Pro tips how to overcome common Progressive Web Application challenges

Paweł Głogowski

Common challenges with PWA can be fixed in a variety of ways. In this article, I want to share some practical tips and solutions on how to resolve common issues of Progressive Web Applications. Refreshing, service-worker configuration and updating to save time and achieve smooth flow and be ahead of your users' needs.

This is the second part of our series about PWA. If you’d like to learn how to change your web page into a Progressive Web Application, be sure to check out our previous 

 application that can be served as a Progressive Web Application. We follow a 

 approach to enable quite frequent changes in the product and ensure that our users get the latest content of the application.

 is heavily cached, serving the latest content to users can be challenging. It’s not possible to refresh the application when you’re in standalone mode so we have to do it differently. We spent some time preparing a user-friendly solution that would allow users to get the latest version of the application quickly.

Different ways to refresh your application

Developers can approach the problem of refreshing the application in different ways. 

The easiest way could be adding a fixed refresh button that is available only on the 

 version. It might be the easiest way since it doesn’t require any interaction with service workers. However, it’s not very user-friendly. Users may not be aware that the latest version of the application is already available and ignore that button.

The second approach could be informing users when the application is showing on the screen. So once the new version is available, users will see some indicator bar with a refresh button. That way, they will know that there’s new content to fetch from a server. Let’s take a look at how that’s indicator bar could look like.

We can achieve the above effect by using 

. Take a look at the following code to see how to achieve it. To get the best result, you should show this bar only to users in a standalone mode (PWA) - we discuss this in our previous article (link) so make sure that you generate that bar only in standalone mode. Additionally, you can style your snack bar to suit your application best.

You can see two handlers in above code - let's see how they can looks like:

We don’t want to allow refreshing the application because we notice some unexpected behavior on iOS - it tends to fail randomly or behaves in an unstable way after some refreshing, so we encourage users to kill the app and reopen it. However, refreshing seems to be stable on Android and Chrome, so for Chrome users, you can change the bar and show the refresh icon so users can refresh the app to get new content on their own.

From the programmatic perspective, nothing interesting is done here - we just show a bar and allow the user to close it. The more important thing here is how we indicate that a new version of the application is available to the user. To do that, we need to define a proper callback for updating service workers and force them to be updated. More on that in the next part of the article.

How to update Custom Service worker callback?

Let's take a look at the service-worker configuration generated during the development of a React application.

I have highlighted the most important parts of that code snippet. As you can see, we add a listener on the state change of service worker. It will be executed when changes occur in the service-worker. It might be misleading that we’re watching for the ‘installed’ state. But the existence of the controller property indicates changes in the service worker. What we need to do is to pass the config object with the callback onUpdate function. We usually need to register our service worker in the index.js file. Here we pass the object with the onUpdate property which is a callback function.

Making your application usable in case of the lack of an internet connection isn't going to be a part of this article. Instead, we will focus on enabling users to install your application for both iOS and Android applications.

How to skip waiting for a new service worker?

However, it's not enough for the configuration of service worker. Because we want the new service worker to take over the old one immediately, we need to configure it to skip waiting. If we don’t do this, the new service worker will be available after the user navigates the refresh current page. It's not always an option since we observe some major problems with refreshing the page in the PWA mode. Visit the following 

 to understand the service worker lifecycle better.

To configure the service worker to skip waiting, we need to add some code to the default service worker implementation which is provided when we generate a sample project. To do so, we will use a tool called 

. So we first need to add a proper dependency to the package.json file along with the modification of the build command. It should look like this:

Note: The following example is valid for React application, but it will look quite similar for application build in other technologies.

You need to provide code for your custom service worker. For now, it will be very simple and will only contain the service worker skip waiting logic. This code will be appended for the actual service worker code.

It's not much code, but right now we can be sure that the new service worker will take over the old one.

How to “update” Service worker, i.e. check the availability of the latest version?

So far, it all looks quite straightforward, but we need the most important piece of the whole picture - we need to know when the changes to our web application occur. In order to do this, we need to force our service worker to “update”. The name for that operation may be confusing because it’s not update itself - rather, it’s checking whether the new version of the application is available. Let's take a look at this piece of code:

This will download the newest version of the service worker file from the server and compare it with the current version to detect any differences. It will fire an event that we can handle by 

 which was described previously. You may ask how the application “knows” that there were changes in code. When you take a look at the build directory, you can see a file like this.

If you see the content of this file, you will notice something like this:

When any file changes, then in precache file there will be different revision numbers and name of precaching file hash ( in the name ) changes. This file is included in the service worker file so if the name is changed, then the service worker file changes so the service worker can notice that change.

How to add a Progressive Web Application to the home screen in iOS?

The last thing we need to cover is determining when to check for the update. Of course, using the setTimeout() feature available in React allows to periodically check for updates of the new version. But this approach can cause some unexpected issues and unnecessary performance costs so we believe that it’s not enough.

