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Mobile development blogs, tutorials and resources inside!Latest Mobile Dev Insights: iOS, Android, Cross-PlatformAdvertise with Us|Sign Up to the NewsletterMobilePro #187: iOS 26 beta, Android 16 QPR2, new Flutter releases, revised Play Store rules, and more...Final chance to book a spot in the MCP Workshop on August 30th, 2025Save your Spot!Hi ,Welcome to another week of MobilePro; this is edition no. 187. Recently, there have been reports of Apple talking to its direct competitor, Google, over integrating the latter’s AI assistant, Gemini, to revamp Siri on iPhones. This follows closely from previous reports that Apple has been approaching companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to gauge whether they can enter into tie-ups over ChatGPT or Claude.Now, many iOS users have been annoyed over AI capabilities in their iPhones not being what was promised to them in 2024, leading to the Apple team taking a step back in their mentions of AI during WWDC in 2025. In light of that, partnerships with Anthropic or OpenAI make sense. However, a potential partnership with Google does sound like a deal with the enemy. Will iOS users be okay with their data being shared with a Google tool? Many iOS users avoid Android as much as they can. Would a Siri powered by Gemini lead to users turning off Siri altogether on their iPhones?Conversely, wouldn’t you use Siri more if it’s more useful and efficient? At least that’s the bet Apple is making. Things are yet in the air though, and the possibilities are endless. News has also trickled out that iPhones meant for businesses will give its IT administrators greater control over which AI tools can be used and to what extent. Among other things, companies can decide if data should be processed in the cloud or on the device itself. You won’t have to wait long for this. It’ll be a part of the iOS 26 release in the next month.Of course, that’s not all the news this week. Let’s dive in.✨ iOS & iPadOS 26 beta 8 ships with Recovery Assistant and Apple Intelligence boosts: Fixes iPhone 15/16 bugs and enhances ARKit, HealthKit, and dev tools.🤖 Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1 debuts minor SDK versioning: Smoother cross-device experiences, richer APIs, and faster dev updates.⚖️ Google reshapes Play Store rules in EEA under DMA pressure: Allows external payments but adds up to 20% fees, sparking “malicious compliance” criticism.🛡️ Android to require verified developers from 2026: New “ID check” security layer launches in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.🛠️ Flutter 3.35 stable + 3.36 beta released back-to-back: Hot reload, Widget Previews, and rapid iteration show fast framework evolution.🎨 Vibe coder vs. senior iOS engineer face off on Granola AI clone: Highlights how AI-assisted dev stacks against seasoned engineering.🍔 Flutter fuels Burger King’s loyalty app success: Rebel App Studio built a new loyalty and ordering app for Burger King Finland in just three months, boosting app-driven sales by 51% through shared Flutter code.Stick around for this week’sDeveloper Tip to add push notifications to your Android or iOS app in just 10 minutesandtheDid You Know? section to to know how Google’s appeal was rejected in an antitrust case.Let’s dive in!📱 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.AppleiOS & iPadOS 26 beta 8 released: Apple has rolled out iOS & iPadOS 26 beta 8, bundled with Xcode 26, introducing Recovery Assistant for device troubleshooting, new accessibility labels on App Store pages, and expanded Apple Intelligence features. The update also fixes key bugs—like startup issues on iPhone 15/16 models—while adding enhancements across ARKit, HealthKit, journaling, and developer frameworks.Apple releases iOS 18.6.2 for iPhone, here’s what’s new: Apple has released iOS 18.6.2, a stability-focused update that delivers important security fixes without new features. It may be the final iOS 18 update before iOS 26 rolls out next month.AndroidAndroid 16 QPR2 Beta 1 is out: Google just dropped Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1, giving developers early access to new APIs and features. This release focuses on smoother experiences across devices, richer app capabilities, and better dev tools—plus it’s the first Android beta with a minor SDK version, letting Google ship innovations faster without breaking app compatibility.Google alters Play Store developer fees and rules in the EEA: Google is revamping Play Store rules in the EEA to comply with the EU’s DMA, letting developers link to external payment options and even direct app downloads—but with new “service fees” of up to 20% and strict search visibility tiers. Critics, including Epic’s Tim Sweeney, argue the changes amount to “malicious compliance” that keeps alternative payments uncompetitive.A new layer of security for certified