I am designing an APP that is very much needed in my industry. I am designing a reference tool that will allow a technician to be able to look up the make and model of the security system or home automation system to find out how to program, operate and wire the system he is working on. However, based on my calculations, if I built such an APP, it would be a little over 972 pages. I would have 18 manufacturers, with at least 9 model types, with 6 submenus per model. I have no problem building one this size, however I am wondering if a phone can even support something this size or if it would be too big of an application. Most of the application would consist of Custom Text on the sub menus and some picture files for each model. One idea I had was to build a free website and then attach a link to each page, however if the technician does not have access to any internet, then he would not be able to use the application. Can anyone tell me if this application would be too large for a phone to handle?

I have decided to break my App down to 18 different App, one for each manufacturer, however each app will still be 54 pages each. Is this still too big?

No, that is not too big. The way iPhone apps work is they only run what is on the screen. So all those other pages are just sitting there waiting to be called.

The only thing you have to watch for is how many mb your app is. If it is over 20mb then I believe that the iPhone user needs a wifi connection to download your application. After that they would not need wifi to use it.

Also, quick question. You said that a technician might not have access to an internet connection? If they have an iPhone, they should have 3G network. I don't think they would ever be without it unless they were out of service range.

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure. As far as 3G network, many times technicians are out of service range. It happens more often than I would like.I decided to break it down into multiple apps because since I am selling it, it would bring a bigger profit. I may also decide to later build one with all of them togather but for a higher price (but cheaper than buying all of them together)

Quick thoughts. There are lots of apps with content screens in the thousands. The trick isn't the phone itself, it can handle very large amounts of data. The challenge is engineering it so it doesn't have to download a massive file each time it refreshes. The standard setup with buzztouch is that all the screen configuration settings are in one file - BT_config.txt. This works great for apps with a few dozen screens. It's not a good design for apps with hundreds or thousands of screens. The best way to do it is to spend some time understanding the documentation then using the control panel to design the navigational structures and menus for the app but not the content. The content for each menu comes from a URL on your website or DropBox. Each menu loads a list of screen-objects from a URL only as they are requested, not before hand. Think Google, they dont' show results until AFTER you search ;-) For sure there are lots of ways to do this and skill is needed to get a good mix. The best reference apps embed lots of lightweight content (text, pdf's, html) in the Xcode project so the app will work offline then toss in some dynamic menus and screens too.

Unfortunately for me, I do not have a web page and I can't use my works web page to store files and have my app point to them. If I can find a free webpage with a file manager I can Access, then I may be able to use that.

If I was building this app and I was ridiculously clever, I'd have all the info in a central database, when the phone gets near the security system it does a Near Field touch and all the systems information is pulled from the central database and uploaded to the app via push notifications. And charge a monthly subscription. I'm thinking that most things electrical that're 'smart' are essentially run with linux, so it's probably possible. But I'm not clever, so I can't.

Nice idea but security systems and even home automation systems do not run with Linux And would not be able to do that. I worked as a tech trainer for all the big security system and home automation manufacturers and even played a part with designing them . Now HAI home automation can be operated via smart phone, and someone can make a program to program it, but the system still can't use push which would be required

Damn, yet another idea bites the dust! lol!

Yeah plus most often the security installer replaces the panel anyhow. Besides I did some checking and that would be against fire marshal code because it would make security too easily defeatable.