The tech innovations are escalating at an unprecedented level. Experts are toiling relentlessly to make advancements in the existing ways of systems deployment. Akin to the introduction of smartphones and mobile applications in the operational frame, they are likely to bring forth more technological progressions over the coming years.
Talking about hybrid apps, we have witnessed many frameworks that claim to facilitate and expedite the app development process. However, counting on the best, feature-rich, and user-friendly hybrid framework is easier said than done. Thus, to help you pick the perfect framework for your hybrid mobile app development project, we have outlined the prominent ones that are currently ruling the market.
Hybrid App Frameworks Redefining Mobile App Development
Ionic
The Ionic framework is a comprehensive open-source software development kit (SDK) for building hybrid apps. Built on top of Apache Cordova and AngularJS, Ionic offers tools and services for developing cross-platform applications using Web technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and Sass. Hence, the developed apps can be distributed through native app stores to be installed on devices by leveraging Cordova.
Ionic is a free and open-source project and has over 120 native device features including, HealthKit, Bluetooth, Finger Print Auth, and more with PhoneGap/Cordova plugins and TypeScript extensions. So, developers can use their CLI to develop, test, and deploy Ionic applications onto any platform.
Additionally, this framework possesses an Ionicons icon pack with a myriad of the most common application icons. It provides live reloading during development as compiling and redeploying the app at every step is a time-consuming process. Also, there are more useful features in Ionic like deep linking, Ionic Native, AoT (Ahead-of-Time) compiling.
React Native
Introduced as a web-interface development platform in 2013, Facebook launched React Native as a hybrid app framework in 2015. This framework provides users with an almost native-like experience among applications with extended stability. Consequently, React Native has a massive potential to become the best cross-platform app development framework in the foreseeable future.
Using this framework, React Native developers can build apps using only JavaScript. It uses a similar design as React, enabling them to compose an intuitive mobile user interface (UI) from declarative components. Therefore, this framework helps developers to create real mobile applications that are indistinguishable from Java/Objective-C apps.
Furthermore, React Native uses a similar basic UI building block as regular Android and iOS applications, and the developers have to put these blocks together using React and JavaScript.
Flutter
Flutter has gained high momentum over the last two years. This open-source SDK launched by Google allows developers to build apps using Dart language. Flutter uses a modern reactive framework enabling app developers to create an interactive, native-like user interface. The framework under the hood uses a two-dimensional (2D) rendering engine to develop all the UI elements. Hence, apps build using this framework look similar on all the platforms.
This framework is built with Dart, C, C++, and Skia graphics engine, while Dart is used for creating components, and the Skia 2D graphics engine is used by under the hood for bringing life to code. As said above, the framework code is written in Dart language, whereas the engine is implemented in C++. The C/C++ code is compiled into the native code with the Android Native Development Kit (NDK). Similarly, on iOS, the C/C++ code is Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiled into native code with LLVM (Low-Level Virtual Machine)
Additionally, Flutter uses its own set of Widgets instead of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Widgets. Flutter Widgets are basically higher-order components developed on top of the rendering library, which is further developed in the top lower level animation & paint libraries. At the lowest level, all the user interface code uses Skia to render the app UI. This framework runs most of its app code inside a lightweight Dart VM.
Xamarin
Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned framework having cross-platform implementations of the Common Language Specifications and Common Language Infrastructure.
With C# shared codebase, mobile app developers can utilize Xamarin tools to code native iOS, Android, and Windows apps with native UI and distribute code across multiple platforms. Being a robust hybrid mobile app development framework, Xamarin saves time while re-utilizing tools, abilities, and teams. Hence, developers can influence the array of Android and Xamarin APIs and also design a remarkable experience for glass with Android GDK and SDK.
Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap, also known as Apache Cordova, is a popular hybrid framework for cross-platform mobile app development. It is an open-source distribution of the Cordova framework using which developers can reuse existing web development skills and thus, rapidly build hybrid apps for multiple platforms with a single codebase.
The core of Apache Cordova apps uses JavaScript for their logic and HTML5 and CSS3 for their rendering. HTML5 provides access to underlying access like a camera, accelerometer, and GPS. However, the browser’s support for HTML5-based device access isn’t consistent across mobile browsers, specifically older Android versions. To surmount these limitations, Cordova embeds HTML5 code inside a native WebView on the device, using a foreign function interface to access its native resources.
Above all, Apache Cordova can be extended with native plugins, enabling app developers to add more functionalities that can be called from JavaScript, facilitating direct communication between the native layer and the HTML5 page. The plugins can also provide access to the device’s camera, accelerometer, microphone, file system, compass, and more.
Final Words
These are the sought-after frameworks for hybrid mobile app development. If you are planning to give an online presence to your business, incline toward the hybrid model. It will help you to create a quick cross-platform app as developers can reuse the same code for multiple platforms. Furthermore, a hybrid app is a perfect solution for deploying applications faster and building prototype apps. The aforementioned frameworks can certainly provide you the best user experience, like a native application.
Given the current trends, we shall suggest tapping into the React Native framework as it is easy for development as well as maintenance of the small to enterprise-level project.
To know why you should rely on React Native framework, feel free to approach the experts of our React Native app development company.