Android devices: Starting in 2026, Android will require all apps on certified devices to come from verified developers, adding an “ID check” layer of accountability to fight scams and malware. The rollout begins in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, with global expansion planned in 2027.Cross-platform and OthersFlutter 3.35 and 3.36 beta released: The Flutter team is on a roll—hot on the heels of Flutter 3.35, which introduced highlights like stateful hot reload and Widget Previews, they’ve already dropped the beta of Flutter 3.36. Flutter 3.35 was released as a stable build on August 14, 2025, and the beta version 3.36.0-0.1.pre followed the very same day, signaling the team’s fast pace in pushing new improvements and features forward.Google expands its Developer program: Google has expanded its Developer Program with a new $24.99/month plan that includes AI-powered tools, Google Cloud credits, and Firebase resources, plus a unified forum at discuss.google.dev for collaboration. Developers can also join the new Google Cloud & NVIDIA community for exclusive AI learning pathways and credits.Rebel App Studio crafts a Flutter-powered Burger King loyalty app in just three months: Collaborating closely with Burger King Finland and Restel, Rebel App Studio leveraged shared Flutter code to build a branded loyalty and ordering app in record time, anchored by agile design, user feedback validation, and strong code reuse. The result? A 51% jump in app-driven sales and a notable boost in customer loyalty, all achieved via a seamless, native-feeling mobile experience.Dart and Flutter MCP Server powers AI agents with deep project context: The MCP server bridges Dart/Flutter projects and AI assistants by exposing tools for tasks like error analysis, layout debugging, and package search, all via the standardized Model Context Protocol. It supports clients such as Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Firebase Studio, and Cursor, enabling AI agents to reason about code context and act with precision.FlashList v2 brings estimate-free, high-precision lists to React Native’s new architecture: Shopify has completely rewritten FlashList for React Native’s new architecture, dropping the need for item size estimates while delivering faster load times, smoother scrolling, and pixel-perfect rendering. The JS-only solution also improves horizontal list support, layout animations, and developer ergonomics, and is now production-ready across Shopify’s mobile apps.Artificial Intelligence (AI)Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context—a 5x boost that enables analyzing full codebases, synthesizing massive document sets, and powering more context-aware agents. The feature is in public beta on Anthropic’s API and Amazon Bedrock, with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI support coming soon.Gemini 2.5 Pro is generally available in Copilot: Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro is now generally available in GitHub Copilot, bringing advanced reasoning, coding, math, and science capabilities. Copilot Pro users can access it immediately, while Business and Enterprise admins must enable it in settings.Want to add push notifications to your Android or iOS app in just 10 minutes? This guide from DEV Community walks you through integrating Clix—a tool that handles device token setup, unified SDK integration, real-time delivery logs, and lightning-fast messaging—so you can avoid the usual configuration headaches and ship faster. Check it out here.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.Vibe coder vs. senior iOS engineer: Granola AI clone showdown: In this experiment, Vishal Dubey, a senior iOS engineer and Riley Brown, a vibe-coder, each try to build a Granola AI clone. The challenge highlights how far vibe coding has come and whether AI-assisted development can rival the craftsmanship of an experienced iOS engineer.Antoine van der Lee on mastering computed properties in Swift: Computed properties in Swift allow you to dynamically calculate values instead of storing them directly, making them a powerful way to encapsulate logic and keep types clean. Antoine explains how they work, when to use them, and the pitfalls to avoid.Clean architecture isn’t just code; it’s the backbone of resilient mobile products: Roman Kamyshnikov emphasizes that clean architecture enables early-stage apps to scale confidently by enforcing clear feature boundaries and modular APIs, avoiding costly late-stage refactoring. In regulated domains like fintech and insurtech, pairing Jetpack Compose with layered architecture ensures traceability, parallel development, and compliance, all without sacrificing velocity.📚️ Latest in Mobile Development from PacktMobilePro presents the latest titles from Packt that ought to be useful for mobile developers.If you are a beginner or an intermediate-level developer with no prior experience in Android app development, this book is for you.