Comparison of Top Four Cross Platform App Development Frameworks – Ionic Vs PhoneGap Vs Xamarin Vs Titanium

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

•   Single source for all supported platforms, especially Android and OSX.
•   The majority of app development is carried out using HTML, CSS, and JS, which is not new to many developers
•   With Ionic, you avail a chance to use the distinctive framework of Angular JS that is embedded in it by default
• Good and versatile availability of plugins.
• Nicely covered UI patterns like tabs, header, bars, lists, and cards.
• Use of CSS to override styles offers an extravagant experience

• As the learning curve for Angular JS is stiff, Ionic is not a better option for developers not acquainted with Angular JS
• Risk of early adoption as Ionic is presumed to be still in its infancy stage, Support, standards keep on changing, and at any unknown moment, even the libraries are completely rewritten
• While you can easily create, Interface and Database type of apps, it is harder to create graphics games and high-end apps using Ionic.

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

• Reduced learning curve as it utilizes JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3 languages, already known to developers
• Apps developed using PhoneGap can be installed similar to native apps by leveraging easy app store discoverability
• PhoneGap follows plug-in architecture increasing the chances of extending native device APIS in modular ways
• PhoneGap allows the distribution and integration of payment through the app store.
•  It is free and open source saving you the licensing costs
• It is easier to seek assistance from tons of libraries for further enhancing the functionality and flexibility of PhoneGap

• Performance issues might arise if too many graphic elements are induced in the app architecture.
• Not clear information, user guidelines or directions are available that could enhance the performance and quality of cross-platform app developed using PhoneGap
• The PhoneGap’s API still does not support a large number of native APIs
• As there is not much control over hardware, apps might become slower with frequent render updates
• Possibility of memory leakage as it does not have cache/memory management

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

• Xamarin re-uses business logic layers, codes and data access across platforms to develop effective offline applications.
• At first, the license costs might seem higher, but with MSDN subscription discounts for a sizeable team and projects, you ought to receive higher returns.
• Xamarin is a native platform wrapping native libraries with a .NET layer with C# making it highly customizable and open to all third-party libraries written for Android and iOS environments.
• The cross-platform apps developed with Xamarin can do anything a native app does as it helps in implementing very performing code underneath resulting an improved overall performance of the app.
•  Xamarin Forms is a very simple API, allows developers to build very beautiful native UI for all the platforms.

• Either the .NET developer must understand the mobile development or a mobile developer should learn .NET for using Xamarin. It is necessary to have knowledge of some platform-specific app architecture or framework that has Objective-C or Java flavor.
• Due to framework libraries in Xamarin, an issue of unreasonable app size might arise to be downloaded from Google Play or iOS App Store.
• Xamarin Forms offer about more than 40 UI controls (still growing); however, a developer is not able to access all the other Android-specific UI controls, requiring him/her to write platform specific codes for such controls.

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

• Comprising of HTML5, CSS5, JQuery, JavaScript and Ajax it becomes easier for mobile developers to learn the heart and soul aspect of titanium.
• The platform-independent API can access the advanced features of modern devices such as touch screen, camera, GPS navigation, and much more to develop feature-rich applications.
• Build quick prototypes using the integrated environment and get instant user feedback.
• 200,000+ developers and 35,000+ apps developed, Titanium is a large community offering access to its Open Mobile Marketplace.
• It recently acquired ‘Cocoafish’ for implementing cloud service and functionality in its platform to develop performance-oriented applications.

• Titanium increases development as well as cost complexities more than proportional to increased application complexity.
• Due to the version and build, Titanium might give rise to SDK related issues, leading to loss of time and efforts, which is not good, especially when you are constrained to the delivery of products and features.
• It offers ‘StoreKit’ a module enabling in-app purchases to Apple’s App Store, which is slightly painful and complex.
• It was better with a Titanium Developer. Since the introduction of Titanium Studio (Eclipse based IDE built on a modified version of Aptana), it has increased the learning curve making it unstable and uncomfortable at times.