JUniversal vs PhoneGap

Overview

PhoneGap

Stacks578

Followers685

Votes94

GitHub Stars4.0K

Forks889

JUniversal

Stacks1

Followers10

Votes0

GitHub Stars126

Forks15

JUniversal vs PhoneGap: What are the differences?

JUniversal: A new, Java-based approach to cross-platform mobile apps (used by Google Inbox and Google Spreadsheets). The vision of JUniversal came from some guys at Nokia who possess considerable expertise both in Java and in building cross-platform apps. They built this tool to provide an elegant way to translate source code and make it useful across multiple platforms. JUniversal offers you the freedom to write your shared code in Java and then translate it to C# (available now) or to C++/Objective C++ (coming soon). You can also combine JUniversal with Google’s j2objc translator to translate Java to Objective-C for iOS; PhoneGap: Easilily create mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. 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.

JUniversal and PhoneGap belong to "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by JUniversal are:

OAuth (based on Scribe)
JSON
Unit testing (JUnit)

On the other hand, PhoneGap provides the following key features:

Android
Blackberry
iOS

JUniversal and PhoneGap are both open source tools. It seems that PhoneGap with 4.15K GitHub stars and 974 forks on GitHub has more adoption than JUniversal with 132 GitHub stars and 22 GitHub forks.

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Advice on PhoneGap, JUniversal

Alejandro

Aug 20, 2021

Needs adviceon

Java

Python

AngularJS

Looking for some advice: we are planning to create a hybrid app for both iOS and Android; this app will consume a REST API. We are looking for a tool for this development with the following attributes:

Shallow learning curve; easiness to adopt (all team is new into mobile development, with diverse backgrounds: Java, Python & AngularJS),
Easiness to test (we discarded Angular-based tools already: creating a unit test in Angular we considered time-consuming and low value. At this point of the project, we cannot afford UI testing with Selenium/Appium based tools).
So far, we are not considering any specific capability of the device. Still, in the mid/long term, we would require the usage of GPS (geolocalization) and accelerometer (not sure if it's possible to use it from a hybrid app). Suggest any other tool if you wish.

565k views565k

Comments

James

Lead Application Architect at TekPartners

Oct 31, 2021

Decided

I've yet to see a non-native application that I felt performed as well and/or provided the same user experience with Cordova/PhoneGap/Xamarin. Frankly, at best they all seemed like underpowered web applications deployed to a sandbox that ran on a phone. They didn't feel "slick" or "mobile-first" and in some cases the performance was unacceptable. At previous companies, we built a few of these apps at the client's insistence, and in every case, they re-engaged us about 18 months later to re-write the app(s) natively.

We are doing some research on React Native and Flutter, but I am not yet convinced that they can provide the same level of experience and performance as native, though I am trying to keep an open mind.

63.6k views63.6k

Comments

Ru_Co

Sep 9, 2020

Review

Hi Manish,

Well between those 2 options (Kotlin and Flutter), Flutter would be the only one that would allow you to make your app for both Apple and Android. Kotlin is for Android only. But there are other crossplatform development frameworks besides Flutter. Which one is the best for you would depend on the app you want to create and your current expertises and preferences. I've marked a few alternatives in my answer.

118 views118

Comments

Detailed Comparison

PhoneGap	JUniversal
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.	The vision of JUniversal came from some guys at Nokia who possess considerable expertise both in Java and in building cross-platform apps. They built this tool to provide an elegant way to translate source code and make it useful across multiple platforms. JUniversal offers you the freedom to write your shared code in Java and then translate it to C# (available now) or to C++/Objective C++ (coming soon). You can also combine JUniversal with Google’s j2objc translator to translate Java to Objective-C for iOS.
Android;Blackberry;iOS;Windows Phone;Windows8	OAuth (based on Scribe);JSON;Unit testing (JUnit);File & network I/O platform wrappers;Collections—HashMap, ArrayList, etc. (based on JDK/Harmony);Logging (based of SLF4J/Logback);About 20K lines currently
Statistics
GitHub Stars 4.0K	GitHub Stars 126
GitHub Forks 889	GitHub Forks 15
Stacks 578	Stacks 1
Followers 685	Followers 10
Votes 94	Votes 0
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 Hard to see 1 Poor user experience 1 Created for web pages, not for complex Apps 1 Not build for high performance	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	Java C#

What are some alternatives to PhoneGap, JUniversal?

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.

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.

Related Comparisons

Some of the features offered by JUniversal are:

OAuth (based on Scribe)
JSON
Unit testing (JUnit)

On the other hand, PhoneGap provides the following key features:

Android
Blackberry
iOS

JUniversal vs PhoneGap