We decided to take advantage of the PWA lifecycle and web API visibility change feature, so once users display the main screen of the application, we catch that event and force the service worker to update. Let's take a look at the following code:

Note: This approach may not work on Google Chrome. If you’re using Chrome, consider different events like scrolling or clicking a button.

We can catch the visibility change event which is fired when the application is displayed on the user’s screen. However, this event is fired when the app is shown and when it’s hidden so we need to check what the value of the hidden property is to determine if it’s displayed.

So now we have all the pieces fitting together and the final flow looks like this: The user opens PWA --> PWA catches the visibility change event and forces the service worker to update → the service worker checks if a new version of the application is available → we handle the update event by showing the refresh bar to the user → The user restarts the app (iOS) or refreshes it (Android) to get new content.

You can see that there are some differences between iOS and Android. To help you understand that better, let’s take a look at the following table.

As you can see, there are a lot of different pieces involved in the process of refreshing your PWA. But in the end, it will be very beneficial for your users. At Solidstudio Software House, we followed this approach in our product 

 to make sure that users have the latest version of the application. In our experience, Chrome seems to have a more stable and reliable environment when it comes to supporting PWA and we still need to fix some unexpected issues for iOS.

Learn how to overcome common Progressive Web Application challenges

The challenges of Progressive Web Apps

Tips how to prepare a web application for installation on a mobile device

, almost 50 percent of total Internet usage in the UK comes from mobile phones. Similarly the United States and Europe. Various reasons account for that, but essentially it's because accessing the web using a smartphone or tablet is handy and convenient, particularly for specific sorts of applications. Before I reach the clue of this article - how to add a web page to a mobile device as a Progressive Web Application - I want to clarify some related matters regarding Progressive Web Application.

And why should you be one? The term mobile-friendly has begun to appear in the media more and more often with the growing boom of these handy portable devices - smartphones, tablets and their subsequent variations. For many, initially, mobile-digital was considered just another quirk, but over time it has become a permanent fixture in the canon of being customer friendly. Creating and developing mobile versions of websites, e-commerce and marketplaces became a standard. Simply, because this meets online users' expectations. Plus, from April 2015 Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor. In a nutshell, becoming mobile-friendly, or even mobile-first is beneficial for all parties. For users means better adoption, for business increased visibility & profits and being on the cutting edge of the Internet - mobile-friendly solutions are essential.

Taking a mobile-friendly approach, or becoming mobile-first cannot be achieved without one more factor - Responsive Web Design.

Responsive web design is an approach to web development presented in 2010- five years before PWA was introduced to the world. The general idea is that design responds to the user’s device - size, motion, and orientation. Responsiveness is achieved with the use of fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries. The approach excludes time-consuming development phases which were earlier needed to fit the different screen sizes on the market. Flexibility and the speed of development of responsive websites became a common practice. Now, almost every website you visit is responsive in its nature.


What does PWA have to do with a mobile-friendly approach?

Building a custom application for multiple platforms is usually time- and resource-consuming. In the era where most of the information search and purchases is done online, and the majority of smaller businesses must meet the market demands at the most inexpensive charge. That's where Progressive Web Applications (PWAs)  and responsive design come with help. PWA generally allows you to easily convert your web application into a native application or at least something which is more or less similar to it. PWA, thanks to its fast performance and compatibility with multiple browsers, ranks highly in Google search results. Hence, solves Google's search engine algorithm ranking issue, being mobile-friendly. Websites based on Progressive Web Application appear higher in search results. In this article, I'm going to show you how to add a web page to a mobile device as a Progressive Web Application.

How to build a Progressive Web Application?

Your application needs to meet specific criteria:

It's served over HTTPS for security purposes.

Responsive web design - it needs to look well on various mobile devices.

It should work even when there's no internet connection or at least show an information screen about the lost connection.

It includes "manifest.json," allowing us to add a shortcut to the mobile screen.

It should work well with slower connections.

Let's focus on the manifest.json file, which is required for adding your application to the device's home screen. It basically contains information about the icon's starting address. Let's take a look at the following example of manifest.json file:

yourApplicationName

How to "install" your website on a mobile device?

Before we begin, note the huge difference in the attitudes to Progressive Web Applications. In general, Google supports PWA and wants to increase its popularity, while Apple prefers users to install native apps bought in the Apple App Store. However, due to the popularity of PWA, Apple began to support this from version 11.3 of iOS. Starting from version 12.2, PWA works quite well but is still not as stable and fast as on Google Chrome. Let's take a look at how to install your web application on Android devices.

First of all, you need to use Google Chrome because other browsers don't support PWA yet. Google Chrome fires the "beforeinstallprompt" event, which can be handled in a customized way. To do so, add the code shown below on a high level of the application. For a React application, that can be the App.js file.


