CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidcordova
Sharrod Hines
Sharrod Hines

Reputation: 11

phonegap vs native apps

Hello I am a beginner app developer I have done some course work starting to build apps with PhoneGap. Next quarter I will be taking a course in building apps natively. I keep hearing about the debate between which approach is better so I am looking for anyone that can help me out on which is better. I do not want to be learning the wrong way if there is a wrong way.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 5571

Answers (3)

Amrit Bains
Amrit Bains

Reputation: 111

The best answer is to see which big names are using HTML5 instead of Native Development. They all could be wrong, but seldom does that happen. And obviously the performance on the HTML5 is not great !

Upvotes: 0

Chirag Savsani
Chirag Savsani

Reputation: 6140

I have 2 year experience in Native Development. Currently I am developing app in PhoneGap.

According to me, Go for Native Development.
There are so may articles about PhoneGap Vs Native.

Most of refer Native App.

Main thing is performance of App. Phonegap will not provide good performance as compare to Native.

If you are too good at CSS, HTML and JavaScript then go for PhoneGap because you don't need to create ios and android app different.

Also if your app support lower version of android(below 4.0), app behave strange because lower version webview is not good. UI will not render properly.

See below links for get better ideas about PhoneGap VS Native.

Must Read this one. - http://www.fastcompany.com/3030873/our-html5-web-app-flopped-so-we-went-native-and-havent-looked-back

So finally

1) Have you much experience in Java or Native Android?
- Go with Native Development.

2) App is big and you want app with better UI and performance.
- Go with Native Development.

3) Have you required app which run on multi platform and Budget is very low?
- Go with PhoneGap

4) Have you much experience in HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc.. ?
- Go with PhoneGap

Just remember that, there is no any debugging tools in PhoneGap so can't debug app like android(Tools Android Studio, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA).

Upvotes: 10

ddb
ddb

Reputation: 2435

if you can choose, go for NATIVE APPS

  1. with Phonegap/Cordova you are always limited within in a WebView, handled by a device that could be an "iPhone 6 plus" or the "worst android smartphone". In any case your app must work for the user.
  2. Instead, in a native app you can use native elements, this way performances and reactiveness will be much better. Also, please consider that look & feel (UX) of iOS and Android apps are not the same (for example material design should be preferred for Android apps), so to create a good mobile application you should develop 2 phonegap apps... but why you should?
  3. also note that, if your app needs to do something "special" than ordinary, it's almost sure that you have to develop your own phonegap plugins for each mobile platform you want to deliver you application... so it could happen that anyway you have yo put your hands in native code.
  4. for me, the only reason to use phonegap/cordova is if you are good in html/css/js and bad with java/objective-c/swift
  5. updating stuck is nightmare with phonegap. If your app is big, and you use different frameworks and things than you depends on e.g: cordova, ionic, plugins, npm packages you are using, grunt packages you are using. everything depends on everything and it is almost impossible to be up to date with all of this, and to make your app to work fine. some of those components will block you to update some other. eg some plugin doesn't still support new Android version and you can not update. (thanks to @mommcilo for this point, I totally agree)

just my thoughs, based on my experience in mobile development (both cordova/phonegap and android/iOS) :)

Upvotes: 4

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