🏗️ Build real-world Android apps with Kotlin and the Jetpack Compose UI framework📚 Leverage the latest libraries to accelerate your Android development💡 Overcome development challenges with tips and tricks from experienced Android professionalsHow to Build Android Application with KotlinPre-order now at $44.99!A U.S. appeals court has unanimously upheld a 2023 jury verdict that labeled Google’s Play Store and its in-app payment system an illegal monopoly. As a result, Google must now allow rival app stores, open its app catalog to competitors, and permit developers to use their own billing systems—a major shakeup in Android app distribution.Sourced from App Developer Magazine.👋 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*{box-sizing:border-box}body{margin:0;padding:0}a[x-apple-data-detectors]{color:inherit!important;text-decoration:inherit!important}#MessageViewBody a{color:inherit;text-decoration:none}p{line-height:inherit}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{mso-hide:all;display:none;max-height:0;overflow:hidden}.image_block img+div{display:none}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0}#converted-body .list_block ol,#converted-body .list_block ul,.body [class~=x_list_block] ol,.body [class~=x_list_block] ul,u+.body .list_block ol,u+.body .list_block ul{padding-left:20px} @media (max-width: 100%;display:block}.mobile_hide{min-height:0;max-height:0;max-width: 100%;overflow:hidden;font-size:0}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{display:table!important;max-height:none!important}}

FREE GUIDE: Airflow 3 Tips & Code SnippetsFREE GUIDE: Airflow 3 Tips & Code SnippetsThinking about upgrading to Apache Airflow® 3? You’ll get powerful new features like a modernized UI, event-based scheduling, and streamlined backfills. Quick Notes: Airflow 3 Tips & Code Snippets is a concise, code-filled guide to help you start developing DAGs in Airflow 3 today.You’ll learn:How to run Airflow 3 locally (with dark mode) and navigate the new UIHow to manage DAG versioning and write DAGs with the new @asset-oriented approachThe key architectural changes from Airflow 2 to 3GET YOUR FREE GUIDESponsoredSubscribe|Submit a tip|Advertise with UsWelcome to BIPro #111: Expert Insight EditionWe’re excited to introduce Sagar Lad, Lead Data Solution Architect at a leading Dutch bank, as our newest Expert Insight contributor. Each week, Sagar will share battle-tested lessons, practical tips, and implementation strategies for building resilient data products in the Gen AI and Agentic AI era.He kicks off this week with a deep dive into Data Products: Turning Data into Tangible Value, showing how to move from concept to measurable business impact. This marks the start of a series designed to help you apply hard-won expertise directly into your data practice.Alongside Sagar’s expert guidance, here are this week’s top stories in data & BI:🔗 Zero-Latency Data Analytics for PostgreSQL Apps – AWS introduces zero-ETL integration from RDS PostgreSQL to Redshift, enabling real-time analytics without fragile pipelines.🔗Amazon Q Developer CLI – From theory to practice: AI-powered project advisor that turns AWS certification knowledge into hands-on portfolio projects.🔗Map Visualization in BigQuery Studio – GA launch brings geospatial queries to life, letting analysts instantly visualize and interact with Earth Engine datasets.🔗Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB – Expanded global rollout with compute/storage scaling, Multi-AZ replicas, and InfluxDB 3 migration path for time series workloads.🔗Power BI Semantic Model Refresh Templates (Preview) – Orchestrate refreshes with Fabric Data Pipelines, supporting event-driven triggers, incremental refreshes, sequencing, and alerts.As always, our mission is to connect you with first-hand expert insights and timely news updates, so you can stay ahead of change while sharpening your craft.Cheers,Merlyn ShelleyGrowth Lead, PacktData Products: Turning Data into Tangible Value - By Sagar LadIn today’s digital economy, data has become one of the most valuable assets for organizations. Every transaction, interaction, and process generates data that — when properly harnessed — can unlock powerful insights, drive innovation, and create competitive advantages. However, simply collecting and storing vast amounts of data is not enough. To truly realize its value, organizations must transform data into usable, scalable, and outcome-driven solutions. This is where the concept of adata productcomes into play.A data product is not just raw data, but rather a packaged, consumable, and value-generating asset built on top of data. Just as traditional products solve customer needs, data products solve business challenges by delivering insights, predictions, or automated decisions in a way that is accessible and reliable for