Without that, you'll see a Chrome embedded info bar with a message like "Add This App to Home Screen" along with the dismiss button. When dismissing this window, expect it to pop up once again in a couple of weeks. You may ask: why bother with a custom solution? Well, first of all, you can create your own solution - it could be an info bar, a banner, or whatever else you want. It can also be customized in terms of colors and layout. A custom solution will significantly improve the user experience. In the above example we use a snackbar to inform users about the possibility of installing the application.

It's basically will show a banner like this

Keep in mind that you should declare deferredPrompt as a global variable. If you fail to do so, the prompt window won't open once again after clicking the cancel button. I believe that the rest of the code is self-explanatory.

Also, you can easily determine if you're using PWA mode. That can be useful because you don't want to show the info bar to users who are already using the PWA. You can do it using the following code:

How to add a PWA to the home screen in iOS?

Unfortunately, accomplishing the same in iOS is far more complicated. Basically, we need to do it manually. The only thing that can be done from the application perspective is showing some kind of information on how to do it. At Solidstudio Software House, we use a snack bar widget that appears at the bottom of the application with a short instruction about how to add it to the home screen. Also, keep in mind that adding a PWA to the home screen in iOS is available only on Safari, and the event "beforeinstallprompt" isn't fired on iOS.


The only challenge here is determining whether the actual device is controlled by iOS. We can do it by analyzing the user agent string. Unfortunately, starting from iOS 13 we can't identify whether it's an iPhone or iPad - instead, it will always show as "

." This is tricky, because we need to recognize if the device is a phone or a tablet. Also, we need to indicate if the current browser is Safari (it doesn't make sense to show that bar on other browsers than Safari). As it turns out, that's not easy, because all browsers on iOS are wrappers on Safari. Consider the following examples:

We search for an iPad, iPhone string in the user agent string for the older version of the iOS system. Analyzing the user agent string, we notice that Safari agents have no references for 'CriOS' or 'FxiOS'. So in the newest version of iOS, you have to determine if the device is a mobile one. At Solidstudio, we use a simple but effective solution to determine it by the width of the screen. Since iPads has 1024 screen width, we can use the following code:

Despite challenges, PWA can be beneficial

Like many solutions, there are some cons. It requires a lot of research and development for a custom solution, but once an effective mechanism is created, it encourages users to install applications on their mobile devices. We worked with the PWA technology in our project for 

. We blend top technologies to offer users native experience and increase engagement with the app. Since PWA may cause some disruptions, here we wanted to share some insights from our experience. Some more solutions, when we are struggling with the auto-refresh of the application in standalone mode, soon will appear on our blog as a follow-up to this article. To stay updated, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter!

Learn how to make usable Progressive Web Application on mobile device.

How to install a Progressive Web Application on a mobile device?

Discover smart use of time and energy for e-mobility

Paweł Baczyński

The basic approach of e-mobility charging infrastructure applies to the use of charging stations for EVs recharge. As a simplified model, it is to provide services for owners of electric cars. However, the use and the purpose of a formed sort of electric grid can go beyond. What are the possible and optimal charging infrastructure solutions? And what is the role of smart electric mobility in achieving sustainable growth?

Factors such as political, social and environmental, contribute to fast e-mobility growth, hence the charging points communication role changes. In the primarily applied charge ecosystem, the information exchange took place between eMobility Service Providers and Charge Point Operators, and Grid Operators. The relation varies depending on the business model applied. Time (or speed of charging) and location influence the user experience, and economic optimization.

Understanding EV Owners’ Preferences Towards Enrolling in Smart Charging Programs

 published in June 2020, shows that nearly 70% of respondents demonstrated a high interest in the EV purchase. Additionally, 56% of EV owners consider an EV to be their next vehicle purchase. The growing interest in EV ownership is driven by various incentives and policies. As of 2020, the growth in the share of new electric vehicles in the passenger vehicle market has accelerated remarkably. Especially in Europe, a +137% jump in electric car sales was recorded at the end of 2020.

The growing number of electric vehicles means there is a demand for a well-planned, flexible, and diverse network. At the same time, operators need to scale, provide the service and meet the expectations of EV owners. Following this, the network needs a guaranteed energy supply, especially when there is increased demand. Consequently, the entire system must be well communicated and engineered, to reconcile the peaks of energy demand with limited capacity.

Still, the mentioned ecosystem is not limited and with the growth new players and users will join. For instance, it’s worth mentioning environmental aspects and green energy supplies (and possibly storage). In an effort to meet challenges, the idea of an integrated architecture has been developed, which supports the efficient use of energy flows and optimum market service. All this in a unified communication system.

