Thursday 2 June 2016

Cross Platform Mobile Development Solution: Which One You Choose?

In the current market, the increasing demand of the mobile applications has enhanced the demand of cross platform mobile development solutions. To meet this demand various major cross platform mobile development solutions are available in the market, such as



  • Native Android Development
  • Native iOS Development
  • PhoneGap
  • MonoGame (Cross platform game development)
  • MonoTouch (Xamarin.iOS)
  • Mono for Android (Xamarin.Android)
  • Appcelerator Titanium

  • In this article, the main focus will be on Android and iOS, because even though there are other competitors, they are the major players in the mobile industry.

    Native Development:

    The finest method to build mobile applications is to use the native tools that come with the platform.
    1. For Android: Java, Eclipse, Android Studio & Android SDK
    2. For iOS: Objective-C and XCode.
    3. For Windows Phone: C# and Visual Studio.
    By using cross platform mobile development solution, the developers can build a simple app natively in both Android and iOS. This will help developers to understand the things that happen in the abstraction layer that a cross platform mobile development solution will provide, as well as it will help to learn the value or lack of value in a cross platform solution.

    Xamarin Tools:

    Xamarin tools are used to build an Android or iOS application with C#, and share a good amount of the code. If a developer uses Xamarin tools for application writing, it means that's using an abstraction on top of the real SDKs for iOS and Android, which help them to get a fully native application with a fully native user interface on each platform. Also, it limited the degree in the amount of code that they can share between the platforms. The developers can reuse the Xamarin tools based written code, without even trying very hard.

    Moreover, Xamarin has its own IDE called Xamarin Studio, which is a cross platform that is well designed and easy to use. Also, it includes a plugin for Visual Studio that allows developers to build their application in Visual Studio. 

    PhoneGap:

    PhoneGap is another renowned cross platform mobile development solution, which is used by a large number of developers. Basically, a PhoneGap is a set of JavaScript APIs that allow to access the native capabilities of the device. Also, it is a wrapper that helps in building a web application, which can locally install to the device.

    In PhoneGap, the developer can build an application or mobile website by using HTML5 and JavaScript, just like any other website today. The PhoneGap applications can easily run on the local browser of the phone, and have some hooks into the native libraries that are exposed through their JavaScript APIs. It means, a PhoneGap application, can be developed just like a cross platform mobile website. In this, the developer can use any mobile framework, such as Sencha Touch or JQuery Mobile, etc.


    Appcelerator Titanium:

    Appcelerator Titanium is cross platform app development solution that is totally different from PhoneGap.  The only similarity between the both is the language, i.e., JavaScript. With Appcelerator Titanium, the developer can use a cross platform mobile development custom API to create their application. It is completely different from PhoneGap and Xamarin, because with Xamarin, the developer use a wrapper around the real native SDKs, and with PhoneGap they use whatever they want to build an HTML5 web application.

    Moreover, with Titanium tool, the developer can have their code against their SDK, which also includes UI components. This means, while writing a Titanium application, they can actually write a cross platform user interface. Even, the Appcelerator Titanium apps are compiled down to completely native applications, which use the real native controls for the platform.

    Conclusion:

    A large number of  cross platform mobile development solutions are available in the market, out of which you can select any one to develop your mobile application or website. Which cross platform mobile development solutions is the most suitable for your app totally depends upon the requirements of your application. So, research well and choose the best cross platform app development solution for your app.


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