Overview

PhoneGap

Stacks582

Followers685

Votes94

GitHub Stars4.0K

Forks889

Flutter

Stacks17.4K

Followers16.8K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars173.7K

Forks29.4K

Flutter vs PhoneGap: What are the differences?

Key differences between Flutter and PhoneGap

Flutter is a mobile UI framework developed by Google that allows developers to create native apps for iOS and Android using a single codebase, while PhoneGap is an open-source framework developed by Adobe that allows developers to create mobile apps using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

1. Performance: Flutter uses a compiled programming language called Dart, which allows it to achieve better performance compared to PhoneGap as it can directly access native components, resulting in faster startup times and smoother animations.

2. User Interface: Flutter uses its own rendering engine to create the user interface, which means that the UI looks and feels consistent across different platforms. PhoneGap, on the other hand, relies on the platform's web view, which may result in inconsistencies in the UI across different devices.

3. Development Workflow: Flutter offers a hot-reload feature, allowing developers to see changes instantly without the need to restart the app, which makes the development process faster and more efficient. PhoneGap, on the other hand, requires the app to be rebuilt and redeployed for every change, which can be time-consuming.

4. Native Functionality: Flutter provides access to a wide range of native APIs and functionalities, allowing developers to access device-specific features such as camera, GPS, and sensors. PhoneGap also offers access to native APIs but may require additional plugins to access certain functionalities.

5. Community and Ecosystem: Flutter has a rapidly growing community and ecosystem, with a rich set of packages and libraries available for developers to use. PhoneGap has been around for a longer time and has a larger community, but it may not have the same level of support and resources as Flutter.

6. App Size: Flutter apps have a smaller footprint compared to PhoneGap apps because Flutter compiles its Dart code into native ARM machine code, resulting in smaller APK/IPA file sizes. PhoneGap apps, on the other hand, rely on a web view and may include additional web resources, resulting in larger app sizes.

In summary, Flutter offers better performance, a consistent user interface, and a more efficient development workflow compared to PhoneGap. It also provides access to native functionalities and has a rapidly growing community and ecosystem, resulting in smaller app sizes.

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Advice on PhoneGap, Flutter

Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

490k views490k

Comments

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.

403k views403k

Comments

Allison

software engineer at AWS

Jan 12, 2021

Needs adviceon

Flutter

React Native

I am building an app that would need at least two external APIs: a map and a payment service. I am currently building in Flutter, but I am having trouble integrating one of the external APIs with the app. I wonder (because I am still at the beginning) if I should switch to React Native or build native iOS and Android apps separately. Any advice would be appreciated!

106k views106k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

PhoneGap	Flutter
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.	Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Android;Blackberry;iOS;Windows Phone;Windows8	Fast development - Flutter's "hot reload" helps you quickly and easily experiment, build UIs, add features, and fix bug faster. Experience sub-second reload times, without losing state, on emulators, simulators, and hardware for iOS and Android.;Expressive UIs - Delight your users with Flutter's built-in beautiful Material Design and Cupertino (iOS-flavor) widgets, rich motion APIs, smooth natural scrolling, and platform awareness.;Access native features and SDKs - Make your app come to life with platform APIs, 3rd party SDKs, and native code. Flutter lets you reuse your existing Java, Swift, and ObjC code, and access native features and SDKs on iOS and Android.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 4.0K	GitHub Stars 173.7K
GitHub Forks 889	GitHub Forks 29.4K
Stacks 582	Stacks 17.4K
Followers 685	Followers 16.8K
Votes 94	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 46 Javascript 13 Backed by Adobe 11 Free 9 Easy and developer friendly 6 Support more platforms Cons 2 Never as good as a native app 1 Created for web pages, not for complex Apps 1 Not build for high performance 1 Hard to see 1 Poor user experience	Pros 147 Hot Reload 125 Cross platform 107 Performance 90 Backed by Google 74 Compiled into Native Code Cons 29 Need to learn Dart 11 Lack of community support 10 No 3D Graphics Engine Support 8 Graphics programming 6 Lack of friendly documentation
Integrations
No integrations available	Android SDK Firebase Dart

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