Top 12 Best Alternatives To PhoneGap

Three cheers to PhoneGap!

Most of us have leveraged the potential of PhoneGap over these years, attaining the complete power of the web to mobile app development. It has been one of the most popular choices when it comes to cross-platform app development. But “Nothing is permanent but change”, as we say.

Here is an official update about PhoneGap:

Update for Customers Using PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build – “We are announcing the end of development for PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build and the end of our investment in Apache Cordova. The PhoneGap Build service will be discontinued on October 1, 2020.” But, Apache Cordova is still active and maintained!

What Is Going To Happen?

From October 1, 2020, PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build are officially closing. 

PhoneGap will be available – open-source and free but will not be actively developed. Eventually, it may start getting incompatible with the latest versions of OS. PhoneGap Build, not being open source, will be completely out of support. All files stored on PhoneGap Build will be deleted after the above-mentioned date. Hence, all important data must be retrieved prior.

Migrating From PhoneGap To A Modern-Day Technology

Choosing a cutting-edge technology from the bunch of today’s modernized ones is tricky but beneficial. Migrating from PhoneGap to new technology could be a tough task. Hence, hiring an experienced and expert software solutions service provider is the best thing to do. That relieves you of all the burden of migration and gets the best possible output, without any loss or damage to data.

Best Alternatives To PhoneGap

• Flutter
• React Native
• Ionic
• Kotlin
• Sencha Touch
• Progressive Web Applications (PWA)
• Apache Cordova
• Bootstrap
• Xamarin
• Xcode
• Android Studio
• jQuery Mobile

Quick Overview of PhoneGap Alternatives

Flutter

Driven by Google, Flutter is an open-source mobile app development framework to develop native-like, adaptable, and graphically-enhanced cross-platform apps for web, mobile, and desktop. It is growing in recognition because of its capability to create vivid, adaptable, and native performance on iOS and Android platforms.

Flutter is quicker and aims to deliver the slickest user interface. It helps to strengthen your online presence by constructing business-centric and web/mobile apps using a specific codebase.

Flutter is considered a preferred choice for cross-platform app development. It is getting the global interest of developers and companies owing to its simplicity and pace to develop feature-rich mobile applications.

Key Characteristics:

• Offers a unified code base for various platforms, leading to time-saving and cost-effectiveness
• Owing to the Stateful Hot Reload feature, swifter, and effective app development
• Adaptable, powerful, and modern-day UI with personalized widgets
• Showcases native-like performance on all relevant devices
• Expressive and quicker user experience with prototype prospects

Organizations Leveraging Flutter

Google Assistant, The New York Times, Tencent, Groupon, eBay, Emaar, Alibaba group, etc.

React Native

React Native has been one of Facebook’s best open source offerings. It is an extensive and accessible technology for creating mobile and web apps with complete provision of the ReactJS library. It is considered an ideal JavaScript library, thanks to its bulk of mobile and web apps that it builds.

React Native has an open-source framework that offers the finest of speed, user interface, and expertise, with a cost-effective methodology. It leverages the same UI block in routine iOS/Android apps with an active blend of components in Java, Objective-C, and Swift. With this innovative technology, it is easy to construct a portion of an application to React Native and some others with native code.

Key Characteristics:

• Rapid delivery of apps due to expertise in technological areas
• Frequent technological updates
• User friendly, attractive, basic user interface and user navigation
• Integrated way of development and testing
• Highly focused, robust, and approachable apps
• Complicated ReactJS mobile and web app interfaces
• Agility with component drive assembly builds

Organizations Leveraging React Native

Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Khan Academy, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Atlassian, Salesforce, etc.

Ionic

Ionic is a popular hybrid cross-platform technology that can be leveraged on various platforms with a unified codebase. With Ionic, developers can create cross-platform hybrid applications for native and web, iOS, and Android platforms.

Ionic makes the finest use of web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and needs a Cordova plugin to wrap the applications in native containers. It has strong community support offering fast solutions and continual updates. It shows great performance and is liked by web and mobile app developers due to its easy-going learning curve.

It offers code reusability and builds highly interactive applications in a short period. It can also be used seamlessly with JavaScript, Vue, Angular, or React. It enables web developers to develop world-prominent cross-platform mobile apps and PWAs.

Key Characteristics:

• Based on dependable, basic web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, leveraging modern web APIs
• Helps creation of a simple and functional mobile and web application, with help of AngularJS
• Easy to adapt, learn and can be accessed by anyone, anywhere with basic web development skills
• Offers native app-like features with Cordova plug-ins
• Development of apps only once rather than multiple times for different devices, making it fast and cost-effective

Organizations Leveraging Ionic

MarketWatch, Pacifica, Sworkit, NHS, Instant Pot, Untapped, Accenture, doubleSlash, etc.

