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TelphinCall Mobile VoIP Application
About | The Case | Solution | Apple Account Creation | App Development
AppStore Submission | Results | Technical details
TelphinCall Mobile VoIP Application (413KB, PDF)
About The Project |
The application is communication client for TelphinUSA Inc. VoIP service. The purpose of the application is to connect iPhone user with the other party via Telphin VoIP server and local telecom providers. User shall be a subscriber of the Telphin services to use the application.
One of the main benefits of the service is significant savings on international calls. The application made these calls more convenient.
The purpose of the application was to make phone calls. Our goal was to make it similar to native phone interface to make it look familiar and increase the usability of the app. Phone contacts book was integrated into the application.
The Case |
Telphin USA is VoIP service provider well known for its Web Callback service. After being a successful service provider for several years, they decided to expand to mobile device market by adding a native iPhone app to their products and services line. Previously, their end-user main client was mobile Web Callback application, also implemented by RobinLab.
Telphin USA was happy with RobinLab Web Callback application implementation, and decided to order iPhone client development from RobinLab.
Telphin did not have any previous experience in developing native iPhone applications. Starting iPhone software development is tricky. Setting an account and acquiring necessary certificates from Apple is not straightforward. There are several procedures to be followed before a company can publish their apps at the AppStore. RobinLab was happy to help Telphin solving these issues in order to shorten application time to market.
Making the interface similar to the native phone screen was a challenge too. There is no necessary graphics provided in the SDK, so we had to create the design for each graphics element.
Finally, when you submit an application to the AppStore, it is hard to say whether your application will be approved for distribution or not. Often AppStore requires a few things to be changed. RobinLab has been actively involved until the application finally appeared in the Store.
Solution |
RobinLab had previous experience working on the Web Callback project; therefore we had a very good idea of all the business logic and functionality of the mobile application we were going to build. Our knowledge of the subject lead to significant savings on communication time; our discussions were mostly limited to timeline and demo schedule.
We were able to run multiple activities, like Telphin Apple Development Account and AppStore account set-up and software development in parallel. Together with the reduction of communication time, it speeded up the project completion significantly.
Apple Development Account Creation |
Setting up Apple Development account correctly for the first time could be quite difficult. We learned it on our own experience. We were glad to offer our assistance to Telphin USA.
The process was started in parallel with software development using RobinLab software development account to save time.
Account creation can take from one to several business days. We needed it to be set up and ready by the time of final build release.
First of all you have to create an account and pay the fee. Then you can proceed with setting up the environment for developing and distributing applications.
You also need to understand all the connections between the App ID’s and development and distribution certificates and provisioning profiles. Of course, there is a guide available for each element, but it takes some time to figure it out and grasp the whole picture.
We created our own step-by-step guide for our customers to help them understand the process and prepare all the files necessary for applications development and distribution. It saves time to our customers and to us.
Application Development |
Application development process for this project was interesting for us. Despite the similarity of the application interface look and feel to the native iPhone dialer, it is built out of custom elements. We wanted to help users easily switch between the mobile phone functions for local calls and the TelphinCall app for making cheep international calls. iPhone SDK contains no elements for creating the dialer, so our interface designer had to create them from the scratch.
Another design issue was application icon. It had to be bright and recognizable to be easly noticed among other apps on the device, but not annoying, and yet it had to have a native look. The issue was connected with the default glare effect that was applied automatically – it was too bright, making the icon unreadable.
We had to recreate all the effects applied to the icon and make them fit to look like other native icons but make it good looking and readable.
AppStore Submission Process |
After the application was developed and all the materials were prepared, the app was submitted to the Apple AppStore.
The process consists of two steps, submission and approval. If the approval is positive, the application gets published at the AppStore and publisher can start distributing it.
But quite often applications get rejected at the first. It can happen by many reasons, like using wrong internal APIs, or using graphic icon AppStore does not like, as it was in that case.
The only way to get application published is to make the requested corrections and re-submit the application. RobinLab has already had some experience in submitting applications to Apple AppStore. We were ready to possible obstacles. All the necessary changes were made to the application within two hours. The application was resubmitted for approval. We also notified Apple Support of changes details and requested to review the application.
Generally it takes Apple Support some time to process the request. But in our case, review was done within several hours, and the application got approved.
Results |
Due to RobinLab’s experience in iPhone application development we were able to minimize time to market by reducing preparation and submission time.
The customer was fully satisfied with the project results. They appreciated our initiatives in designing and building the user interface, help with Apple AppStore materials preparation and support during the application submission phase.
Both the customer and their users with iPhones were happy about the new way of using the Telphin VoIP service.
Technical Details |
Used technologies and products:
- iPhone SDK
- Cocoa Touch
- C
- SQLite
- SVN
- Atlassian JIRA
Project complexity:
- Overall duration: 3 weeks
- People resources: 1 Developer, 1 QA and 1 BA / SCRUM-master
There are plans to port the application to Android and Blackberry/RIM platforms.
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