Custom Communication API & SDK
Digital OTT Experience Platform
Building Enterprise Grade Solutions
Finding web solutions via mobile phones has become the trend in recent days. If it’s laptops and computers earlier, it’s the iPhones and Androids trending today, and it would be advanced versions of the same, the future days. Now-a-days, Smartphones are pulling in a great demand among worldwide mobile users. One strong reason for this rising demand is for the apps that get along with these mobile devices. Mobile apps are loved by most people for its design and ease of use feature. Today, Cross Platform Mobile Application development is making outstanding impressions among world-wide developers.
These hybrid apps can be designed on any (two or more) of these OS platforms: iOS, Android, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7, Web OS, MeeGo, Maemo and many more to go with. However, any developer would focus on the major giants iPhone, Androids, Blackberry and Windows. Hence, developing apps that supports two or more of these platforms together will be absolutely pleasing. Mobile apps designed under cross platform modules has their own pros and cons, which is to-be discussed below in brief.
Table of Contents
Features of Cross Platform App Development:
1. Developer–Friendly
Cross platform framework is entirely based on developers’ comfort. The frameworks majorly comprise of dynamic and scripting languages, which is easy for any developer to handle with. Building cross platform apps only requires HTML5, Javascript and CSS3, which will certainly be on the fingers of any web developer. The developer can make use of the common hardware features on all mobile devices and have the UI specific for each OS platform.
2. Re-usability of Codes
One of the best things with cross platform mobile application development is, once the app is developed, it can be launched on multiple OS. It is not needed to write codes or sequences for each platform individually. Instead you can simply reuse those bits in upcoming projects and different platforms.
3. Plugins
Most of the cross platform frameworks include plugins that lets you create a native library and integrate it to the SDKs’ like PhoneGap, Appcelerator’s Titanium and Rhodes. This helps you develop apps with most advanced features and tasks.
4. Reasonable Costs
This can be the best benefit with cross platform mobile application development. Developing a single app for all platforms costs less money when compared to those on independent platforms.
5. Service Support
Almost all cross platform frameworks comes with the option to directly communicate with cloud services, from which you could achieve an excellent support.
6. Fast Compilation
Compiling hybrid mobile apps is faster and effective, when compared to that of other native apps.
7. Simple Testing
Testing is made absolutely simple with cross platform framework. Hence, it wouldn’t take much time to launch the app.
Limitations of Cross Platform App Development:
1. Less Quality
Though cross platform mobile apps are faster and friendly, they have faced issues for having a less performance quality when compared to native apps.
2. Needs Update
Since each app is designed on one or more OS platforms, it is hard to be supported by every feature of OS. Each time the OS gets updated with new features, your app also needs an update.
3. Requires Connection
A connection needs to be set up for starting up a cross platform app, which is not needed with native apps.
4. Hardware Restrictions
Cross platform mobile applications has restrictions to some of the hardware features, as these apps come up with multiple mobile OS platforms.
5. Seller Lock-in
This is one major limitation with cross platform mobile application development. Lot of frameworks are build using Javascript and hence if you wish to move from one OS to another, the code you already used is not going to work out. It can be made reusable by putting in a lot of work on your codes.
As you see, hybrid apps come up with features and limitations that could either delight or disappoint any developer. Anyhow, if used with good standards and attributes, the apps are certainly going to cross some higher levels.
There are various cross platform mobile application development tools available in the market like Rhomobile, Appcelerator, Widgetpad, Phonegap, and MoSync which eases the development .When creating a cross platform mobile application developers have to face various problems. While testing on several devices, code behaves different on different device and on the browser.
I agree with you 🙂
There are challenges in developing it as a Hybrid app.
Thanks
Bala
The features and limitations of Cross Platform Mobile Applications were great. I have never thought of such feature in the mobile application. It were great and interesting …..
Less Quality Performance.. I find that sentence not being quite correct. It is true that on certain features a hybrid app will lack behind a native app. A quality app with deliver great performance.
Thank you for this post on cross-platform app development. While there are some benefits in using CP tools, the vast majority of mobile developers still keep developing in native, mainly in one platform and sometime two platforms max. There is a different approach for solving the problem of mobile app dev platforms and fragmentation.Semantic driven transformation and model driven engineering will e beneficial.
Using a cross-platform mobile application development tool can help you save a lot of time and money, as long as the UI of the app is updated to match the each system.Thank you!