As dominant as the iPhone has been in the smartphone market, one of the reasons that Droid devices have become the favorite of people is because of the extensive use of widgets. A widget is really just a simplified overview of data for a certain application that gives you partial functionality or a partial view of data. Widgets allow you to get a quick glance of very important data without having to open the application. Of course if you need a more detailed view, or need full functionality, then the widget links to the full application.
Android devices have had this functionality every since the beginning, but until recently this much sought after user interface element hasn’t been on Apples radar for iOS. To get an idea of some of the most popular widgets for Android, check out this article.
Rumors are swirling around Apple developer circles about the possible support for widgets in the next major release of iOS 5.0, but we will have to wait for the World-Wide Developer Conference in 2011 to see if they will announce it officially. Until then, there is still a need for this kind of widget functionality.
Our development efforts are to bring you applications that use push messages to give you as much widget functionality as Apple allows at this time. We use silent text messages to send you updates, and we update the numeric badge icon for your application to give you a quick view of data without having to launch your application. Not only does this save you time, but it also saves your battery because the application doesn’t have to be running in the background for it to work.
Once Apple opens up development for widgets we hope to bring you even more and better widgets .