How I ended up with an Android Phone.
About 11 months ago, the day after Christmas 2011, I got my first smart phone, the iPhone. In April of 2012, my mom needed a smart phone, so I gave her my iPhone and borrowed an old Motaola Droid from my wife. A few weeks later, my wife lost her phone (actually it was stolen), so I gave her the droid back and I ended up buying a new Samsung Galaxy Nexus for myself. Except for the fact that the price of the phone dropped by about $100 after a month of ownership, I have been very satisfied with this phone.
3 months to write an app.
In July of 2012, I decided that I'd try to write my own Android App. Three short months later, I published my first app to Google Play. The App Usage Monitor app that I published is incredibly simple, but I think a turnaround time from thinking about an app to publishing one is pretty good, given that I had never written Java before!
Not - In the money.
It's now late November, and there has now been 20 user installs, with 10 active user devices. I haven't solicited any of my friends or family to use my app, so these are all unbiased downloads and installs. Monetarily, there hasn't been much of a windfall. I have earned $1.98 in revenue from AdMob. In comparison, I've earned 47 cents from Adsense revenue linked from this blog, so I haven't really realized any financial benefit for my effort in this app or in this blog.
Was it worth it?
I judge this experience as a complete success. I developed an app that I like to use. I learned about a new development and deployment process - eclipse, git, Google Play store. I got to write some Java code. I had a lot to blog about.
Basically, I was creative and produced something. This, for me, is one of the most satisfying ways to spend your time. While consuming content (watching television, reading blogs, or listening to podcasts) is fun and enjoyable, it is much more fulfilling to struggle and create something, even if your audience is incredibly small.
The future
I think the app that I developed has all of the central components that I envisioned for it. Nevertheless, I have a few updates that I'd like to make to my app. These include adding another view that will make it easy to visualize data, making my app more tablet friendly, and providing better ways for a user to save their data. I think these are minor updates that shouldn't take me too long. After these features are implemented, I think I will begin working on a separate app. I plan to work on a very different type of app so that I can learn how other apps function.
Finally, in a somewhat related note, I think I will get a Nexus 7
for Christmas. It will make development on tablets easier and I hope it will open my eyes on new tablet friendly apps that I can develop. Also, it's just cool and I want one.
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