Global EV Outlook predicts that in 2030 in Europe, in the Stated Policies Scenario, the energy demand for EV fleets will grow by 4% (110 TWh). However, the Sustainable Policies Scenario predicts an increased energy demand for electric fleets - up to 6% (187TWh). High peaks are expected at evenings and nights, but in general, global energy demand will rise. To streamline the communication of key domains in the ecosystem (energy supplies, established and expanding charging network and e-mobility services), the information flow should run via an open protocol.

Higher energy demand at certain times means not only intensified production but also agile energy distribution. In a nutshell, Smart Charging enables intelligent management of the energy and how the electric vehicle is charged when connected to the grid.

Although higher demand for electricity is not expected to happen before 2030 (according to European Environment Agency’s predictions), still locally grids might be overloaded on high peaks. With efficient use of EVs and charging infrastructure, smart charging comes to help to provide greater network stability without unnecessary expenses.

EU directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency describes smart metering systems. The inclusion of smart charging sets top-down endorsement for the development of data exchange systems and in the future standardized and open communication. The use of smart charging implies connecting an EV to a charging device through a data connection, and the charging device to a charging operator through another data connection.

Smart Charging applies to ‘intelligent’ communication between the charging system, grid and a charged object (here particularly we have in mind an EV, but also this could apply to any chargeable item). Taking an EV as an example, the term ‘smart charging’ means the charging device is ‘communicating’ with the car, the charging operator and the service company links through data. Each time an EV is plugged in, the charger exchanges information to optimize charging.

So, via smart charging the charging service providers (this applies to smart home charging and charging network owners) can guide how much energy and at what cost and time to deliver to any plugged-in EV. Enhanced communication among market participants helps efficiently manage high peaks and energy demand. This helps properly manage time, money and energy.

Charging points with smart charging connect EV owners, roaming hubs, and operators. Each time an EV is plugged in, the charging point transfers information (e.g. charging time, speed) to a centralized administration system. Extra data may also be forwarded, e.g. information about the local grid’s potential and how energy is at the moment used at the charging section (house, office building, supermarket etc.). With smart charging management, grids can be in advance informed when the peaks are expected. How? Smart charging also enables scheduling the EV charging. On the one hand, the system is accurately informed as to what amount of energy will be needed at a specific time, on the other hand, the user can plug in the plug and the charging process itself can be programmed at a convenient time interval. This eliminates excess energy use, and the actual power consumption can be conducted at lower tariffs, hence the efficiency.

The stream of data is analyzed and visualized in real-time by the tailored software backing the administration platform. This enables operators to control and manage energy consumption and distribution. Here's a little trivia: some countries already legally mandate the use of smart charging to prevent excessive billing and to utilize electricity productively.

From Charge Point Operator to Smart Charge Point Operator

In the basic model, the charging session starts as soon as the EV is connected to the charging point and stops when the battery is fully charged. In the enhanced scenario, the Charging Service Provider turns into Smart Charging Service Provider. Thanks to a properly designed communication system, SCSP can receive information from the grid when there is a peak in energy production. The same applies to higher energy demands (e.g. nighttime home charging). The third segment is the EV drivers. The information flow delivers the set time when the EV is needed again. Depending on the time frame - If charging applies to the overnight schedule, the EV can be charged much more steadily. For the grid, this indicates more constant, lower power consumption if demand is huge, and higher power consumption if there is a production peak. This extra section, responsible for smart charging communication, ensures that power consumption control is high-performance and effective.

EV charging infrastructure is formed by eMobility Service Providers, Charge Point Operators and roaming hubs. The data exchange aims to provide EV drivers a trouble-free charging experience. Overall information is related to EV electricity consumption. The easiest and most practical way to implement smart charging seems to be open standard implementation. Open protocols aim to ease and scale e-mobility services and accelerate the EV charging market development. Recent versions of OCPI (2.2) and OCPP (2.0.1) support smart charging communication. Privately held OICP and eMIP protocols in charge point information exchange modules also include smart charging operations. In the near future, it might become mandatory to implement Smart Charging modules. Hence Charging Service Providers will become Smart Charging Service Providers connecting the local grid operators and, via the national grid operator, being able to communicate with the energy market.

What is the potential of charging stations?

Smart charging goes beyond just agile energy management. Some pilot programs already exist in which the car not only consumes energy but also delivers it back to the grid (Vehicle-to-grid, V2G). In this way, EVs can actually soak up peaks and troughs occurring on the grid instead of enhancing them. Power back to the grid forms an extra role for Smart Charging Service Provider (within the protocol) that is also valuable for the energy flow within the grid.

Intelligent building architecture takes into account the flow of energy consumption data. In both households and smart office buildings, Smart Charging Service Provider communication will help to utilize energy usage and match it accordingly. For the Charge Point Operators, this also provides additional information about energy use, which will help to ensure sustainable energy consumption. Charging stations with a smart layer can turn into a critical part of a new energy flow network, balancing the load, and providing crucial information to the whole system.