Kotlin

Kotlin is Google’s powerhouse preferred programming language for Android programming. It has been developed by JetBrains and has gained a lot of popularity amongst the developers. It focuses on easing the job of mobile and web application development, especially in the arena of Android apps.

It has a competency to create modern-day, secure, and advanced applications. Kotlin beats Java language incompetence, coding structure, speed, and execution. It offers extension functions to allow adding extra features to the underlying component.

It is a modern-day, statically typed language that showcases functional and object-oriented programming levels. It takes care of various platforms, containing JVM. It is seamlessly interoperable with Java.

Key Characteristics:

• Increased code legibility and maintainability
• Compatible with existing libraries of Java, Android, and web
• Secure and crisp code, creating quick and effective development
• Constantly evolving framework with good support from the global community
• Facilitates choice of any Java IDE to start development
• Instinctive and lean syntax

Organizations Leveraging Kotlin

Google, Coursera, Amazon, Spring, Netflix, Corda, Uber, Gradle, Evernote, Atlassian/Trello, etc.

Sencha Touch

A popular UI JavaScript library especially meant for the mobile web, Sencha Touch has been aptly used by web developers to build UI for mobile web apps and make it look like a native app. It supports the fast and seamless building of HTML5 based mobile apps that operate easily on a variety of devices.

Sencha Touch merged with Sencha Ext JS is one of the most efficient JavaScript frameworks for the creation of robust cross-platform apps. It supports different features like forms, trees, lists, pivot grid, etc. that are key in garnering the finest of performance.

It consists of a set of GUI based components that help in building the best of applications based on the theme chosen. For the mobile app, experiences like smooth scrolling, animations, and adaptive layouts help create a web experience.

Sencha Touch offers a lot of widgets that are all set to offer the best of user experience. With its responsive touch feature, users can seamlessly navigate through the app. It offers the best possible speed of execution for all types of mobile apps and all desired OS. It turns out to be a cost-effective way out and easy to understand the mechanism for developers.

Key Characteristics:

• Fastened web and mobile development with ease
• Flexible, code compatible, and responsive touch
• Variety of Sencha tools available
• Robust data package along with many backend sources
• Based on MVC architecture

Organizations Leveraging Sencha Touch

Telstra, XT, Samsviran, OneHat, MSL Group, FFR, Reliance Industries, Applic8, Total, etc.

Progressive Web Applications (PWA)

Progressive Web Apps are web applications that load up in a web browser just like web pages or websites. It provides an enriched mobile experience through native-like functionalities such as the ability to work offline, push notifications, and device hardware availability.

It feels like a native app and extends the same experience as a native one. There is no requirement to download it from an app store. The loading, execution, and functioning happens in a web browser.

Global organizations have implemented PWA to deliver perfect experience and availability across platforms and devices. It transpires as a vital technology to focus on web and mobile users at the same time.

More so, it works well in inaccurate and slow data connections making it widespread among users who have suffered the problem of dropping signals, disrupted transactions, and failed procedures. PWA provides a supplementary benefit of convenience and serviceability, even in the slowest connection.

Key Characteristics:

• Offers an appealing user experience owing to its modernized web standards
• Users get a feeling of a native app-like experience
• Utilizes HTTPS for high-end security preventing any cyber threat
• Provides modern-day applications with features like service workers
• Responsive for all types of mobile devices like mobile, tablets, desktops
• Can work seamlessly in offline mode, on low-end network
• Can be shared through a link and needs no separate installation

Organizations Leveraging PWA

Uber, Forbes, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Smashing Magazine, Financial Times, etc.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a popular alternative to PhoneGap, which is still active and running, despite PhoneGap going obsolete. It is an open-source platform that is leveraged for the creation of mobile apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

It is open-source software, with complete community support. It is considered a popular option when it comes to building and implementing hybrid mobile apps. The app codebase can be written with HTML5 and JS and then executed across many mobile platforms like iOS, Android, etc. It wraps the JS/HTML script into native containers that can avail the device functionalities, through JS APIs.

Key Characteristics:

• Code reusability across platforms
• Supports offline mode of computing
• Accessibility to native APIs for implementing mobile functionalities to JavaScript app
• Open source and free to use
• Can be leveraged through Command Line Interface for creating projects
• Possesses core components that create the application base with ease
• No need to learn platform related programming languages
• Saves on development time, faster to develop apps

Organizations Leveraging Apache Cordova

Walmart, Adobe, Qrstore, JustWatch, AB 180, Forum.eu, useinsider, Root Inc. etc.

Bootstrap

Considered one of the most popular and extensive HTML, CSS, and JS libraries across the globe, Bootstrap has been considered ideal for mobile-first, responsive web development. As free, downloadable software, it helps developers create swift and responsive sites. It is quite easy to start with.

It contains a lot of design templates that function based on HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, and JavaScript Extensions. It features a responsive grid system, massive prebuilt components, potent JavaScript plugins.

