Hello!. I have a little tech app idea I'll love to startup. I made an educated guess that my target users are mostly on the android platform. At least 70-80%.Now I don't have funds to get a development team and I want to keep the expenses to the barest minimum. I have a little tech background. I have, used html, css, c# in the past. I always hated Java in school. But it seems I have to embrace it or Kotlin for the development of the app. I want to be able to build at least the MVP and try to gain traction. I am also thinking about cross platform options to cater for both Android and the few iOS users we may have. React Native and Flutter comes to mind. I also think I can get someone highly technical than myself as a co-founder to help. I will appreciate it if you can drop your 2 cents.

What makes this only useful to Android users?

@C0D4 it's useful to everyone. But majority of the users are using Android phones. About 85% Android /15% iOS ratio

@Haxk20 kindly chip in

Last time I checked react native was better with text selection / copy / paste handling.

Flutter was nicer in overall to develop application and deal with device api and third party extensions.

Flutter was more organized, everything worked and react native more chaotic even when using expo.

Good luck 🍀

@Infinix @vane Tahnks man for the input. So you saying if I wanna go with a cross platform tech, flutter is preferable to react native. Can you now make the same comparison between flutter and java/kotlin

@Infinix well i have made an app for a client, the ratio is 9 ios users for 1 android !
Maybe because it targets rich people. But still your expectations may be very wrong.

As your teck idea, please search well in the app store and the play if something "near" was ever made, and if not, before telling urseld that u may be the next Zuckerberg ask yourself why no one did it, or maybe a lot did it and never succeed becasue the idea is good for the user but cant be profitable and thus cannot survive is a very costy world.

After answering all that you must create some "executive todolist" for the app, a kind of task list required to develop the app. This will let u see what ressource you really need, a server ? A realtime server ? Security ? Payment systeem ?
As a consultant in this exact field with more than 10years of experience i saw many ideas never coming to reality because some juridical details that made the app just illegal ! (Especially payment system)

I say all this because when you start developing u will be so aware of "details" and will lose the "big picture" and this is where so many people fail.

As to answer you for the tech details, u said u did c#, c# and java are just equivalent, there even tool that translate java into c#, if u did c# u can do java with no problem at all.
Besides, andrid java is not very complicated, technically you must study the structure of a bunch of classes and everything get repeated so much.
Once you understand activity and fragment lifecycle, sharedpreference and view inflating your app is finished very soon.
Dont bother yourself with tools that are so new and Will change overtime. Android Java is stable, ive learned it 10 years ago when it was at version 2.2 and 9 years later I am still using the same skills. Maybe bit more aware of edging cases and best libraries to use.

My advice go for java, let your emotions not ruining it

@devapsarl Thank you. Would you mind being my consultant even if it's for a few days. We can discuss more details of the startup idea.

I'd like to volunteer myself to help you work on the android app, I've been pretty lazy these days. Here's my number if you'd like to have a chat +2348164727987.

@Infinix i will stay tuned on this rant ask any question u want bro.

@devapsarl Why do you suggest using Java instead of Kotlin when Android is now Kotlin first?

@Infinix because kotlin is still brand new, and many many libraries are not compatible yet.
Plus, there is still very few support about kotlin comparing to java on stackoverflow and globally. U may get stuck if u face a problem.
On the pros side, kotlin is very close to swift, so if u end up mastering kotlin, and if soon you are planning to go on ios dev it wont be very hard to learn swift

@Haxk20 OK, Thanks man

@devapsarl do you recommend cross platform development?

@Infinix no i dont, many people who did this ended up re-doing things natively.
Of course everything depends on the level of complexity of the app. But is general the main cons of cross plateform are:
1- debugging may be tricky
2- the app should be different on ios and android, the look and feel are different according to different ui spirit and hardware. So doing an app that runs the same on both plateform is a bad idea
3- lower level of support comparing to swift or java
4- performance
Etc