Such a grid-friendly smart module already exists on the German and Swiss markets. The Mobility House provides a grid-friendly feature of the charging processes to ensure a stable electricity supply during a huge energy transition (“Energiewende”). Smart energy management reduces electricity costs, and as the TMH states, it’s due to lower grid fees. In numbers, the savings reach from 60 to 120 euros per year and per charging point, from reduced grid usage fees. Besides, Swiss users show growing demand for controlled charging processes.

Notifications, when charging can be done at a lower rate using renewable energy, are encouraging. By forming a benefit system providers can gather a greater audience. The efficient use of charging stations with smart charging is not limited. The e-mobility market is constantly evolving towards optimal use of time and resources. Efficient energy flow means reducing power spikes and pits, even up to 50%. Additionally, enhanced communication between stations and the network, as well as between partners, enables better grid management and the entire efficiency of the e-mobility system.

How to get more out of electromobility? Discover smart use of time and energy for e-mobility.

Charging station potential - how to fully benefit with smart electric mobility?

Cities that show you what the future will look like

Gabriela Stawiarska

The concept of smart cities has been circling around for years. Although initially dubbed as futuristic embroidery and oftentimes portrayed in dystopian novels, it is no longer a pipe dream but a bold vision coming to life. As much as flying cars and robots replacing humans in daily activities are not likely to be seen in the foreseeable future, the implementation of smart cities idea is a real-life occurrence. Technology world is on a continuous hunt for better, faster, smarter, more efficient and more advanced solutions. Big-tech companies are racing to introduce ground-breaking measures in order to fit into the leading edge. And… it’s no surprise that they do.

Humankind is bound to witness the highest level of technological advancement. From rechargeable electric vehicles, energy created from wind or water and spaceships exploring cosmic space to big data, fintech, IoT and artificial intelligence, the world is inundated with solutions that were once beyond the boldest dreams. This is where the idea of smart cities emerges and sets off on an ambitious venture to bring the innovations together in order to create interconnected operation networks that would eventually run the cities.

The demand for such projects is fueled by mass population surge to urban areas which tests their infrastructure and services to the limits. Allegedly, out of 7.8 billion people currently inhabiting the planet, more than half is living in cities permanently - and the number continues to grow. It is estimated that within the next 30 years, another 2,5 billion people will move to urban areas. Such population figures pose a potential threat for various aspects of cities’ proper functioning i.e. mobility, energy, waste or security.

Authorities and entrepreneurs have been searching for solutions to leverage technology so that it satisfies the increasing requirements. Across the globe we can already observe some highly advanced metropolitan areas. Amongst the most technology-oriented cities, we can differentiate:

According to IMD Smart City Index 2020, Singapore ranks first. It leads the way in terms of healthcare and livability, mobility and safety. Although, known for its extraordinary architecture, Singapore has a lot to offer when it comes to smart mobility solutions, with great emphasis on facilitations for its eldelry citizens. An autonomous fleet has been created to help senior citizens stay mobile. They also use a contactless payment/ticketing system in public transport. With the use of “open data”, the authorities introduced a trial to facilitate transport planning, that way 5 000 vehicles are being analyzed in real-time circumstances. The trial resulted in the rate of over-crowded buses being reduced by whooping 92%.

Another milestone on the path to the impressive number one position in smart cities ranking is how greatly developed the healthcare system is. TeleHealth video consultations offer appointments over the internet. TeleRehab allows patients to undergo exercises in their own home through wearable IoT devices which monitor patients’ state. There is also an AI-based Smart Elderly Alert System that alerts caregivers when an emergency action is required due to the patient's physical symptoms.

Surely, there are no surprises here. With financial resources of that scale and sharp investments, Dubai has a lot to offer in terms of smart city solutions. It set a goal of going entirely paperless by the end of 2021, heavily focusing on high-level digitalization. Going paper-free is not the only step on Dubai’s path towards smart sustainability, they also undertook a massive venture of building the largest solar park in the world.  Spread over a total area of 77 square kilometers, Solar Park reached a generating capacity of 1.013 GW, while its phase 4 and 5 is still under development.

Dubai has also introduced an online way of delivering government services. Citizens can obtain three types of bundles: the wedding bundle, the newborn bundle and the business bundle from the comfort of their homes. Similar facility has also been launched via the DubaiNow app that allows people to pay for utilities, transportation, health services, education or residency directly from their smartphones. There is also an advanced smart car rental service in the city, all steered from a mobile device.

Photo: DEWA (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority)

In many rankings claimed to be the happiest and smartest city in Europe, Copenhagen is known for its impressive levels of eco-management. In 2014 it was dubbed as the European Green Capital and set an ambitious goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2025. Through the energyLab Nordhavn project, they managed to reduce emissions and implement new urban energy infrastructures, i.e. through producing heat from municipal waste. Copenhagen is a great showcase of testing real-life, advanced technology in urban areas in order to improve the quality of life. It has to be mentioned that it’s also a marvellous place for entrepreneurs, highly advocating for startups initiatives. With more than 250 small companies that make up two-thirds of the smart city industry, Copenhagen welcomes investments with open hands and supports their progress through various government incentives.

