Top app development companies interview: HyperSense Software

AppFutura
Published on Apr 04, 2018 in App Development
Top app development companies interview: HyperSense Software

Andrei Neacsu is CTO/COO at HyperSense Software. This mobile app development company was founded in 2003 by Dan Negrea and Andrei Neacsu. It is located in Romania.

Here’s what Andrei Neacsu had to say about HyperSense Software and the mobile app development world.

Tell us a little bit about your previous work

I started working in software development as an iOS developer in 2009. I had a prior vast experience in C, C++ and JAVA. In 2012, I joined HyperSense Software in a moment of restructuring and revamping of the service line.

As CTO, I lead HyperSense into various fields. Between 2012 and 2014 we worked closely with EA Games and Chillingo on various projects that involved both mobile and web development. In 2013, https://us.trucrowd.com/ was launched as one of the first Equity Funding platforms in the US. I’ve also spearheaded our company in R&D projects that involved various mobile development fields like video processing, location tracking and m-commerce. In the field of video processing, our greatest success was the MyBlender app - an application capable of applying advanced video processing treatments such as chroma keys, blurs and track mattes at speeds greater than the video’s own playback speed (more details can be found here). On location tracking, we worked on the GEOREACH app which mainly targets the security sector. The most notable accomplishment of the GEOREACH app was the continuous tracking of the user’s location with a battery consumption of only 0.3% per hour.

What does your mobile app development company do?

First of all, HyperSense is a one-stop custom software development agency. We provide the whole range of services needed for mobile development, including consultancy and mobile app strategy. We are not bound to any frameworks, as we possess the skills and knowledge to build any software from scratch.

Second, working with HyperSense actually means working with the whole team of highly trained experts in their fields. Even if a client “hires” one iOS developer they will benefit from the combined expertise of the whole company - expertise that covers native iOS and Android development, web development, UI/UX, software architecture, DevOps and many other features.

Which clients have you worked for?

In the past, we’ve worked with EA Games, Chillingo, ALD Automotive, truCrowd, MyBlender and many others.

If you had to choose one category, what kind of app do you think is your mobile app development company’s specialty?

One category of mobile apps we excel in, is Social Media applications. We especially enjoy working on them because they are complex, and require knowledge in different fields such as: multimedia processing, content delivery, advanced animations, end-to-end encrypted chat systems, advanced user access writes, location tracking, maps and many others.

One Social Media mobile app we released about a year ago and to which we are continuously adding new features and maintaining is CrossLife (more details about the CrossLife app’s ecosystem can be found here). CrossLife allows users to share videos on Youtube, images, it uses AWS CloudFront (CDN) to fast deliver media to users, has a secure chat system and a complex leaderboard system (with a strong server backend component for calculating scores).

Society is another great example of Social Media applications we have developed. Society is a Social Media app developed especially for groups and one of its’ main features is the fact that it enables users to share videos. The videos are transcoded using the AWS Transcoder to an adaptive bitrate format which allows them to also be viewed on low bandwidth mobile networks.

What is the average budget of the mobile apps you develop?

Based on the last five years, an average budget would be around $20.000 per app. I would emphasise that most of the applications we developed are quite complex and native to iOS and Android versions.

Do you develop all mobile apps in-house or do you outsource some parts of the process?

We ONLY develop mobile and web apps in-house.

Pros of developing in-house

  • High-end quality control
  • Faster delivery and release cycles
  • Closer relationship with our customers and availability for them to meet in person with the development team
  • Increased transparency

Cons of developing in-house

  • It takes a bit longer to scale our business, leading sometimes to the delayed start of the project
  • Our staff training is more expensive and time consuming

Which would you say are the best mobile apps that your company has developed and why?

If I had to choose 3 apps they would be: MyBlender, CrossLife and GEOREACH. I will explain my reasons in short.

MyBlender is probably the most advanced video processing application available on App Store (it also has a native Android counterpart available). MyBlender is like having Adobe Premiere in your pocket - and this is not all: admins can create video treatments using an online tool and they become available in MyBlender instantly.

CrossLife is a full-featured Social Media application created for the CrossFitters community. It contains the following features: video and image sharing, event creation and reminders, secure chat, a Work Out of the Day generator, complex leaderboard and many other features.

GEOREACH is an application especially developed for the security field. It tracks the user’s location and reports it securely (using ECDH encryption) to a secure server, and it does this by only consuming 0.3% battery per hour. It also features an end-to-end encrypted chat, has an SOS module that can be triggered by a secret button combination without needing to have the app in foreground.

Do you prefer to build mobile apps with native, hybrid or web languages?

We prefer to develop mobile apps with native languages. We use SWIFT for iOS and Kotlin for Android, but we also provide support for Objective-C and JAVA.

There are two main arguments why we support the development of native apps: high reliability and lower lifetime costs due to lesser maintenance need. More details about our thoughts on this subject can be found here.

Let’s focus on iOS and Android mobile app development. Which are the Pros and Cons of each platform?

Let’s start with iOS:

iOS Pros

  • Considered more secure and reliable than Android
  • Highly optimised hardware-software environment
  • Easier to develop apps due to limited device range
  • Highly developed app marketplace (App Store)

iOS Cons

  • Harder to find Obj-C and SWIFT developers
  • Closed OS ecosystem with limited access to core functionalities
  • Limited device range

And let’s tackle Android as well:

Android Pros

  • Open-source OS
  • A bit more features available on Android
  • JAVA developers are easier to find
  • Easier development for both phones and tablets

Android Cons

  • Considered to be less secure than iOS
  • The large range of devices makes development and testing a bit more difficult
  • Less development support documentation compared to iOS

Which one will evolve more within the next 5 years?

Most probably Android will evolve more in the next 5 years. If iOS benefits from a very well established app marketplace, Android has a huge device range that attracts more users. In the last 2 years we’ve also noticed an improvement in user perception on Android security features. It also seems that Android has fixed many of its’ UX issues and has improved the overall user experience, making it feel like a premium mobile operating system. And last, but definitely not least, we’ve seen a lot of improvements on hardware and on pricing for Android premium devices.

Which device is the best in the market right now?

Firstly, I would like to express a personal opinion on Android vs. iOS devices: Android devices are better suited for the end-users (better quality and features/price ratio) while iOS devices are better suited for app publishers (due to higher ROI on the App Store).

Personally, I’m looking forward to the release of the new iPhone, OnePlus 6 and Xiaomi Mi Mix 2s (i’m especially looking forward to testing the fingerprint sensor integrated in the display).

And which device do you feel more comfortable developing an app for?

I really don’t have a preference here. In the past I’ve worked as an iOS developer and I enjoyed developing for any one of Apple’s devices, including the Apple Watch.

Why is AppFutura useful to you?

For us, at HyperSense Software, AppFutura is a partner that helps us reach a vaster range of clients. We truly appreciate our collaboration with AppFutura and I personally recommend this collaboration to any app and web development company. Only by having a company account on AppFutura, the door opens to the possibility of connecting to new potential clients.

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