Any iPhone/Android app writers out there?

[Slavik]

Just wondering what the average cost for an app is?

To give you a quick rundown.

Little resident app sits in the background and monitors your GPS location.
Cross references your location with a database
Makes a suggestion/alert depending on the database result

What sort of cost and timeframe would something like that involve?

 

[RickM]

I've made a fair few iOS and Android apps, generally it's impossible to guess a timeframe without a pretty significant, drilled down list of requirments. You're looking at a bare minimum of $1-2k (for a very simple app) or for a pretty standard app, with location support, database support, etc you're probably looking more around the $4-$12k mark.

That's just for the iOS app. To have an app made for android it'd be about the same.

It can however be cheaper (and quicker) to build it yourself using a toolkit such as Titanium. I've used it myself a few times and from what you've posted, you'd be better off using that. You build the app using their own javascript-style code, and it compiles it into native iOS and Android code (and by native I mean it's a 100% native app - no webviews or messy frameworks piled on top of a virtual app).

It supports GPS and database usage on both iOS and Android. You could probably get the basic functionality done within a day.

It's a very easy system to pick up too - the docs are pretty decent, its 100% free to use , etc.