Phonegap or Titanium [closed]

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PhoneGap and Titanium allows you to build native Mobile Apps based on HTML and JavaScript.

Has anyone gained experience in both? What are the major differences? Which one has the best support and documentation? Which one is the best to develop app, having dynamic UX (like navigation drawer, actionbar manipulation, and fragment in android) ?

Answer 1

PhoneGap is a framework to build Hybrid Apps, while Titanium is a framework to build Native Apps.

When building for mobile devices you can take one of three approaches: Web apps, Hybrid Apps or Native apps.

Web Apps are websites designed to fit in mobile screens and are accessed by typing a URL in the phone’s browser. There are multiple UI frameworks that can make your Web app look like a native app, or you can build it using media queries to make it responsive to the web browser’s dimensions.

Hybrid Apps are Web apps that are packaged in a custom full-screen browser to resemble a native mobile app, with extensions that provide access to some hardware features, but your user interface is still written in HTML/CSS and rendered by a web browser.

Native Apps are written using different languages depending on the platform. Native apps have full access to the hardware and the user interface is rendered by the platform SDK.

More on this can be view at : http://www.appcelerator.com/blog/2012/05/comparing-titanium-and-phonegap/

Answer 2

Well, this is an often debated topic.

First of all the fundamental difference. Whilst Phonegap & Titanium will both compile to natively installed apps, the vast majority of the UI and functionality of a Phonegap app will actually run in a webview as a local website, so isn't really a native app.

Phonegap allows the widest platform support, but will need to be used with a JS/HTML5 framework such as Sencha Touch or jQuery Mobile, and will generally not be as performant as a truly native app.

Titanium allows an app to be written entirely in javascript but be translated and compiled in native code, thus giving a fully native experience. A major limitation of Titanium is platform support; it kinda only really supports Android & iOS, albeit apparently Blackberry and Windows Phone support is on the way.

If you are looking at dealing with actual OS features, then Titanium is what you need, but if your app isnt majorly intensive on the processor, and you would like cross platform support then phonegap and probably Sencha Touch is probably a better idea.

I would also encourage you to take a look at Xamarin, although it is a commercial offering.

Thanks, Tristan