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Latest Mobile Dev Insights: iOS, Android, Cross-Platform

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MobilePro #182: Stack Overflow Survey 2025, Flutter on iOS, Apple’s iOS 26 beta, GitHub introduces Spark, and more…

Hi ,

Welcome to the 182nd edition of MobilePro! This week’s edition dives into Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, Apple and Google’s OS upgrades, major developer tool releases, and insightful community learnings shaping the tech landscape:

📊 Stack Overflow 2025: The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey is out! There's a lot of useful data in there but a trend to keep note of is that even though developers' AI use skyrockets, accuracy concerns rise sharply. Developers are increasingly distrustful of the accuracy of AI tools.
🦾 Flutter on iOS: Flutter now offers robust iOS support with native UI integration, App Clip targets, and seamless multi-platform development, all from a single codebase.
📱 Apple’s iOS 26 Beta: Apple rolls out iOS 26 with a Liquid Glass design, smarter Apple Intelligence, and the return of AI‑powered Notification Summaries.
🧠 Apple Foundation Models: Apple reveals its Foundation Models for iOS 26: local and cloud‑based AI powering Apple Intelligence with strong privacy controls.
⚡ GitHub Spark: GitHub introduces Spark, an AI‑powered tool that builds and runs “micro apps” from natural language prompts.
🔥 Firebase Updates: Firebase releases major SDK updates, renames libraries, and boosts tooling across Android, iOS, and Flutter.
🏗️ Mastering Swift 6.2 Concurrency: A complete tutorial on Swift 6.2’s async/await and structured concurrency for modern app development.

Stick around for this week’sDeveloper Tipto configure custom notification sounds in Flutter, andtheDid You Know?section to learn about the upcoming launch of GPT‑5.

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📱 What's Happening in Mobile Development?

If there’s any major news in the world of mobile app dev in the last week, MobilePro has you covered.

Apple

Apple’s iOS 26 beta brings major redesign and revives a controversial AI feature: Apple’s iOS 26 public beta introduces the sleek new Liquid Glass visual design alongside major app upgrades like smarter Apple Intelligence, revamped Camera, Messages, Maps, Wallet, CarPlay, and a new Games app. Notably, Apple has reinstated its controversial AI‑powered Notification Summaries for news apps in beta 4 with clearer opt‑in controls and warning labels after the feature was previously pulled in early 2025 due to misinformation issues.
Flutter brings first‑class iOS support for cross‑platform app development: Flutter’s iOS support empowers developers to build high-quality, performant apps for both iOS and Android from a single codebase, with support for native UI integration and modern graphics. It streamlines workflows with tools like platform channels, App Clip targets, and robust IDE setup while keeping pace with the latest iOS releases—though it notes some beta iOS 26 debug mode limitations for physical devices.
Apple Shares Details on Upcoming AI Foundation Models for iOS 26: Apple’s Foundation Models in iOS 26 consist of a 3-billion-parameter model that runs locally on Apple Silicon devices, alongside a larger model deployed via Apple’s Private Cloud Compute—both trained using licensed, synthetic, and responsibly crawled data with fine‑tuning and reinforcement learning. These models form the technical core of Apple Intelligence, enabling advanced on‑device AI features while maintaining strict privacy protections.
Expo introduces precompiled React Native for iOS: Expo (in collaboration with Meta) is introducing precompiled React Native for iOS in React Native 0.81 / Expo SDK 54, which slashes clean build times by up to 10× for projects where React Native is the primary dependency. It uses prebuilt XCFrameworks for both React Native and its dependencies (including simulator and Catalyst builds), delivered via Swift Package Manager, with source builds still supported for debugging.

Android

Google's second Android Canary release is already out for Pixel devices: Google is rolling out Android Canary 2507 (build ZP11.250627.009) to compatible Pixel devices, offering experimental updates such as expanded forced dark mode, refined UI elements like rounded lock‑screen shortcuts and toggle contrast, and early support for graphical Linux applications via the Linux Terminal app. This Canary release represents Google’s second iteration in its new year‑round Canary channel—tailored for developers to test cutting‑edge APIs—though it's not recommended for everyday primary devices due to its experimental nature.
What’s new in Android’s July 2025 Google System Updates [U: 7/28]: Google’s July2025 System Updates deliver incremental enhancements across Play Services, Play Store, Android System Intelligence, Private Compute Services, and Wallet on Android phones, tablets, Wear OS, Auto, TV, and PCs. Highlights include simplified system management settings, streamlined document scanning, easier Wallet transit card transfers and season‑pass purchases, AI/ML improvements for developers, improved key verification UI, app recommendations via Play Store, and new task-driven features and loyalty card scanning.
Samsung DeX gets a redesign based on Android 16’s desktop mode [Gallery]: Samsung’s DeX in One UI 8 has been rebuilt on top of Android 16’s native desktop mode, offering a refreshed interface with a centered taskbar, vertical app drawer, and revamped Quick Settings panel for smoother, more consistent PC‑style usability. While the overall functionality feels familiar, several smaller Samsung-specific features—like Lock/Exit DeX buttons, pinning apps, and custom taskbar settings—are currently missing in this early rollout.

