The digest of news from the world of mobile development for the last week No. 21 (July 15-21, 2013)

This week a new version of PhoneGap was released, Yandex told how it made the interface of its dialer, VKontakte and Google announced their application contests, finally, the web version of Google Play was updated. In addition, we made a new design for the digest.

The best

PhoneGap 3.0 with new modular architecture and new APIs

The new version of PhoneGap introduces a new modular architecture that, according to the company, "will allow your application to remain small and fast." Developers can simply select the necessary APIs, after which the necessary plugins will be automatically installed.

VLC is back on the App Store

VLC 2.0, written from scratch, is licensed under both the GNU General Public License v2 and the Mozilla Public License v2. “MPLv2 is well suited for distribution through the App Store,” said one of the developers of VideoLAN.

The difficult part is obvious: how did we make the call interface in Yandex.Shell

In this article, Yandex designers talk about how they created the seemingly sometimes obvious thing, like the call interface in Yandex.Shell.

New Developer Economics Report Released

This week another Developer Economics report was released for the third quarter of 2013. The study is based on a survey of more than 6,000 developers. This is the largest market research and mobile development economics in the world.

Android

• Contest VKontakte - Android messenger with encryption (VKontakte)
  Pavel Durov holds a contest among Android developers, the prize fund of which ranges from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 rubles.
• Competition of mobile applications for the city Moscow App Contest'13 (Habr)
  Competition for the best application that solves urban problems and makes everyday life of residents of a metropolis easier and more enjoyable, held from July 17 to September 20, 2013 in conjunction with the Moscow Department of Information Technologies.
• Beacon Mountain - Now For MacOS X (Intel)
• The web version of the Google Play store (Play) has been updated
• Ice cream cart on request from the mobile application (Habr)

iOS

• Not for print. How we launched the magazine for the iPad (Habr)
  The story of the creation of the Russian automobile magazine WTF automotive magazine for iOS.
• Haxe + OpenFL: even my grandmother can make a game for iOS! (Habr)

Windows phone

• New Nokia Imaging SDK and graphic applications: details (Habr)
• Microsoft wants to attract developers to create Companion Web services (Apps4All)
  The company is launching a new project called Companion Web, which, according to rumors, will allow using the Internet to combine all the devices we use.

Development

• Is your application slow? This is because our civilization is dying.
  
• What are games: cultural gap of mobile games (Apps4All)
  An interesting article about the role of the community for mobile games.
• Game development is no longer an industry driven by hits (Apps4All)
  The market is such that there is room for every game.
• Telerik updated its Kendo UI HTML5 framework (Kendo UI)
• Winter Nights 2013: Supercell on development secrets (App2Top)

Marketing and monetization

• Free2Play MMORPG. Types of players and their monetization (Habr)
• PRninja for iPad will help you in promoting applications (App Store)
  Maria Petrenko (apparently our compatriot) has created a free iPad application that can guide you through all stages of the PR campaign for your application.

Devices

• How to connect a smartphone to a car - get to practice: Part 2 (Habr)
• Video review HTC One mini. The inexpensive simplified version of HTC One (Habr)
• LG Optimus G Pro (Habr)
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (Habr)
  Nokia Lumia 1020 is the only smartphone with a 41-megapixel photosensor and Windows Phone 8 as the operating system.
• We test the Galaxy for strength (Habr)