This content originally appeared on Telerik Blogs and was authored by Md Akhtar Hossain
[Photo by Eduardo Rosas from Pexels]
Xamarin 2.0, Appcelerator Titanium and PhoneGap are powerful, modern mobile app development frameworks that allow you to quickly create sophisticated apps for different operating systems such as Windows, Android, iOS and Blackberry.
One of the key benefits of using a framework for mobile app development is that it helps you build apps very fast. A framework includes tools and features that will greatly speed up your app development process. On the contrary, if you build your app natively, it will take a huge amount of time as it’s a complex process.
These modern frameworks won’t just save you time, they’ll also allow you to develop high-quality, high-performance, feature-rich applications.
This post compares Xamarin, Appcelerator and PhoneGap so you can easily decide which framework would be the right choice for you.
But before diving deep into the comparison, let’s take a quick look at an interesting chart.
[Source: Google Trends, screenshot taken on April 12, 2020]
The above chart shows the popularity of these three frameworks over the past 5 years. You can see Xamarin has a distinct lead. PhoneGap decreased in use, and Appcelerator Titanium stayed steadily in third.
Xamarin
Developed by Microsoft, Xamarin is an awesome mobile app development framework that lets you build Windows, Android, iOS, watchOS, tvOS and macOS apps using .NET and C#. It was released on May 16, 2011.
Official website: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/xamarin
Github: https://github.com/xamarin
[Source: Google Trends, screenshot taken on April 12, 2020]
The above picture demonstrates Xamarin’s popularity in different regions of the world. It shows that this mobile app development tool is most popular in countries like China, Belarus and South Africa.
Companies that Use Xamarin
As you can see below, Microsoft brags some heavyweight users of Xamarin, including UPS, Alaska Airlines and BBC Good Food.
[Source]
Benefits of Using Xamarin
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Free and open-source: Xamarin, part of the free .NET platform, is free of charge for personal and commercial use. This open-source framework has 60,000+ contributors from 2,700+ companies actively working to make it better.
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Cross-platform development: This app development tool lets you share over 75% of your code across different mobile operating systems. You can access native APIs from your shared code.
Xamarin.Essentials gives you platform-specific APIs, such as Clipboard, Compass, Detect Shake, Email, Color Converters, App Information and so on, using which you can develop a high-quality mobile app. The single, cross-platform API included in Xamarin.Essentials saves you so much time as you don’t need to write code separately for each platform.
- High-quality UIs: Xamarin.Forms, an open-source UI framework created by Microsoft, allows you to build cross-platform mobile user interfaces. You can achieve a consistent material look and feel across different platforms using Visual API, and can also create a native look using platform-specific features such as Android elevation, iOS Safe Area and Windows ListView.
[Source]
You can create stunning UIs using the Xamarin.Forms’ built-in layouts, pages and controls. This tool also lets you customize the behavior of any control and define your own pages, layouts, controls and cells. You can build declarative UIs using XAML and non-declarative UIs using C#.
You can learn how to build UIs using Xamarin.Forms on this page.
Useful UI components from companies like Telerik, Syncfusion, GrapeCity and DevExpress will make your work a lot easier.
- Great availability of useful learning resources: There are a huge number of learning materials available for Xamarin.
… Official tutorials, courses and videos
… Planet Xamarin (insights from the community of Xamarin developers)
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High performance: Apps built with Xamarin are native mobile apps. Xamarin apps run at a lightning-fast speed as it lets you utilize platform-specific hardware acceleration and gives you full access to native APIs.
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Fast app development:
[Source]
The code-sharing facility, Visual Studio tools, AI-assisted IntelliSense, effortless debugging, high-quality DevOps tools, remote iOS simulator, profiler, auto-provisioning for iOS, and Xamarin features such as Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin.Essentials and SkiaSharp greatly speed up the app development process.
Drawbacks of Using Xamarin
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Pricing: Although Xamarin is completely free of cost, you need to use Microsoft Visual Studio for commercial development, and its licensing fee is not cheap. Take a look at the pricing details here.
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Platform-specific limitations: With Xamarin, you will face some platform-specific issues. Some of the notable iOS-specific limitations are disabled runtime features, no dynamic code generation and no remoting. A few Android-specific limitations include limited support for Java generation, limited support for dynamic language and partial support for Java generics.
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Not good for game development: Although you can develop mobile games using Xamarin, this framework would not be a great choice for game development as you cannot share much code across platforms, especially for making games with great features and interactive UI elements. You should rather build games natively as it will give maximum performance.
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Xamarin is difficult to learn for those who don’t have C# and .NET skills. To master Xamarin, you must first be good at C# and .NET.
Appcelerator Titanium
Developed by Appcelerator, Inc., Appcelerator Titanium is another great mobile app development framework that lets you create iOS, Windows, and Android apps using JavaScript. It was released on November 25, 2019.
This framework has free and premium versions. See the plans and pricing here.
Official website: https://www.appcelerator.com/
[Source: Google Trends, screenshot taken on April 12, 2020]
The above picture demonstrates Titanium’s popularity in different regions of the world. It shows that this mobile app development tool is most popular in countries like Mexico, India and Spain.
Companies that Use Appcelerator Titanium
Companies such as Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Avis and Cisco use Appcelerator Titanium.
[Source]
Benefits of Using Appcelerator Titanium
- Real-time mobile analytics:
[Source]
Titanium provides you with real-time mobile analytics data that helps you lower app crash rates, improve uptime and fix issues. A feature in Titanium called Custom Analytics lets you execute custom queries on analytics data, and the Mobile Lifecycle Dashboard feature helps you enhance collaboration and decrease reliance on manual reporting and point tools.
