There are a number of cross-platform app frameworks out there, each with their own set of pros and cons, however, as per the following trend where we have picked the most competitive and top-performing frameworks available in the market today.
Xamarin:
Loved by Developers, Trusted by Enterprise
Xamarin was launched in 2011 as an independent cross-app development framework but was later acquired by Microsoft in 2016, thus lending it more credibility than before.
It is an open-source framework that was launched to solve the problem of disjointed native technology stacks, which made mobile app development a difficult and expensive affair.
Pros of Xamarin
Xamarin app development uses C# for coding, meaning that it works seamlessly on an array of platforms (including Android and iOS).
Xamarin has a strong community of over 60,000 contributors from more than 3,700 companies.
Share more than 75% of your code across platforms, for “write once, run anywhere” ease.
A single tech stack for faster development
Cons of Xamarin
It is expensive for enterprises. Xamarin is a framework that comes free for individuals and startups.
Xamarin is not recommended for apps that demand heavy graphics because each platform has a different method for visually laying out screens. A UX/UI-rich application is advised to be executed natively.
It also offers limited access to certain vital libraries that the app developers need for mobile app development. Also, since the core of its user-interface conception is not mobile, creating the UI is time-consuming.
Apps Made with Xamarin Cross-Platform App Framework
Fox Sports
Alaska Airlines
HCL
American Cancer Society
BBC Good Food
React Native:
Learn Once, Write Anywhere
React Native is an effort by Facebook launched in 2015, and it did cause a wave in the market for hybrid frameworks. Within a few years of its primer in the market, it is already one of the most popular ones and the most trending one we discussed here.
Pros of React Native
Up to 80% of a codebase can be shared across platforms, depending on the difficulty of the app.
Apart from code reusability, it allows you to preview results right away, besides offering readymade elements, thus shortening the developing time significantly.
“Hot reloading” feature enables developers to see changes made in code within seconds not minutes as when using native technologies.
React Native emphases on UI to a great extent rendering a highly responsive interface.
It also gives you access to certain great native functionalities like accelerometer and camera. The result it renders is a high-quality native-like user interface.
Cons of React Native
React Native is not fully a cross-platform app framework. To use some functions like a camera or accelerometer you have to use native components, so there will be a separate code for Android and iOS.
Since the framework is not built in conjunction with iOS or Android, it lags behind the native platforms at times. This is one of the reasons that led Udacity to stop investing in React Native for new features.
React Native lacks consistency when it comes to releasing the updates.
React Native improves the speed of development, but also increases the duration of the debugging process, especially on Android.
Apps Made with React Native Cross-Platform App Framework
Instagram
Bloomberg
Pinterest
Skype
Tesla
Flutter:
Beautiful Native Apps in No-Time
Flutter is another open source and free cross-platform framework for creating native interfaces for Android as well as iOS. Google announced Flutter in February 2018 at Mobile World Congress and released its first version on December 5th, 2018, and this makes ‘Flutter’ in this list of cross-platform app frameworks.
Flutter is a cross-platform app framework and Google maintained it.
In the Developer Survey Results, 2019 Flutter is amongst the top 3 most loved frameworks and it add another complexity to the existing popularity of the Reactive Native framework.
Pros of Flutter
“Hot reloading” feature enables developers to see changes made in code within seconds not minutes as when using native technologies.
It is an ideal framework for MVP development. Instead of spending extra money and time on two separate apps, you can build a Flutter mobile application rapidly that looks native on both Android and iOS.
Flutter is based on Dart, an object-oriented programming language that developers have found rather easy to acquire the skill for.
Flutter has a full set of widgets in Google’s Material Design and in Apple’s style with the Cupertino pack.
Many ready-made solutions for native Android and iOS apps enable you to work with Continuous Integration platforms like Travis and Jenkins.
Cons of Flutter
There is limited TV support with apps built on Flutter framework i.e, Flutter offers no support for Android TV and Apple TV.
Though by the virtue of being developed by Google, there are several libraries with ready-to-implement functionalities, Flutter still lacks with respect to native development.
Since Flutter-enabled apps use built-in widgets and not platform widgets, therefore the size of the app is usually bigger. Currently, the smallest possible app made with Flutter can weigh no less than 4MB.
Apps Made with Flutter Cross-Platform App Framework
Alibaba
Google
Google Ads
Tencent
Adobe PhoneGap:
Build amazing mobile apps powered by open web tech
PhoneGap was previously known as Apache Cordova and Adobe owned it. It is a simple cross-platform app development framework that uses HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.
Pros of Adobe PhoneGap
It allows you to share the application with the team to garner their feedback.
It also offers a cloud solution in case you want to create your app directly.
Features like access to third-party tools, a large community (the one behind the free and open-source Apache Cordova), and a large number of plugins, make it better than its competitors.
It uses an intuitive desktop as for mobile app development and then serves the app created on the desktop to mobile devices connected to it.
Cons of Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap is not recommended for high-performance applications and hardware intensive apps like gaming apps due to its poor performance and lack of UI Widgets.
PhoneGap is dependent on iOS SDKs to build an app and downloading these SDKs requires a Mac.
Apps built with PhoneGap to incline to go a little low on performance as related to native apps
Apps Made with PhoneGap Cross-Platform App Framework
Wikipedia
TripCase
FanReact
Ionic:
Make App Creation Lightning Fast
Ionic is an open-source cross-platform app framework and licensed under MIT. It uses HTML5 for translation. Very similar to AngularJS in design and structure. It also inherits a few design elements from iOS as well as Android. It allows you to build native-like hybrid apps for Android and iOS as well as progressive web apps. Ionic has introduced Ionic React: One codebase. Any Platform. Now in React.
Pros of Ionic
Ionic is based on a SAAS UI framework designed specifically for mobile operating systems. It provides numerous UI components for developing robust applications.
The Ionic framework allows you to ship continuously. From automated native builds to live updating and CI/CD, Ionic App flow addresses the entire mobile
DevOps
A vibrant community of more than 5M developers in over 200 countries back Ionic.
Cons of Ionic
The knowledge of AngularJS becomes almost a necessity if one wants to go beyond basic apps.
Designing in-app navigation is complex because of its not-so-easy-to-use UI-router.