Copenhagen Solutions Lab also partnered with Google to create Project Air View – a system measuring air pollution in the streets of Copenhagen. The real-time data across the city is collected from Wi-Fi access points, installed i.e. on the streetlights or buses and then fed into the general system. The knowledge generated from the partnership will provide the politicians with new insight upon which they can develop public policy addressing the problem of air pollution.

Norwegian capital grows to be Copenhagen's biggest rival in terms of smart city solutions. Awarded with the European Green Capital title in 2019, Oslo carries the e-mobility solutions on its back for what seems like an entire Europe. It plans to ban combustion engine vehicles by 2025 in order to meet its ambitious environmental targets. As much as it may sound extreme, with a charging network that developed and governmental incentives of that scale (removing most taxes, offering free parking and access to charging points and ferries, and authorising the use of bus lanes – the congestion in these “free-flow lanes”), the goal looks in fact reachable.

However, not only smart e-mobility stands for the reason behind Oslo “smartness”. FutureBuilt is a 10-year programme that aims to bring together public and private partners who are then to invest in buildings with 50% reduction in carbon footprint.

Boston was one of the first cities that started experimenting with smart cities solutions back in 2010, as a somewhat of a testrun for technologies. Throughout the years, many of them have been implemented in daily life for good. One of the most prominent examples of it are the well-developed apps, facilitating effortless navigation and reporting known as participatory urbanism. Few flagship apps can be differentiated: Where’s My School Bus allows parents to monitor their child’s safe route to school everyday. BOS:311 is an app that enables easy, on-the-spot reporting of any issues in the city that are instantly transferred to local authorities’ attention.

Boston also paid a great deal of attention to smart transportation and launched various programmes to improve the transport across the busy city.


It may be free to say that NYC appears somewhere high on any cities ranking in terms of the best, the biggest, the most advanced. It cannot be left out on the smart cities one. However, it must be noted that with a population of that scale and sucha massive density, The Big Apple’s solutions may slightly differ from the aforementioned ones. The main point of focus here is how to ensure that such a mass of people can lead a healthy, sustainable life without draining the city’s resources to the limits. Here’s where local authorities stepped in with smart lighting and water metering systems. Being known for its breathtaking “city at night” views of the lit up skyscrapers, it is also known for one of the highest energy consumption in the world. In 2013 they launched the Accelerated Conservation and Efficiency (ACE) program in order to get more control of the building's lightning systems. More than $350 million in funding has been already distributed across more than 650 buildings owned by 16 city agencies. Many of these projects are LED lighting retrofits, and they are saving over $800,000. In terms of water, NYC introduced an automated meter reading system that’s already installed in over 800.000 buildings feeding the daily water intake and delivering detailed data. Apart from that NYC can proudly brag about numerous systems enabling efficient waste management, air quality control and many more.

All of the above have managed to implement innovatory solutions as new standards in the everyday life of citizens and authorities. However, these are naturally not the only cities in the world that undertook actions towards being more smart and technology-oriented. Amongst other solutions implemented across the world we can find:

Sensors that can monitor crowd density and the movement of registered cars.

Systems that can tell when people are littering from high rise buildings

Apps allowing citizens to find an ATM, pay a ticket, report violations

Smart street lights that adapt to the activity on the street.

Smart metering systems feeding the energy data automatically to energy supplier, connected with solar panels and their share of energy production to the grid

Waste management with sensors automatically reporting to the services when containers are full

Advanced charging networks for electric vehicles, enabling seamless commute for EV users

Broad adoption of solar panels in public assets, such as traffic lights,

As much as all that has been implemented already is to be admired, big tech companies take no half-measures and aspire to shoot with technology through the roof. Apart from the real-life examples, some walked the extra mile and went on an astronomic venture of building smart cities from scratch.

It was back in 1966 when Disney introduced his first vision of a separate town-like area designated for a showcase of technology that ultimately was supposed to develop solutions that would help people lead a seamless existence. EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) eventually became a theme park, but its main theme was rooted directly in the smart city idea.

Many years later, we get to experience what may seem like Disney’s vision of an all-smart city comes to life.

Woven - Toyota’s bold vision of the future

Toyota introduced what might be the boldest concept of smart city back in 2020. Although slowed down by the onset of pandemic, the project is now moving forward.  Woven City, nestled at the foothills of Mount Fuji in Japan, is supposed to take up 175 acres and become somewhat of a real-life laboratory for the most daring findings technology can offer. Built from scratch, Woven is supposed to not only serve as a test-station for engineers but as a fully functional space which inhabitants would get the chance to, by all means, contribute to its further development. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), who leads the architectural aspect, describes the project as follows: “Toyota Woven City aims to bring people and communities together in a future enabled by technology yet grounded in history and nature”.

