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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. Ionic vs PhoneGap vs Xamarin

Ionic vs PhoneGap vs Xamarin

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Xamarin
Xamarin
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.5K
Votes785
PhoneGap
PhoneGap
Stacks578
Followers685
Votes94
GitHub Stars4.0K
Forks889
Ionic
Ionic
Stacks9.5K
Followers8.6K
Votes1.8K

Ionic vs PhoneGap vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

# Introduction

1. **Framework Difference**: Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit whereas PhoneGap and Xamarin are full-fledged app development frameworks.
2. **Toolset Difference**: Ionic primarily utilizes web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) while PhoneGap and Xamarin support a wider range of programming languages.
3. **Performance Difference**: Ionic apps can be slower compared to native apps, while PhoneGap and Xamarin provide better performance near to that of native apps.
4. **Community Support Difference**: Ionic has a strong community support system, while PhoneGap and Xamarin have a more extensive range of plugins available for developers.
5. **Market Presence Difference**: Ionic is popular for cross-platform development, PhoneGap is known for its simplicity, and Xamarin is favored for enterprise-level applications.
6. **Ease of Development Difference**: Ionic provides easy-to-use UI components, easy prototyping, and quick development, while PhoneGap and Xamarin offer more control and customization options. 

In Summary, the key differences between Ionic, PhoneGap, and Xamarin lie in their frameworks, toolsets, performance, community support, market presence, and ease of development respectively.

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Advice on Xamarin, PhoneGap, Ionic

Anonymous
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
William
William

CEO at Stealth Startup

Feb 11, 2021

Needs adviceonlambdalambdaAmazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDBWindowsWindows

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
Thuan
Thuan

FE Lead at SOLID ENGINEER

Jun 16, 2020

Decided
  • Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
  • Easy to learn & deployed production
  • Fast development
  • Strong community
  • Completed Documents
  • Native performance with lower RAM used.
  • Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
  • Powered by Facebook.
666k views666k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Xamarin
Xamarin
PhoneGap
PhoneGap
Ionic
Ionic

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.

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.

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.
Android;Blackberry;iOS;Windows Phone;Windows8
Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
4.0K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
889
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
578
Stacks
9.5K
Followers
1.5K
Followers
685
Followers
8.6K
Votes
785
Votes
94
Votes
1.8K
Pros & Cons
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
  • 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
    Poor user experience
  • 1
    Hard to see
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

What are some alternatives to Xamarin, PhoneGap, Ionic?

Flutter

Flutter

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

React Native

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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