It has customized components developed to help users have a fast pickup with Bootstrap. These pre-fixed components like buttons, navigation, drop-downs, progress bar, badges alerts, etc. come up as a handy tool for developers.

Key Characteristics:

• Consistency and Flexibility
• Open source, easy to set up and learn
• Robust grid system
• Responsive, open-source, and supports mobile-first
• Easy to change the layout and customize grids
• Dropdown components and templates to support

Organizations Leveraging Bootstrap

Spotify, Intel, Alibaba, Walmart, Twitter, Mint, Coursera, Udemy, Docker, Vine, etc.

Xamarin

Xamarin is a free, open-source, popular technology powered by the Microsoft .NET platform. It has strong community support and it comes along with .NET. Apps developed in Xamarin can be built on macOS or Windows and executed on multiple OS like iOS, Android, etc.

Xamarin showcases a strong native, cross-platform and third-party integration with other important libraries like Facebook, Google API, Google Play, etc. Xamarin apps display platform-detailed hardware acceleration.

Applications are written using C#, which includes business logic, native API access, backend code, etc. Xamarin offers a fundamental framework to .NET to avail native features.

Key Characteristics:

• Sharing of code across platforms
• Native user interface
• Completely native look offering an enhanced user experience
• Direct addition of components to apps
• Easy integration of backend technologies
• Allows creating platform-specific UI code layer

Organizations Leveraging Xamarin

Microsoft, Kellogg’s, Bausch, Dow Jones, JustGiving, American Cancer Society, Alaska Airlines, BBVA, etc.

Xcode

Xcode is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) used by developers to create applications for different Apple platforms like iPhone, iPad, Macs, Apple TV/Watch, etc. It is available for other PC also. It can be downloaded through the Mac App Store.

Xcode gets all needed tools into a single software package while producing an app, rather than attending to them individually. It was originally named as Project Builder. It consists of editors, compilers, and other software components that work in sync to help write code, compile it, and give it to the app store for submission.

Xcode possesses all that developers look for, while building applications on Apple devices. It offers developers a streamlined workflow to UI design, coding, testing, and problem-solving. The IDE associated with Xcode combines with Swift language to make the developing experience simple and effective.

Key Characteristics:

• Offers a filtered view of the information needed
• Offers an integrated assistant editor to show required files
• Creates a complete UI prototype
• Customizable tools to increase productivity
• Professional editor to write advanced code

Organizations Leveraging Xcode

Accenture, Instacart, Pinterest, Figma, Ruangguru, Asana, Intuit, Apple, Alibaba Travels, etc.

Android Studio

Considered an apt programming environment for Android devices, Android Studio is the official integrated development environment for Google’s Android OS. It is created on JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA software.

It is written in Java, Kotlin, and C++. Since it is developed by Google and Jet Brains, there is strong community support. It has a set of inbuilt features that help in designing Android designs and components easily and quickly.

It enables Firebase integration because of which real-time experience with IoT based application is possible. It is a popular platform that assists in creating sophisticated and fully developed applications with modern-day features.

Key Characteristics:

• Instant delivery of applications with immediate changes
• The fast build of layout adding a variety of attributes
• Offers real-time experience to Android apps
• Intelligent and quick code editor to offer precise coding
• Helps create apps for all types of Android devices

Organizations Leveraging Android Studio

Google, Lyft, Delivery Hero, BNP Media, Career Club, Modere, New York Jets, Asana, etc.

jQuery Mobile

jQuery Mobile is a popular UI framework, based on jQuery core and JavaScript programming standards. Being lightweight, it has a robust theming framework and simplistic API. This API helps in creating highly responsive mobile apps and effective websites.

It is apt in carving out high-quality websites and applications that can function effortlessly on a variety of devices and platforms. It makes the utmost usage of both – jQuery and jQueryUI to offer API features for mobile web apps.

If you have a basic understanding of JavaScript programming, it is easy to learn the jQuery Mobile framework. It creates a framework that is competent with a wide variety of mobile devices. It is built on top of jQuery core so that it is easy to grasp and learn, for all those who understand the jQuery syntax.

Key Characteristics:

• Seamless compatibility with peer mobile frameworks
• Native like experience
• Touch-based web framework
• HTML optimized user interface
•  Flexibility and theme-based designing

Organizations Leveraging jQuery Mobile

Barefoot Proximity, Xcel HR Corporation, JumpStart Games, Nutramax Laboratories, etc.

As We Cherish PhoneGap and Bid Adieu To It

Technology is always here to change. Newer things come; older ones go. Now is the turn of PhoneGap to say bye to us, leaving behind the wonderful advantages it got us all, all through these years.

Thankfully, migrating from PhoneGap to its peer technologies like Apache Cordova, PWAs, Ionic, Flutter, and React Native is an easy task, especially, with an efficient IT service provider helping about the entire process, with ease and effectiveness.