Namely, despite almost unlimited amounts of technology, Toyota firmly assures that Woven City is a lot more than just a showcase of robotics and applied science. The focus is on sustainability and human-centric approach.

It is important to underline how far-fetched and penetrative the project is. It touches upon every aspect of urban wellbeing. Starting with smart mobility solutions enabling self-driving vehicles to peacefully coexist with pedestrians, the visoners behind the Woven City’s idea left no room for analogue settlements. Buildings are meant to be packed with technology to such an extent where daily chores much like taking the trash out, will be handled by artificial intelligence and fully automated. Robots are supposed to also take care of the inhabitants of the City of Future and measure their health parameters automatically, reporting any discrepancies.

The developed technological ameliorations are likely to establish the foundation for its future use on a broader scale.

Being a former car manufacturer, now a mobility company, Toyota really pushed the boundaries with mobility solutions that are to be implemented in Woven. They proposed an innovative way to separate different types of urban commute and reinforced it with autonomous vehicles to then transfer a great deal of transportation underground.

In terms of the pathways, there will be three types:

One road is designated for use by higher speed/zero emission automated vehicles.

Another street is designed for a mix of lower speed personal mobility vehicles, such as bikes, e-bikes, and e-scooters.

The third road is a park-like promenade exclusive for pedestrians.

Such distinction is supposed to serve the seamless convey, allowing everyone to select their chosen mean of transport with a great sense of safety as well as reducing congestion. What must be emphasized is that all vehicles will be zero-emission, electric and fully autonomous. Shared transportation will also serve as a delivery system.

Major thing about the entire conveyance system is that a great share of it is supposed to happen underground in metro-like subterranean systems directly connected with buildings - yet another way to ensure the traffic is limited.

City of the future - infrastructure and housing

Next stop on the winding path towards the ultimate smart city is its infrastructure and housing. Here, again, Toyota reached for some extraordinary measures. Sustainability and functionality seem to be leading the idea behind the housing structure. Houses are to be packed with sensor-based AI to do things such as restocking the fridge or taking out the trash automatically.

It has to be underlined that the aforementioned underground system is going to be connected to the AI solutions, that way right after the sensors report the lack of something, it will get automatically delivered to the building through the subterranean network.

To push things to an even higher level, housings will be equipped with technology monitoring people’s health and also automatically reporting any discrepancies.

Eco management plays a huge role in Woven City and any other smart city. This is where technology meets nature and serves it in the best possible way.

Amongst the sustainable solutions, powering the eco-efficiency, we can differentiate:

Solar panels installed on every building’s roof (taking up nearly the entire rooftop space) providing green electricity. In addition energy will be obtained from hydrogen fuel cells.

Buildings made of mostly of wood to reduce the carbon footprint, using traditional wood joinery mixed with robotic production method

Only zero-emission electric vehicles charged with energy obtained from solar panel

It goes without saying that implementation of such advanced smart city solutions into every city is at this point rather impossible. However, much like Rome wasn’t built in one day, as the time passes by, we can all expect more and more technology flowing into the urban areas. It is beyond important for governments to start paying attention to sustainable development and the utilization of AI and technological findings that can ease everyone's lives. Solutions, like the ones available in Copenhagen or Oslo, can be transferred all over the world. With current development of technology, where traffic can be measured automatically, street lights powered with green energy, cars charged with solar electricity and citizens having the chance to navigate and operate tasks from their smartphones, it is crucial that such solutions are implemented worldwide and become the new normal for the better future of the planet. Technology is here to stay and it’s about time humans start using it to increase the quality of daily lives.

Smart cities solutions that will amaze you

Learn more about the advantages of both solutions Amazon Web Services and Oracle Cloud 

Paweł Małkowiak

During the last decade, cloud computing has been growing at an exponential rate. The size of the cloud computing market is today larger than ever. COVID-19 outbreak accelerated digital transformation, making cloud computing a priority of choice. In 2020, the public cloud services market reached $257.5 billion in 2020. And according to Gartner forecasts, in 2021 the market revenue will increase 18.4% to a total of $304.9 billion.

Naturally, the cloud computing market has witnessed the rise of several players who now dominate the scene. Gartner's 2020 Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Professional and Managed Services, positions:

If your organization aims to become more responsive to market changes and increase its operational efficiency, moving to the cloud is a smart move. And sooner or later, you'll have to choose a cloud provider. That's why we are here to give you a helping hand.

Why compare Oracle Cloud and Amazon Web Services? We decided to compare these cloud computing solutions delivered by two different vendors – a market leader and a smaller, but promising provider – to show you their pros and cons. Present how they differ in detail and indicate which factors you need to take into account when choosing the best cloud solution for your business.

