FileMaker database very big? Will your app be doing a lot of syncing and data transfer? Are you running large videos in the app/on the device? You will need a high end device. If you have a small, self contained app, which is not data hungry, mostly text based, without a lot of fancy transitions etc, then it may run well on a low end device, and if that is your target market you should get the appropriate device to test with. Think about the layout of your app also – does it lend itself better to a tablet or a phone? Are there lots of fields and buttons on a single layout? You probably need a tablet – or you could consider breaking up the layout to work better on a phone.