end users.What is a Data Product?At its core, adata productis a solution designed around data to serve a specific purpose or generate business value. It could take many forms — such as a dashboard, an API serving machine learning predictions, a recommendation engine, or even a dataset curated for a particular domain.For example:→ Netflix’s recommendation systemis a data product built to enhance user engagement.Characteristics of a data product include:1. Purpose-driven— It is built to achieve a clear outcome (e.g., increase sales, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction).2. Reusable— A well-designed data product can serve multiple teams or applications.3. Consumable— It is packaged in a way that non-technical users or systems can leverage it seamlessly.4. Scalable— It is designed to evolve with changing business needs and data volumes.Data Product: Bridge between Producer & ConsumerData Products vs. Data AssetsIt is important to differentiate betweendata assetsanddata products.Adata assetcould be a data lake, warehouse, or dataset that stores raw or processed data. While valuable, assets by themselves may not generate outcomes unless someone analyzes them.Adata product, on the other hand, transforms these assets into actionable, consumable outputs that stakeholders can directly use to make decisions or power business processes.In other words, data assets are ingredients, while data products are the finished dishes that customers can consume.Why Do Organizations Need Data Products?Organizations often struggle with extracting value from their data investments. Billions of dollars are spent globally on data platforms, yet many businesses face the“last mile problem”— where insights fail to reach decision-makers in a meaningful way. Data products help bridge this gap by operationalizing data and embedding it into workflows.Key benefits of data products include:1. Faster Decision-MakingWith well-packaged insights, business users don’t need to spend hours querying databases or waiting for reports. A data product like a sales forecasting model can instantly provide actionable intelligence.2. Democratization of DataData products abstract technical complexity, enabling business users, analysts, and applications to easily consume data-driven insights.3. Standardization and ReusabilityInstead of rebuilding analytics pipelines repeatedly, a single data product can serve multiple business units. For example, a customer segmentation data product could be reused by marketing, sales, and product teams.4. Scalability and AutomationData products, once designed, can be scaled to handle growing data volumes and embedded into automated workflows.5. Value RealizationUltimately, data products help organizations move beyond storing data tomonetizing and operationalizing it— whether through cost savings, revenue generation, or improved customer experiences.Key Principles for Designing Data ProductsDesigning a successful data product requires more than technical skills — it requires product thinking. Some guiding principles include:1.Start with Business ValueA data product must solve a real business problem. Before building, clearly define the outcome it should drive.2. User-Centric DesignThe product should be intuitive for its target users, whether that’s executives, developers, or customers.3. Trust & TransparencyUsers must trust the data product. This requires data quality checks, explainability in AI models, and governance measures.4. Scalability & ReusabilityBuild products that can adapt to future needs, serve multiple stakeholders, and scale across datasets and domains.5. OperationalizationA data product should integrate seamlessly into business workflows and systems, rather than existing as a standalone artifact.6. Monitoring & ImprovementData products must be continuously monitored for performance, accuracy, and relevance, with feedback loops for improvements.Challenges in Building Data ProductsWhile data products are powerful, organizations face challenges in creating and scaling them:1. Data Quality Issues: Poor data leads to unreliable products.2. Cultural Resistance: Teams may hesitate to trust automated insights.3. Lack of Product Mindset: Many companies treat data as IT projects, not products.4. Scalability Hurdles: A data product may work for a pilot but struggle in enterprise-wide deployments.5. Governance & Compliance: Ensuring data products adhere to regulatory and ethical standards is critical.Overcoming these requires strongdata governance, clear ownership, cross-functional collaboration, and a product-centric approach.Read the full article on our Packt Medium page, and don’t forget to follow us for more expert insights like this.