Summary

In this chapter, we have learned how to work with different platform functionalities provided by the two mobile operating systems, Android and iOS. While the two are quite different, most of the core concepts are the same. We can use high-level components in the FireMonkey library and their cross-platform abstractions. This way, we can just recompile our projects for both OSs with the same source code.

Toward the end of the chapter, we also explored what you need to do to call platform APIs not wrapped by the FireMonkey library. This is significantly more work, but it’s important to realize that it is possible, unlike in cross-platform mobile development tools, which offer a defined set of features without the ability to add others.

While the focus on mobile is particularly relevant, in the next chapter, we’ll spend a little time focusing on desktop, as FireMonkey also supports Windows, macOS, and even Linux (via an add-on library). We’ll cover some...