Before we jump into details, let’s clarify some significant abbreviations, to be sure we’re on the same page. While browsing tips and clues on computing services you may find IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, DaaS and serverless. Following Microsoft and techopedia definitions:

IaaS - Infrastructure as a service - infrastructure is hosted on the public or private cloud instead of in a traditional on-premises data center. The infrastructure is delivered to customers on demand while being fully managed by the service provider.

PaaS - Platform as a service - offers the same kit as IaaS, plus additional features - middleware, development tools, business intelligence (BI) services, database management systems, and more. PaaS is designed to support the complete web application lifecycle: building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating.

SaaS - Software as a service - a complete software solution that you purchase on a subscription plan from a cloud service provider.

DaaS - Desktop as a service - a cloud computing solution in which virtual desktop infrastructure is outsourced to a third-party provider. DaaS relies on the virtual desktop, which is a user-controlled session or dedicated machine that transforms on-demand cloud services for users and organizations around the world.

Serverless - allows developers to build applications faster by cutting out the need to manage infrastructure. For serverless applications, the cloud provider automatically provisions, scales and manages the infrastructure required to run the code.

Note: the term ‘serverless computing’ applies to the event when the tasks linked with infrastructure provisioning and management are invisible to the developer. Servers are still running the code.

Oracle Cloud is a relatively new solution on the market and can't be compared to AWS in terms of scale. While Oracle Cloud might not occupy top positions in global cloud service provider rankings, the solution has a lot to offer. In fact, Oracle has set its cores on becoming a cloud leader in the future.

To help you recognize what Oracle Cloud is all about, let's explore its key features and capabilities.

By combining IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and DaaS solutions, Oracle provides a broad range of cloud services and products such as:

Business analytics, including Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, Big Data, data visualization, autonomous analytics, and more.

Application development, including mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, database, and more.

Cloud infrastructure setup and maintenance.

Cloud for customer services, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Security solutions focused on safety and compliance.

Oracle Cloud offers many services and products as an integrated set, allowing companies to lower their spending by eliminating the need to purchase third-party solutions. This is just one of the many advantages of Oracle. Check a detailed look at the pros of Oracle Cloud:

Integrated technology stack – Oracle delivers apps, middleware, and database as an entire, well-integrated system. There's no need to create a patchwork of third-party services coming from different vendors and go through the trouble of adapting them to the solution. To make the most of Oracle Cloud, it's best to invest in the all-inclusive version.

Smooth customization – Oracle allows its clients to be flexible in setting up the cloud service to match their unique requirements.

Cutting-edge technologies – Oracle is an industry leader whose advanced technologies make its cloud platform fast and high-performing. Speed is definitely a factor that sets this solution apart from others.

Scalable architecture – Oracle offers a sophisticated infrastructure that is fully scalable, allowing organizations to expand their IT platforms as they evolve. That feature is important for large enterprises that are going through the process of digital transformation and may want to revamp their operations in one area after another.

Niche focus – when building its cloud offer, Oracle focused on creating solutions that would match the requirements of specific customer segments. Instead of trying to grow its platform in every possible way, Oracle focuses on improving these capabilities.

Great customer support – you can be sure that your issue will be addressed quickly and effectively.

No solution is perfect, and Oracle Cloud also has its cons. Here are the most important disadvantages of this cloud vendor you should be aware of:

Poor low-end offering – since Oracle is focused on the high end, the offering around the low end is limited.

Poor performance with solutions based on .NET.

A minimum product might not be enough – Oracle provides all the services and products out-of-the-box, but these are very minimal solutions that might not be sufficient for companies that need simple functionalities. Organizations in need of a comprehensive platform are even less likely to get what they need.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a longstanding leader in providing cloud servers and storage to organizations looking to offload their data center infrastructures. In the fourth quarter of 2020, AWS generated revenue of approximately $12.7 billion.

Here's why so many companies choose AWS as their cloud provider today.

AWS offers cloud storage that supports managed, hybrid, block, and low-cost archive storages (such as Elastic File System, Storage Gateway, Glacier, S3, EBS), as well as a wide range of data transport functionalities.

Support for various databases (Aurora, RDS, Redshift, DynamoDB). Note: Aurora, Redshift, and DynamoDB are AWS custom technologies.

Support for advanced technologies (the Internet of Things, augmented reality and virtual reality, machine learning)

Tools that enable monitoring of workloads, configuration, and more.

Tools for security and performance optimization.

Analytics and business productivity, Business Intelligence (BI).

A broad range of developer tools (AWS Code Build, CodePipeline, CodeDeploy).

Top security, identity, and compliance management.

AWS has an excellent track record of successful implementations, and its financial performance attracts even more organizations to its offer.

Learn more about how Amazon Web Services (AWS) compares to Oracle Cloud platform and what to choose to fully benefit the cloud.

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