Comparision of Cross-Platform Mobile Frameworks

Visnupriya

1 min read

From past one year, I have been working on cross-platform mobile frameworks. Thought I would share my point of views in it. Today Mobiles are part of daily life. It is big chanllenge to develop high performance mobile applications that satisfy customers expectations. The developement of new applications in short peroid for each mobile operating sysytem is a big expectation and challenge.


There are 23 cross-platform mobile application development tools as follows,

Framework

URL

Open Source License

Framework Target

RhoMobile

http://rhomobile.com

MIT

Embedded applications

Phonegap

http://phonegap.com

Apache Public License v2

Embedded applications

Appspresso

http://appspresso.com

closed source freeware

Embedded applications

Appcelerator

http://appcelerator.com

Apache Public License v2, Proprietary

Embedded applications

AppFurnace

http://appfurnace.com

NO

Embedded applications

Application Craft

http://applicationcraft.com

NO

Web, Native and Enterprise Applications

iUI

http://www.iui-js.org

MIT

Web Applications

Sencha Touch

http://www.sencha.com

GPL v2 (+ commercial edition)

Web Applications

MoSync

http://www.mosync.com

GPL v2 (+ commercial edition)

Hybrid, Native and Enterprise Applications

NS Basic/App Studio

http://www.nsbasic.com

NO

Web Applications

WorkLight

http://www.worklight.com

NO

Embedded and Enterprise Applications

Big5Apps (discontinued)

http://big5apps.com

GPL v2

Web Applications

MobileReflex

http://mobilereflex.com

NO

Enterprise Applications

iPFaces

http://www.ipfaces.org

closed source freeware

Enterprise Applications

Canappi

http://www.canappi.com

Generated Native Code

Enterprise Applications

Jmango

http://www.j-mango.com/web

?

Eclipse Pulsar

http://www.eclipse.org/pulsar

?

mobl

http://www.mobl-lang.org

MIT

?

NEXT

http://nextinterfaces.com

Apache Public License v2

Web Applications

QuickConnectFamily

http://quickconnectfamily.org

MIT

Embedded and Enterprise Applications

Jembe

http://www.jembe.fr

NO

Embedded and Enterprise Applications

codenameone

http://www.codenameone.com

NO

?

Kivy

http://kivy.org

LGPL 3

Embedded and Enterprise Applications

Now lets see their device-specific capabilities and support platforms.
Rhodes:
rhodes_page
Rhomobile suite includes classic products like rhodes, rhoelements, rhohub, rhoconnect, rhogallery and rhostudio. It is a Ruby-based framework that allows you to build your application a very similiar way like Rails. We can build native as well as web based mobile application using Rhodes.
Supported Platform: Android (2.1 and greater than), BlackBerry (4.6, 4.7, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0), Windows mobile, iPhone (3.0 and greater than),Windows Phone 7
Sencha Touch:
sencha
Sencha Touch is a full featured widget library based on the Ext JS javascript library and high performance HTML5 mobile application framwork. Its specially target the WebKit Browser.
Supported Platform: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry.
PhoneGap:
phonegap
PhoneGap is a useful solution for building cross-platform mobile applications , its uses modern Web Technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript. Phone gap is mostly used to build hybrid application because it is not purely native and purely web. It provides Javascript API to develope advance device functionality.
Supported Platform: Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Symbian, palm WebOS, Bada.
Appcelerator Titanium:
titanium
Titanium from Appceletor.Inc provides rich set tools that are Titanium SDK to develope native mobile application and using to build hybrid and web based mobile application. Titanium Studio is an extensiable for developing titanium application and web application.
Supported Platform: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry (Beta version).
Let’s see some device capabilities of the afore mentioned framworks:

Capability

Rhomobile

SenchaTouch

PhoneGap

Titanium

Geolocation

Check-icon

Check-icon

Check-icon

Check-icon

File uploading

Check-icon

Check-icon

?

Camera

Check-icon

Check-icon

Check-icon

Check-icon

Maps

Check-icon

Check-icon

Check-icon

Accelerometer

Check-icon

Check-icon
,BlackBerry required OS 4.7

Check-icon

Contacts

Check-icon

Check-icon

?

SMS

Check-icon

Check-icon

Check-icon

Barcode

Check-icon

Check-icon

Native date/time picker

Check-icon

?

Check-icon

Hope you may find this blog useful as well.