If I were to ask a developer two reasons why is she using PhoneGap, the answer might be – first, building a cross-platform app for multiple platform is quicker than developing a native app for each, and second, maintaining just a single project for an app is cost-effective in both short and long term.
PhoneGap provides an easy way for developers to deploy apps to multiple platforms. It enables you to utilize your coding skills and write code in HTML, CSS and Javascript, cross-platform web programming language, to develop natively-installed apps. Thus, PhoneGap is essentially an application container technology that renders HTML content through embedded web-browser, which is not Chrome or Safari. It is rather the web-view used by native OS. On Android, it is android.webkit.WebView and on iOS it is Objective-C UIWebView class.
According to the official website, PhoneGap has been downloaded over 1 million times and it claims that the framework is being used by 400,000 developers. The numbers suggest that it is a decent success, but it is definitely not for everyone for all the benefits it provides.
The Performance Issue
PhoneGap was never meant to replace native mobile apps. Native-apps interact better with the hardware, generally load fast, offer smooth transitions and do everything a little better that what PhoneGap code can do.
Limitations
PhoneGap has its own limitations. Granted PhoneGap API does allow you to access native functionality through Javascript such as using phone’s camera, but the scope is limited. You cannot develop a graphic intensive game by using this framework. Also, complex and sophisticated applications that require high API-level are better built by using native codes.
Also, PhoneGap fares badly with apps constantly run in the background, such as News and Weather, and Social-media apps.
Competition
It is not 2012 where a hybrid application might just go well with the audience. It is 2016 where a smartphone user has thousands of apps to choose from in each category, a sub-standard performance may already put your app at a certain disadvantage. Native applications make use of native operating system in a better way.
Conclusion
There are certainly many things that go against the use of PhoneGap development framework, but it should be accepted that PhoneGap was never meant for every project. The framework only suits simple applications that are more on the lines of web apps.
At Octal Info Solution, we carefully analyze your requirement and that of your apps and consult you accordingly. There are no rights and wrongs, it is all about making smart choices.
