Hybrid Mobile Applications Development – PhoneGap

Hybrid Mobile Applications Development – PhoneGap

When you are developing a mobile app, one of the first decisions you need to make is whether it will be a native app, hybrid app or web app. Each type of mobile app development has pros and cons. It may vary depending on your budget, timeline, performance, UI, future updates and so on.

We will discuss Phone Gap which is an open source framework for developing cross-platform mobile apps. Based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Basically, you can build cross platforms mobile applications from the same source code. Major platforms support are iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, WebOS, and Symbian.

Hybrid applications fall in the middle of native and web apps. Hybrid app development is constantly changing and we can see new frameworks and platforms frequently.

Hybrid app access the hardware through plugins which are written in native code and allow a hybrid app to access device through APIs.

Well, there are always pros and cons when we talk about hybrid mobile apps.

There’s a huge range of platforms and mobile devices available, from Windows Mobile to Blackberry, Android to iOS. There are powerful mobile app development frameworks such as PhoneGap, Sencha, jQuery, Ionic, SproutCore, and Ember.js, that help to design and develop native apps for the web that offer a look, feel and functionality that works across all devices.

Choosing one platform for mobile app development is not a workable solution anymore for individuals and companies who are looking to expand their business. That is why start-ups or enterprises need a comprehensive solution that will ensure that your app reaches to unlimited users.

PhoneGap is a web-based framework that is packed with JavaScript, allows the hybrid app to access hardware API like touch, sound, camera and more.

Advantages of Using PhoneGap

·         The major advantage of using PhoneGap is a single code base to deploy your cross-platform mobile applications.

·         Supports hardware and can be integrated to Geo Location, Accelerometer, sound etc.

·         Development time is short as compared to native mobile applications.

·         Integrate into client’s database APIs and web services.

·         Offline support

Disadvantages

·         The biggest disadvantage of PhoneGap is, new features released may not be supported by the PhoneGap framework.

·         Various core device features may not be integrated with PhoneGap.

·         Lower monetization opportunities.

·         There is a slight performance issue as compared to native apps.

·         There are fewer libraries in HTML such as scanning bar code etc.

In the end, it is really your choice to go ahead with native, hybrid or web app development.