Times are tough and development budgets seem to be getting smaller and smaller, assuming that you are not Draw Something or Instagram. My experience has been that clients who are interested in supporting both Android and iOS do not generally want to develop two native applications. The reasons are obvious: cost and time. So the conversation tends to turn to cross platform solutions. Currently, there are two types of cross platform mobile solutions for non-games: web based ones and Mono. I am currently doing a little work in Mono for Android and will write about that at a later date.
The most obvious web based solution is probably Phonegap. Phonegap has been around for a while and allows developers who have HTML/CSS/JS skills to leverage those to develop rich cross platform mobile apps. That’s all true. However, there are a few issues with Phonegap: it is not a mature platform, is a huge dependency, and is nowhere near as performant as native code.
This will probably be the most inflammatory issue I have with Phonegap, but I stand by it. Phonegap is not mature and it shows. A lot of the more complex and useful functionality comes from community plugins. However, the platform has to date been in such a state of flux, that you are likely to find that many plugins don’t work or at least don’t work without some form of modification on the most recent version of the platform. This may seem like a relatively small issue but if you look at it in terms of developer efficiency, then it becomes a bit more serious; do you want to be hunting down the right version of the right plugin for your version of Phonegap?
Dependencies are a necessary evil on any project and plugins are dependencies. Even if you are developing a native app you are taking a dependency on at least a language and one or more frameworks. Using a tool like Phonegap adds a big dependency on Phonegap itself which also depends on those native dependencies you were trying to avoid. Worse still, since the Phonegap must interact with Cocoa Touch or Android, there is a chance that you will have “mystery meat crashes” on one or both platforms. One example on iOS is that Phonegap does not do a great job with memory management, so your choices are use ARC (only recently an option), dropdown to Objective-C and write some “release” statements, or run the risk of seemingly random crashes in the wild. Another issue with such a large dependency that depends on one or more distinct dependencies is that you end up with the lowest common denominator between all platforms. For example, there is no iCloud support in Phonegap nor is there Newsstand support. Someone could write a plugin for these but those would be yet another dependency in your app and any changes to Phonegap or worse Newstand or iCloud could break your plugin.
It is unlikely that you will be developing the next Infinity Blade, but performance still matters even outside of the games space. Phonegap is not as fast as a native app. It can’t be. Normally, this isn’t a huge issue for most apps but it is important to consider during the planning stages of your app especially if you want to use the camera or have a flashier UI; the camera is noticeably slower in Phonegap. As always, your app’s tolerance for the performance hit will depend a lot on the spec, but it is something to keep in mind.
Having said all that, there are cases in which Phonegap is a good choice. If budget is a huge issue, cross platform is a must on day one, the app will be pretty plain, and performance is not a chief requirement. As always, you need to pick the right tool for the right job, but remember there are no silver bullets. Questions? Comments? Rage? Find me on Twitter or Google+.