Others

Stack Overflow 2025 survey reveals booming AI use but deep developer mistrust: Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, featuring over 49,000 respondents across 177 countries, finds that AI tool adoption has surged to 84%, yet trust in their output has plunged, with only 33% of developers believing AI-generated solutions are accurate; many report “almost right” AI code introduces productivity-draining technical debt. 
.NET MAUI 10 Preview 6: MediaPicker improvements, WebView interception, and control fixes: Microsoft’s .NET MAUI 10 Preview 6 enhances developer productivity with key updates to MediaPicker—supporting multiple file selection and in‑API image compression—and adds WebView request interception for custom header handling or redirects. It also boosts performance and stability with fixes across core controls like CollectionView, CarouselView, SearchBar, and resolves memory leaks in iOS handlers. Preview 6 supports Android API levels 35 & 36 and includes diagnostics and interop improvements across platforms.
Firebase rolls out major updates: Firebase has rolled out major updates in July 2025, including Firebase JavaScript SDK v12.0.0 (requiring Node.js 20 and ES2020) and Firebase Android BoM v34.0.0, which brings breaking changes like removal of Kotlin extensions (KTX) and the renamed Firebase AI Logic library replacing firebase-vertexai. The Flutter SDK BoM v3.13.0 (July 1) adds bug fixes and new Cloud Functions features, while the Unity SDK v13.0.0 (July 24) upgrades to Android BoM v34.0.0 and iOS Cocoapods v12.0.0. Additional updates include CLI tool v14.6.0 and C++ SDK v12.8.0 with platform upgrades for improved tooling and backend support.
GitHub introduces Spark AI, which creates apps with natural language: GitHub has introduced Spark, an experimental tool under GitHub Next that lets users create and run “micro apps” from simple natural language prompts. Users can choose between OpenAI’s GPT or Claude Sonnet models, with Spark not only generating the code but also running the app and offering a live, interactive preview for iterative refinements.

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Bring your Flutter app to life with custom notification sounds! This step‑by‑step video guide shows you how to use FCM and flutter_local_notifications to set up unique sounds, manage channels, and create a standout user experience.

In case you have any tips to share with your fellow mobile developers, do reply to this mail and we’d be glad to feature you in a future edition of MobilePro.

💭 What is the Mobile Community Talking About?

What are mobile app developers discussing? Do you have any concerns, advice, or tutorials to share?MobileProbrings them to you all in one place.

Flutter + Firebase video showcases cross-platform app dev power: A new Flutter video dives into how Flutter’s architecture, developer tools, and widgets integrate seamlessly with Firebase’s backend services to streamline cross-platform app development. It demonstrates how to quickly build high-quality apps for iOS and Android.
Grounding with Google Search in the Firebase AI Logic client SDKs: Explore how Firebase AI Logic now uses Google Search grounding for Gemini models bringing real‑time, citation‑backed answers to your apps and reducing AI hallucinations.
The dark corners of inline, crossinline, and reified in Kotlin: Discover Kotlin’s “dark corners” of inline, crossinline, and reified—what their true capabilities and pitfalls are when optimizing lambdas and type handling in modern high‑performance code.
Mastering Swift 6.2 Concurrency: A Complete Tutorial: Unlock the full potential of Swift 6.2 concurrency with this comprehensive guide—covering async/await, structured concurrency, and best practices for building efficient, modern Swift apps.
Fade in images with a placeholder: Get started with Flutter’s Fading In Images Cookbook to smoothly transition from placeholder to real images in your apps using FadeInImage, network or asset loading, and customizable effects.

📚️ Latest in Mobile Development from Packt

MobilePro presents the latest titles from Packt that ought to be useful for mobile developers.

A perfect book for developers who have a fundamental grasp of the Swift language and who aspire to take their development skills to the next level by learning some of the advanced topics and techniques of the Swift Language.

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🧠Master the latest Swift 6.2 features to enhance your application development

🤖Learn advanced techniques like concurrency, memory management, Generics, and Swift Testing

💡 Apply best practices in Swift to write clean, scalable, and maintainable code

Mastering Swift 6

Pre-order now at $44.99!

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OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT‑5 in early August 2025, consolidating its GPT-series and o-series (o3 reasoning) models into a single unified system. The release is expected to include mini and nano variants, with timelines still subject to changes due to testing and infrastructure constraints.

Sourced from Reuters.

👋 And that’s a wrap. We hope you enjoyed this edition of MobilePro. If you have any suggestions and feedback, or would just like to say hi to us, please write to us. Just respond to this email!

Cheers,

Runcil Rebello,

Editor-in-Chief, MobilePro