Ionic vs PhoneGap vs React Native

Overview

PhoneGap

Stacks578

Followers685

Votes94

GitHub Stars4.0K

Forks889

Ionic

Stacks9.5K

Followers8.6K

Votes1.8K

React Native

Stacks34.4K

Followers29.5K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars124.4K

Forks24.9K

Ionic vs PhoneGap vs React Native: What are the differences?

Development Approach: Ionic is a framework that uses web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build hybrid mobile apps, while PhoneGap is a tool that wraps a web application into a native container. React Native, on the other hand, uses a different approach by compiling JavaScript code to native code, allowing for better performance.
Performance: Ionic and PhoneGap apps can have performance issues as they rely on web technologies, whereas React Native apps have better performance since they compile down to native code. This difference is crucial for apps requiring complex interactions or high-performance capabilities.
User Interface Components: Ionic offers a wide range of pre-designed UI components that help in building apps quickly. PhoneGap, on the other hand, has fewer built-in UI components, requiring more customization. React Native provides a set of native components that give the look and feel of a native app, making app development smoother.
Community and Ecosystem: Ionic has a large and active community, which results in frequent updates and a vast array of plugins. PhoneGap has been around longer and has a mature ecosystem with plenty of resources and plugins available. React Native, being backed by Facebook, has strong community support and a growing ecosystem.
Learning Curve: Ionic is relatively easy to learn for web developers due to its use of web technologies. PhoneGap is also beginner-friendly but might require some native code knowledge for certain features. React Native, though powerful, has a steeper learning curve as developers need to understand both JavaScript and native APIs.
Platform Support: Ionic and React Native support both iOS and Android platforms, with additional support for other platforms. PhoneGap, however, has wider platform support, including Windows Phone and BlackBerry, making it a preferable choice for apps targeting diverse devices.

In Summary, Ionic, PhoneGap, and React Native differ in their development approach, performance, user interface components, community support, learning curve, and platform support.

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Advice on PhoneGap, Ionic, React Native

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.

491k views491k

Comments

Andrea

May 26, 2020

Needs adviceon

Vue.js

Vue Native

React

I'm a huge fan of Vue.js and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I need to build a mobile app for my company and I was now wondering whether I could make use of VueJS with Vue Native instead of switching to React. I know Vue Native builds on top of RN. My question is whether I'd have as much freedom with Vue Native over RN and whether you feel like Vue Native is "production ready" or not. Not sure of which shortcomings I may find using Vue Native... Thanks a lot!!!

336k views336k

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

Detailed Comparison

PhoneGap	Ionic	React Native
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.	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.	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.
Android;Blackberry;iOS;Windows Phone;Windows8	Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;	Native iOS Components;Asynchronous Execution;Touch Handling;Flexbox and Styling; Polyfills
Statistics
GitHub Stars 4.0K	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 124.4K
GitHub Forks 889	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 24.9K
Stacks 578	Stacks 9.5K	Stacks 34.4K
Followers 685	Followers 8.6K	Followers 29.5K
Votes 94	Votes 1.8K	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 Hard to see 1 Poor user experience 1 Not build for high performance	Pros 248 Allows for rapid prototyping 228 Hybrid mobile 208 It's angularjs 186 Free 179 It's javascript, html, and css Cons 20 Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps 15 Not meant for game development 2 Not a native app	Pros 214 Learn once write everywhere 174 Cross platform 169 Javascript 122 Native ios components 69 Built by facebook Cons 23 Javascript 19 Built by facebook 12 Cant use CSS 4 30 FPS Limit 2 Slow

What are some alternatives to PhoneGap, Ionic, React Native?

Flutter

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

Xamarin

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.

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.

Apache Cordova

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.

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.

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.

Sencha Touch

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.

Related Comparisons

Ionic vs PhoneGap vs React Native: What are the differences?

Development Approach: Ionic is a framework that uses web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build hybrid mobile apps, while PhoneGap is a tool that wraps a web application into a native container. React Native, on the other hand, uses a different approach by compiling JavaScript code to native code, allowing for better performance.
Performance: Ionic and PhoneGap apps can have performance issues as they rely on web technologies, whereas React Native apps have better performance since they compile down to native code. This difference is crucial for apps requiring complex interactions or high-performance capabilities.
User Interface Components: Ionic offers a wide range of pre-designed UI components that help in building apps quickly. PhoneGap, on the other hand, has fewer built-in UI components, requiring more customization. React Native provides a set of native components that give the look and feel of a native app, making app development smoother.
Community and Ecosystem: Ionic has a large and active community, which results in frequent updates and a vast array of plugins. PhoneGap has been around longer and has a mature ecosystem with plenty of resources and plugins available. React Native, being backed by Facebook, has strong community support and a growing ecosystem.
Learning Curve: Ionic is relatively easy to learn for web developers due to its use of web technologies. PhoneGap is also beginner-friendly but might require some native code knowledge for certain features. React Native, though powerful, has a steeper learning curve as developers need to understand both JavaScript and native APIs.
Platform Support: Ionic and React Native support both iOS and Android platforms, with additional support for other platforms. PhoneGap, however, has wider platform support, including Windows Phone and BlackBerry, making it a preferable choice for apps targeting diverse devices.

In Summary, Ionic, PhoneGap, and React Native differ in their development approach, performance, user interface components, community support, learning curve, and platform support.

Ionic vs PhoneGap vs React Native

Overview