In most cases, companies develop separate applications for each mobile platform, each coded in a different language. Â For iPhone and iPad, they develop an app in Objective-C. Â For Android, they use Java. While more expensive and time consuming to develop and maintain, creating these native applications ensures that the apps are optimized for their respective devices.
Tools that simplify the creation of apps for multiple platforms have always had significant drawbacks and will never be suitable for all applications. There are tools that make it possible to create apps for both iOS and Android in C#, but result in apps with a large footprint on the device, slowing download times and taking up storage. PhoneGap (Apache Cordova) uses a different approach and can present a viable development option for many situations. Businesses with limited budgets that need to launch their product fast often choose hybrid development for it’s speed and simplicity – even if it means switching to native apps once the product becomes more stable.
What is PhoneGap?
PhoneGap (Apache Cordova) is an example of a framework that enables you to build a mobile app using familiar web tools such as HTML5, CSS3, utilizing Javascript to access device-level APIs. PhoneGap claims to have bridged the gap between web and mobile development – once the code is written, it works the same on any intended platform. In addition, hybrid apps can be downloaded via app stores just like native apps, so their exposure to the market is not impacted.
PhoneGap includes direct API support for
- Accelerometer
- Camera
- Compass
- Contacts
- File system
- Media
- Network (click here for complete list)
When combined with responsive design, PhoneGap apps perform well on devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. This flexibility offers a significant advantage as the range of display sizes in smartphone devices continually increases.
PhoneGap also offers PhoneGap Build, a cloud based tool that enables you to build a store-ready app without the need to install and maintain a native SDK on every platform you’re developing for.
Recent Advances with PhoneGap 3
In the past, PhoneGap has been criticized in the mobile development community because its performance is inferior to that of native apps and PhoneGap apps were plagued with platform specific issues. However, with PhoneGap 3 that was released in 2013, a lot of these issues have been addressed.  The result is that today hybrid app development can match the performance of native apps on newer mobile devices. PhoneGap 3 enables businesses to quickly get their product on the market – on multiple systems (e.g. both iOS and Android at the same time). Other advantages of PhoneGap 3 include:
- Much faster development process. Anyone with HTML/CSS, JS experience can build an app with PhoneGap.
- Single code base. In native development there are two code bases (iOS and Android), which means that any change/fix or new feature needs to be added twice.
- Much cheaper than native. PhoneGap framework itself is open source and free, and certainly, reduced training, design, development and testing time results in great savings.
PhoneGap Examples
These are some examples of apps developed with PhoneGap:
- Rormix – an app that connects users with music and videos of emerging/unsigned artists. The app was developed using PhoneGap in a little over a month – on both iOS and Android.
- NUS Extra – an app developed for National Union of Students (UK) to help students find discounts and deals by location, keyword, and browse by category.
Mobile Development with Dextrys
At Dextrys we’ve embraced hybrid app development early on seeing its potential of helping businesses reduce time-to-market. We’ve developed multiple native and hybrid applications, most recently a hybrid app for one of the biggest brands in cosmetics targeted for Asian market. If you’re interested going mobile and reaping the benefits of the revenue opportunities it opens up, feel free to contact Pat Lucas (plucas@dextrys.com)
