Apache Cordova vs Sencha Touch vs Xamarin

Overview

Sencha Touch

Stacks78

Followers90

Votes28

Xamarin

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.5K

Votes785

Apache Cordova

Stacks686

Followers892

Votes218

GitHub Stars955

Forks345

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Sencha Touch, Xamarin, Apache Cordova

Gabor

CTO at momento.

Aug 23, 2021

Decided

As a startup, we need the maximum flexibility and the ability to reach our customers in a more suitable way. So a hybrid application approach is the best because it allows you to develop a cross-platform application in a unique codebase. The choice behind Ionic is Angular, I think that angular is the best framework to develop a complex application that needs a lot of service interaction, its modularity forces you (the developer) to write the code in the correct way, so it can be maintainable and reusable.

209k views209k

Comments

Jan

Jan 24, 2022

Decided

I wanted to develop a student app that possibly could be used by many teams (students from other schools)

I chose Ionic, because:

single codebase: previously, we used React Native for Android and Angular for web/PWA, which was troublesome
portability: runs on PWA (which is important, because iOS license is too expensive for school app), web, Android iOS (+ others, if needed)
full use of web technologies: Next.js, Tailwind, React in this example (in oppose to Flutter/Java/Kotlin)
stability and maintainability: low-entry level due to basic web technologies without new syntax (in oppose to React Native and Flutter), web is really stable and won't lose support (which doesn't have to be true with Flutter/Dart)

106k views106k

Comments

William

CEO at Stealth Startup

Feb 11, 2021

Needs adviceon

lambda

Amazon DynamoDB

Windows

We are developing an AWS IoT app for large boats. The IoT devices have sensors all over the boat for engine oil pressure, position, water depth, fuel level, crew location, etc. When the boat has internet, we interact with AWS cloud using lambda and Amazon DynamoDB. When the boat is offshore, the captain and crew still need normal and emergency alerts and real-time sensor information. The crew might have an Android or IoS phone or a Windows or macOS PC to receive alerts and interact with sensors. We may use the AWS GreenGrasss edge computing solution and either MQTT or HTML for that function.

Question: We want to develop a cross-platform client to run on Windows, Mac, Android, IOS, and possibly Linux. We are primarily Python programmers, so PyQt or Kivy are options for us, but we have heard good things about React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, and others. We think an AWS Greengrass core on an RPI4 could communicate to the client with MQTT or a local webserver with a client web interface.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

464k views464k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Sencha Touch	Xamarin	Apache Cordova
Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform. Built for enabling world-class user experiences, Sencha Touch 2 is the only framework that enables developers to build fast and impressive apps that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, and more.	Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.	Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Built on HTML5 Technology- Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform.;Smoother Scrolling and Animations- Sencha Touch 2 provides a user experience unparalleled in HTML5. Fluid Adaptive Layouts- Sencha Touch’s novel layout engine leverages HTML5 in powerful ways to let developers build complex applications that respond, load, and layout in a snap.;Navigation View- The new Navigation View component makes it easy to make applications that feature beautiful animated transitions between screens as well as providing automatic back button management.;Class System- Sencha Touch 2 builds on the class system from Ext JS 4. Developers can take advantage of powerful features like dynamic loading and mixins, all making it easy to create minified custom builds for your application.;Component DataView- The new Component DataView enables you to build beautiful interfaces based on a Model and a Store. It’s easy to create a template that has full featured components instead of simple HTML templates so you can bind, listen, and control components inside of a DataView.;Advanced List Plugins- Lists are one of the most popular components in Sencha Touch, and with 2.0 we’ve updated two of the most powerful plugins: Pull to Refresh and Load More. These plugins, activated with a single line of code, deliver a fantastic List experience out of the box.;Infinite Carousel- Carousels are a great way of showing multiple screens of information in a constrained space. In Sencha Touch 2 they get even more powerful, with a data-bound Carousel supporting an infinite number of items. No need to worry about performance, or memory — Sencha Touch manages it for you, so scrolling is consistently smooth.;Config System- Sencha Touch 2 has a great API thanks largely to its config system. Almost any configuration of any component can be changed at run time, with a consistent and predictable API.;AJAX - Sencha Touch provides full AJAX support, including CORS and JSON-P;DOM manipulation - Full DOM manipulation support available;Feature Detection - Automatically detects the presence of features like geolocation, canvas and orientation support;Geolocation - Provides a simple wrapper around geolocation on devices that support it;Icons - 300 icons included;Example apps - 8 full example apps included;Touch events - Provides a full range of touch events and gestures like tap, swipe and pinch	Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.;Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.; Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.;Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio- Create, build, debug, and deploy apps in Visual Studio. Or use Xamarin Studio, a fully-featured IDE that is built for mobile app development.;Native UI, Native Performance- Xamarin delivers high performance compiled code with full access to all the native APIs so you can create native apps with device-specific experiences.; Point and Click UI Design- Xamarin provides a world class Android UI designer. Use Apple Xcode UI designer to create interfaces and Storyboards that automatically sync with your Xamarin.iOS project.	Cross-platform (CLI) workflow;Platform-centered workflow;Hundreds of plugins
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 955
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 345
Stacks 78	Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 686
Followers 90	Followers 1.5K	Followers 892
Votes 28	Votes 785	Votes 218
Pros & Cons
Pros 8 Structured code 5 PhoneGap intergation 5 Mvc 3 Customised Component 2 Mobile oriented theme	Pros 121 Power of c# on mobile devices 81 Native performance 79 Native apps with native ui controls 73 No javascript - truely compiled code 67 Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms Cons 9 Build times 5 Visual Studio 4 Price 3 Complexity 3 Scalability	Pros 48 Lots of plugins 35 JavaScript 26 Great community 25 Easy Development 18 Easy to learn Cons 2 No native performance 1 Hard to install 0 Hard to install

What are some alternatives to Sencha Touch, Xamarin, Apache Cordova?

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

Shoutem UI

Shoutem UI is a set of styleable components that enables you to build beautiful React Native applications for iOS and Android. All of our components are built to be both composable and customizable.