About PhoneGap

Before we get to what PhoneGap is all about, let’s take a look at the category it falls into – Cross platform app development. Cross platform app development is quite simply the utilization of various technologies in order to develop a single mobile application that can run on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) simultaneously. Given the current craze for mobile apps across all the major mobile platforms, cross platform (also known as multi-platform) app development is gaining more and more popularity as a one-stop solution.

PhoneGap is one such cross platform mobile app development tool and is making the rounds globally in terms of both popularity and critical acclaim. So, what is it about PhoneGap that makes it different from the various other multi-platform app development tools? Here is a breakdown of what PhoneGap can do for you and where it is applicable.

PhoneGap is an open source framework for quickly building cross-platform mobile apps using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. Wrap your app with PhoneGap Deploy to mobile platforms! Build your app with web technology Wrap your app with PhoneGap Deploy to mobile platforms!

Apache Cordova is an open-source mobile development framework. It 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.

Benefits of PhoneGap

From the perspective of both developers and app owners, PhoneGap offers several advantages over native app development. While the battle of native app development vs. cross platform app development is a never ending one, each field has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages that we will cover later. For now, here is a look at how PhoneGap can help developers and app business owners.

Supported platforms -:

Advantages of PhoneGap -:

• Use HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3 to build stuff. No need to learn a platform specific development

• One code for all (PhoneGap supports around 7 platforms)

• Rapid testing and deployment.

• Use of the vendor specific market place to sell your products.

• Could do more platform specific things on the device than its default browser (website).

•Most of them are open source with lot of plugins and support to the community.

Disadvantages of PhoneGap -:

• Poor performance compared to its native counterpart.

• Even though you have lot of plugins, there isn’t for everything. So, If you have to use something which doesn’t have one then you got to build it from scratch. That is going to take a lot of time.

• Different devices support similar functionalities not identical, building for all of it is even more money.

• Limited Capabilities vs Native

Below are a few issues we ran into while developing apps with PhoneGap:

·    At times, the documented features of PhoneGap don't work as they should
·     Having a lot of graphical assets on your app can cause the performance to drop and, in worst case scenarios, even kill the app with a "memory limit reached" error
·     Each platform has its own webview that differs depending on the version and when targeting older devices some inconsistencies may become apparent
·    Not all native features are accessible through the Cordova platform

·   Performance issues (DOM manipulation, data manipulation)

·    CSS is not the best substitute for native effects and animations

·    Apps that require rich animations and/or effects tend to be choppy and unresponsive (because usually the effects are done with CSS and JavaScript)

·    No possibility of creating background services