Android development
Android app development
Native apps in Kotlin, built for the device your customer actually holds — and through Google Play's release requirements without discovering them in the last week.
From £75/hrAn estimate before any work startsOne developer, start to finish
01
Android's difficulty is not the language. It is the breadth.
The device your customer holds may be four years old, running a skin you have never seen, with the manufacturer's own idea of when to kill a background process. That is a product decision with a cost attached, so it gets made in the open.
02
What actually gets built
Native, in Kotlin
Kotlin with Jetpack Compose and Android's own architecture components underneath, rather than a house pattern nobody else can read.
The release rules that catch people out
A personal developer account opened in recent years must run a closed test with a minimum number of testers, for a continuous period, before it can apply for production at all. Recruiting testers is a scheduling item, not an afterthought.
Fragmentation, handled deliberately
A device matrix decided at the start: which versions, which screen sizes, and whether you care about the manufacturers whose battery management can stop a background sync running at all.
Both platforms, one product
Where an iOS app exists, the data model, the API and the business rules carry over entirely. The interface does not, and should not.
03
How the work runs
You describe it
Two sentences is enough to start. What you are building, who it is for, and where it is stuck if it already exists.
A scope and a price, inside 24 hours
Not a range with a shrug attached: what is in, what is deliberately out, what each stage costs and what it depends on. If something cannot be priced honestly yet, that is said rather than padded.
Built in the open
Your repository from the first commit, deployed somewhere you can see it from the first week. Progress is a working thing you can open, not a status call.
Handed over properly
Your accounts, your keys, your infrastructure, and a README that assumes the reader is not me. Ongoing work can run on a retainer; nothing breaks if it does not.
- Rate
- From £75/hr
- Scope and price
- Inside 24 hours
- Written by
- The person who scoped it
Publishing for the first time? The closed-testing period has to be in the plan, not discovered at the end. Tell me your timeline and I will tell you what it has to accommodate.
Start a project →Common questions
How long does Google Play review take?
A straightforward update is usually quick, but first submissions and anything touching sensitive permissions take longer, and a new personal developer account has the closed-testing period to complete before it can apply for production at all. Plan the testing requirement into the timeline rather than hitting it at the end.
Can one codebase cover Android and iOS?
Yes, with Flutter or React Native, and for a lot of apps that is the right call. The trade comes due where the app meets the device — background behaviour, notifications, anything platform-specific — and in how fast you can adopt something new a platform ships.
We have an iOS app already. What carries over?
The backend, the data model and the business rules carry over entirely; the interface does not, and should not. Budget an Android build as a real build rather than a port, with the saving showing up in everything behind the screens.
04
Tell me what you want to build
Two sentences is plenty. You get back a scope, a price, and an honest view of whether one codebase should cover both platforms.