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MobilePro #168: Kotlin beta lands, Nylo v6, KotlinConf 2025, Postman introduces Spec Hub, and more…

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Hi ,

Welcome to the 168th edition of MobilePro! This week’s issue is packed with updates that reflect just how quickly the mobile development landscape is evolving—from Kotlin’s smarter compiler updates to Apple’s critical security patches, and powerful new tooling for building AI-native apps:

🛠️ Kotlin 2.2.0 Beta lands: With smarter warning controls and deeper Gradle integration, Kotlin continues refining its dev experience for teams looking to write cleaner, more maintainable code.

🚀 Nylo v6 boosts Flutter devs: The latest version of Nylo delivers a Navigation Hub, local push, smarter state handling, and a new UI Scaffold—helping you ship robust apps, faster.

💡 Angular + Flutter + Firebase go agentic: Learn how to build LLM-driven apps that feel smart and personal with live demos, support, and AI resources—running through May 6.

🎤 KotlinConf 2025 is around the corner: Set for May 21–23 in Copenhagen, this year’s event promises 100+ talks and in-depth workshops on everything from Compose to Multiplatform.

🔒 Postman rolls out Spec Hub and BYOK encryption: Build, validate, and govern APIs with real-time linting, and gain full control over your data with customer-managed encryption keys.

And in What’s Happening in AI?—OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini models bring faster, tool-aware reasoning to ChatGPT. As always, stick around for our Developer Tip to boost your workflow, and don’t miss the Did You Know? segment!

Let’s dive in!

P.S.: If you have any suggestions or feedback, or would like us to feature your project on a particular subject, please write to us. Just respond to this email!

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[Rubrik Guided Lab] AWS Cloud Native Protection

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According to an IBM report, 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud. What's your data recovery plan?

Join us on Wednesday, April 23rd @ 10:00 AM PST for Virtual Camp Rubrik: AWS Cloud Protection to -

Protect AWS workloads, Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon EBS
Recover and restore your AWS data and workloads
Discuss the current state of the cloud threat landscape

Save Your Spot

📱 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.

Kotlin 2.2.0-Beta 1 is here: This new version brings smarter compiler warning management, cleaner JVM default method generation, and improved Gradle diagnostics. Developers can now use the new -Xwarning-level flag to fine-tune warning visibility and error thresholds, helping teams enforce better coding standards with precision. The Kotlin Gradle Plugin also now supports Gradle’s Problems API and --warning-mode, offering more structured and flexible reporting during builds. And yes—updating is seamless via Android Studio or IntelliJ with built-in plugin support.
Nylo v6 has officially landed: It brings a streamlined developer experience to Flutter apps with smarter state performance, an improved router, and the new Navigation Hub for seamless bottom and top navigation control. With additions like local push notifications, a brand-new Scaffold UI package, and authentication and form enhancements, Nylo v6 is tailored for secure, efficient app development.
Stability and compatibility boosted in iOS & iPadOS 18.5 Beta 3 update: Apple's iOS and iPadOS 18.5 Beta 3 delivers key fixes across Vision Pro, StoreKit, and enterprise app support. The update resolves a launch issue in the Apple Vision Pro app and ensures StoreKit’s intro offer eligibility logic works correctly. Enterprise app stability has been restored after launch failures were reported in earlier versions. Siri's known music playback issue persists, while enhancements in Writing Tools preserve text attributes in complex formatting workflows.
Android 16 Beta 4 is here: It brings final APIs and platform stability so developers can confidently finish app testing before the official release. With broader device availability and updates across JobScheduler, Intents, and accessibility APIs, developers can now fine-tune their apps for performance, security, and compatibility. Whether you're building SDKs or targeting large screens, you’ll find improvements designed for both innovation and reliability.
KotlinConf 2025 is just around the corner: The 2025 conference is taking place in Copenhagen from May 21–23, and it’s packed with workshops and over 100 speakers across five dedicated tracks. Developers can sharpen their skills in areas like Kotlin Multiplatform, Compose, Ktor, and Spring Boot—all hosted by JetBrains and top Kotlin experts.
Postman has unveiled Spec Hub and BYOK Encryption: These introductions will empower developers to build and scale secure APIs with confidence. Spec Hub offers a unified platform for designing, validating, and publishing multi-format APIs, complete with visual editing and real-time linting. Meanwhile, BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) gives enterprises full control over data security by letting them manage their own encryption keys within a zero-trust framework. You can rest assured—Postman is redefining secure, compliant, and efficient API development at scale.
Angular, Flutter & Firebase Team Up to Help Developers Build AI-Driven App Experiences: The Angular and Flutter teams have teamed up with Firebase to launch new resources that help developers build AI-powered, agentic apps—apps that combine LLMs with goals and tools to create dynamic, personalized experiences. From April 15 to May 6, you can join livestreams, access hands-on demos like a barista app and travel planner, and get real-time support from engineers. With curated content, community engagement, and responsive guidance, developers can now explore AI app development confidently—without compromising on creativity or control.

💭 What is the Mobile Community Talking About?

