Android Studio vs IntelliJ

Introduction

On May 16, 2013 at Google I/O, Google announced Android Studio to be the primary IDE for building Android apps which is built on the IntelliJ platform. Since both the community and ultimate edition of IntelliJ also support Android development, what is the difference between the two and how to choose? In this post I will focus on Android studio and the ultimate edition of IntelliJ, which requires a paid subscription.

I only focus on Android development. If you develop applications with a variety of different technologies, IntelliJ Ultimate edition is probably the best choice.

Added advantage
Let's make one thing clear: Android studio is an awesome IDE and for most of us it satisfies our Android development needs. But there are some features in IntelliJ which are lacking in Android studio which may come in handy when doing Android development. I will discuss those features below.

JSON support
IntelliJ Ultimate has full featured JSON support. If your Android application connects to a JSON endpoint, it may be worthwhile to have an editor with JSON support.

REST Client
IntelliJ Ultimate provides a REST client which can be used to execute URL requests to test available backend services.

Structural search and replace
Structural search and replace provides an advanced search & replace mechanism with knowledge about the source code. For example, I used this tool to rewrite the Google analytics V2 to Google analytics V4 in less then 10 minutes. Analytics code was scattered all over the place but structural search and replace lets you easily refactor such code.

Database support
If your application uses a relational SQLite database, a database editor is very helpful. IntelliJ Ultimate provides database support and also includes a connector to connect to an Android SQLite database which is really helpful to inspect the database of your application.

Advanced debugger
IntelliJ 14 provides an advanced debugger which shows variable values in the editor right next to their usages.

Analyze dependency matrix
The Analyze dependency matrix can be used to analyze the dependencies between projects and classes.

Conclusion
Although Android studio is a wonderful editor for Android development this post showed a couple of features in the IntelliJ Ultimate edition which may be worth the price when doing Android development.