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Cross-platform development: You can reuse 60-90% of code across different platforms. This saves a huge amount of time.
[Source] -
Drag-and-drop palette:
Titanium’s App Designer includes a drag-and-drop palette that allows you to visually design your apps effortlessly. It produces high-quality code. Using this framework, you can easily create visual effects such as dynamic animations.
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Pre-made push notification service: You can engage your app users using the push notification service of this framework.
[Source]
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Great performance: Titanium apps are fully native apps. A feature called Hyperloop lets you directly access native APIs so you can easily implement platform-specific features in your app. Direct access to native APIs gives you a performance boost. You can also run native code such as Objective C, Swift or Java code besides Titanium code, which amazingly boosts app speed.
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API Builder: Titanium’s API Builder lets you assemble models, APIs and connectors for data access, and allows you to build data models programmatically and through a visual wizard. You can normalize your data and deliver it to the client. API Builder provides you with pre-made connectors for MS SQL, Box, Mongo DB, Salesforce, MySQL, etc.
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And finally, you can write code in JavaScript, which is a great benefit if you love this language.
Drawbacks of Using Appcelerator Titanium
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There’s a price involved: Although this framework offers a free version, it doesn’t have all the features and it doesn’t give you much flexibility. You need to spend money on the premium version to get all the Titanium’s facilities.
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Hard to make complex apps: One of the major disadvantages of using Titanium is that it’s difficult to build mobile apps that involve much complexity.
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Issues with SDK: You may face SDK-related issues with Titanium, which will waste your time and effort.
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As you can’t add HTML and CSS code, DOM elements and animations can become less responsive.
PhoneGap
PhoneGap is an amazing mobile app development framework that lets you build powerful Android, iOS, Windows and Blackberry apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Official website: https://phonegap.com/
GitHub: https://github.com/phonegap/
[Source: Google Trends, screenshot taken on April 12, 2020]
The above picture demonstrates PhoneGap’s popularity in different regions of the world. It shows that this mobile app development tool is most popular in China.
Top Apps Built with PhoneGap
Untappd, FanReact and Hockey Community were all built with PhoneGap.
Benefits of Using PhoneGap
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App development using your web dev skills: If you already know the basics of web development, you can quickly learn PhoneGap, and making an app with this framework will be a breeze for you.
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Access to native APIs: As PhoneGap allows you to access all the native APIs like camera, accelerometer and GPS, you can easily develop native functionalities on your mobile app and your app will have a native look and feel.
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Cross-platform development: From just one codebase, you can develop apps for multiple mobile platforms. Thus you can reach more customers. Cross-platform app development saves you a great amount of time.
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Open-source framework: PhoneGap is free and open-source. This app development framework has amazing community support. There are a great number of people out there ready to help you out and also working full swing to improve this tool.
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Powerful tools for app development: PhoneGap gives you powerful app development tools such as PhoneGap CLI, PhoneGap Desktop app, PhoneGap Developer mobile app and PhoneGap Build. PhoneGap CLI (Command Line Interface) lets you create, compile and run code from a command-line terminal. You can use this tool on any platform. The PhoneGap Desktop app gives you a graphical user interface for making mobile apps. You can download the Windows version of this app from this link and the Mac version can be downloaded from this link.
Using the PhoneGap Developer mobile app, you can develop an app, perform testing and check how your app looks on your mobile phone. With this tool, you can see app changes and check whether your app works well on a mobile phone or not, without re-signing, re-compiling and re-installing your app.
With PhoneGap Build, you can package your app in the cloud by simply uploading HTML, CSS and JS files.
- Plugins and third-party tools: Plugins let you extend your app’s functionality. You can take a look at the plugin library here. There are several third-party tools built by the community to make your testing, debugging and app-development process easier.
Drawbacks of Using PhoneGap
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Performance issues: The performance of PhoneGap apps is not as good as that of truly native apps.
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Not suitable for game development: PhoneGap is not an ideal choice for making hardware-intensive apps such as mobile games.
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Outdated plugins: Some of the major PhoneGap plugins can be updated. So some features such as camera and geolocation may not work properly.
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You also won’t find plugins for some necessary features, although you can build your own custom plugins. But for that, you need to have native development skills.
Quick Comparison
| Comparison factor | Xamarin | Appcelerator Titanium | PhoneGap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free and premium | Free |
| Open-source | Yes | No | Yes |
| Native performance | Yes | Yes | No |
| Language | C# | JavaScript | HTML, CSS, JavaScript |
| Platform support | Windows, Android, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, macOS | iOS, Windows, Android | Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry |
| Used by | Microsoft, Bloomin’ Brands Inc., Alaska Airlines, Allscripts, Aggreko, HCL, BBC, JustGiving, Olo | Cisco, VMware, Homes.com, Zipcar, AmWINS, AVIS, Blackbaud, Arrow Electronics, Bracket | FanReact, Localeur, Nexercise Inc., Sabre, HealthTap, Untappd LLC, Oki Technologies Inc., Logitech Inc. |
Final Words
This blog post gave you a brief comparison between Xamarin 2.0, Appcelerator Titanium and PhoneGap. It explained only the most important features. To find out more about these frameworks, visit the official sites.
In this post, I have mentioned many useful tools. Telerik UI for Xamarin is another great tool. It’s an extremely useful product that gives you exceptionally high-quality Xamarin UI controls. Try it now!
This content originally appeared on Telerik Blogs and was authored by Md Akhtar Hossain
Md Akhtar Hossain | Sciencx (2021-03-26T13:42:03+00:00) Xamarin 2.0 vs Appcelerator Titanium vs PhoneGap. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/03/26/xamarin-2-0-vs-appcelerator-titanium-vs-phonegap/
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