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

Tutorial for full-screen notifications from your Flutter app: Have you ever struggled to display full-screen notifications from your Flutter app—especially on the lock screen or when the app is killed? This tutorial walks you through a practical solution by bridging Flutter with native Android using method channels. By leveraging AlarmManager for scheduling and handling actions like snooze or accept directly from full-screen notifications, it ensures a reliable flow with data stored in Hive. If you're building a reminder or tracking app, this guide might be exactly what you need to overcome those limitations.
How Shopify Scaled Mobile Development with React Native and TypeScript: Shopify is marking five years with React Native, and their journey highlights how thoughtful patterns, native integration, and TypeScript have powered high-performance, scalable mobile development. From sub-500ms screen loads to rapid iteration with hot reloading, their team has proven React Native can meet demanding product needs. Native code still plays a key role for complex tasks, ensuring flexibility without compromising performance. You can now build confidently—knowing that cross-platform speed and quality can go hand-in-hand.
The skills developers need in an era of AI development: As AI transforms software development, developers are encouraged to evolve their skill sets—focusing not just on how AI works, but on how to work effectively with it. Key capabilities now include data literacy, critical thinking, and the ability to design user-centric, AI-augmented experiences. Soft skills like adaptability and ethical reasoning are equally vital. You can embrace this shift confidently, knowing the future of development is a collaborative blend of human insight and intelligent tooling.

🤖 What’s Happening in AI?

AI is evolving fast—are you keeping up? MobilePro brings you key discussions, trends, and expert takes in one place.

OpenAI has introduced o3 and o4-mini: Its most intelligent reasoning models yet, they are built to handle complex queries with advanced multimodal capabilities and full tool access within ChatGPT. From visual analysis to data-driven responses, these models can decide when and how to use tools like Python and web search—delivering fast, thoughtful answers under a minute. With agentic reasoning, improved instruction following, and support for custom tools, you can now develop smarter apps and automate workflows confidently and securely.
JetBrains debuts free AI tier and Junie coding agent in IDEs: JetBrains has launched a free AI tier and introduced Junie, a new AI coding agent integrated directly into its IDEs. Junie assists with writing, debugging, and understanding code contextually—streamlining development workflows with privacy and efficiency in mind. JetBrains ensures that AI adoption doesn’t compromise data security, offering enterprise-grade privacy controls across the platform.
Apple wanted people to vibe code Vision Pro apps with Siri: Apple once envisioned letting anyone “vibe code” Vision Pro apps using Siri—no programming required. This concept, powered by natural language and AI, would allow users to describe an idea and have Siri build it, creating immersive AR apps on demand. While the feature never launched, the ambition reveals how Apple foresaw the potential of conversational AI in creative workflows. You can expect more developer-friendly AI innovations like this as platforms mature and privacy-conscious tooling evolves.

📚️ Latest in Mobile Development from Packt

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

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Flutter Design Patterns and Best Practices

Buy now at $44.99 $35.99!
Use the code FLUTTERPRINT20 at checkout

Mobile App Development Tutorial — **Excerpt from iOS 18 Programming for Beginners by Ahmad Sahar**

Simulatoris downloaded and installed after you install Xcode. It provides a simulated iOS device so that you can see what your app looks like and how it behaves, without needing a physical iOS device. It can model all the screen sizes and resolutions for both iPad and iPhone so you can test your app on multiple devices easily. In this excerpt from Ahmad Sahar’s iOS 18 Programming for Beginners, you will learn how to run your app in Simulator.

Running your app in Simulator

You will implement multiple types of text-related views and modifiers. Each step in this excerpt applies minor changes to the view, so note the UI changes that occur after each step. Let's get started:

Click the Destination pop-up menu to view a list of simulated devices. Choose iPhone SE (3rd generation) from this menu:

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In your own projects, you should pick whichever simulator you require. That said, if you want to match the screenshots in this book exactly, use the iPhone SE (3rd generation) simulator. This simulator also has a home button, so it is easier to get to the home screen.

Click the Run button to install and run your app on thecurrently selected simulator. You can also use the Command + R keyboard shortcut.

Simulator will launch and show a representation of an iPhone SE (3rd generation). Your app displays a white screen, as you have not yet added anything to your project:

Switch back to Xcode and click on the Stop button (or press Command + .) to stop the currently running project.

You have just created and run your first iOS app in Simulator! Great job!

The destination menu has a section showing physical devices connected to your Mac and a Build section. You may be wondering what they are used for. Let's look at them in the next section.

***

There are plenty more such recipes, which you can read in iOS Programming for Beginners.

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iOS 18 Programming for Beginners

Buy now at$44.99

💡️ Developer Tip

Do you need an SF symbol in X code? Check out this video here for a shortcut..

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.

❓ Did You Know?

The iconic Android mascot, affectionately known as Bugdroid, was created in 2007 by Google designer Irina Blok. Interestingly, her inspiration came from the universal restroom symbols—those simple human figures on bathroom doors. Blok envisioned a robot version with antennae, resulting in the friendly green figure we recognize today.

Sourced from Logobee.

👋 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