💡 Smarter Insights This Week🔳 Power BI August 2025 Feature Summary: What if Power BI could think smarter for you? The August 2025 Feature Summary delivers Copilot in SharePoint Online, automated measure descriptions, and filtered report summaries. Plus, Pro workspace org apps, advanced modeling with Databricks Direct Lake, new connectors, and visual upgrades, all boosting speed, scale, and smarter insights.🔳 Benchmarking AWS S3 Performance With Python Scripts: Ever wondered if your AWS S3 storage is really as fast or cheap, as promised? This guide shows how Python benchmarking uncovers latency and throughput trade-offs across storage classes. Learn setup, key metrics, practical scripts, and best practices to balance cost and performance while avoiding hidden bottlenecks.🔳 Zero-Latency Data Analytics for Modern PostgreSQL Apps: Tired of building fragile data pipelines? AWS now offers zero-ETL integration from RDS PostgreSQL to Redshift, announced July 23, 2025. Stream transactional data in seconds, apply filters per integration, and even automate setup with CloudFormation, unlocking real-time analytics and ML without the overhead of ETL.🔳 Using Google’s LangExtract and Gemma for Structured Data Extraction: Struggling to make sense of dense documents? Google’s LangExtract framework with Gemma 3 LLM makes structured data extraction from long unstructured text faster, smarter, and traceable. With chunking, parallel processing, and iterative passes, it surfaces key facts, like insurance policy exclusions, turning legalese into structured, plain-English insights you can actually use.🔳 From theory to practice using Amazon Q Developer CLI to generate tailored AWS projects: Too much AWS theory, not enough practice? That’s where most learners stall. Amazon’s Q Developer CLI transforms study into action by suggesting skill-matched projects and guiding implementation with CLI commands. From S3 websites to CloudFront and IaC, it makes building practical, portfolio-ready AWS projects achievable for everyone.🔳 Zero-ETL: How AWS is tackling data integration challenges? In this blog post, we explore how AWS is simplifying data integration with zero-ETL, replacing fragile pipelines with real-time replication. From Aurora, RDS, and DynamoDB to Redshift and SageMaker, zero-ETL reduces costs, handles schema changes automatically, and delivers near-instant analytics, transforming integration from an engineering burden into a strategic advantage.🔳 Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB: Expanding managed open source time series databases for data-driven insights and real-time decision making? Time series data is exploding, powering everything from IoT to gaming. AWS Timestream for InfluxDB now spans 19 Regions, offering compute/storage scaling, Multi-AZ replicas, and 24xlarge instances. Backed by a strategic partnership with InfluxData, customers gain real-time analytics, high cardinality support, and a migration path to InfluxDB 3.🔳 Firestore with MongoDB compatibility is now GA: At Google Cloud Next ’25, Firestore previewed MongoDB compatibility, and it’s now generally available. Developers can reuse MongoDB code, drivers, and tools with Firestore’s serverless database, gaining multi-region replication, 99.999% availability, PITR recovery, triggers, and enterprise-grade security. With expanded API support and Firebase access, Firestore delivers scalable, cost-efficient document storage.🔳 Earth Engine raster analytics and visualization in BigQuery geospatial: Geospatial data holds untapped business value. Now generally available, Earth Engine in BigQuery lets analysts join satellite imagery with structured data for richer insights, from disaster risk to supply chain planning. Paired with new map visualization in BigQuery Studio, it transforms complex geospatial queries into intuitive, interactive decision-making tools.🔳 Semantic Model Refresh Templates in Power BI (Preview). Keeping data models fresh can be complex. With Semantic Model Refresh Templates in Power BI (preview), you can orchestrate refreshes using Fabric Data Pipelines, supporting event-driven triggers, incremental refresh, sequencing multiple models, and automated alerts. The guided setup makes advanced refresh workflows easier, faster, and more reliable for analysts.See you next time!*{box-sizing:border-box}body{margin:0;padding:0}a[x-apple-data-detectors]{color:inherit!important;text-decoration:inherit!important}#MessageViewBody a{color:inherit;text-decoration:none}p{line-height:inherit}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{mso-hide:all;display:none;max-height:0;overflow:hidden}.image_block img+div{display:none}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0}#converted-body .list_block ol,#converted-body .list_block ul,.body [class~=x_list_block] ol,.body [class~=x_list_block] ul,u+.body .list_block ol,u+.body .list_block ul{padding-left:20px} @media (max-width: 100%;display:block}.mobile_hide{min-height:0;max-height:0;max-width: 100%;overflow:hidden;font-size:0}.desktop_hide,.desktop_hide table{display:table!important;max-height:none!important}}