How advantageous is PhoneGap? [closed]

Question

I am planning to do an app on all Mobile Platform. I found Phone gap is a solution for write once deploy anywhere.

The app just have to talk to a webservice and display information in a grid layout grouped under categories.

Anyone who has developed apps in phone gap can share your views and thoughts on this.

Does phone gap really serve this purpose? - Write once and deploy any?

Will the look and feel be the same in Android, iphone etc. (these are 2 platforms I am most interested on.)

How about the performance on different platforms ? What are the other blocks I might hit down the road?

Thank you all in Advance..

Answer 1

if that is REALLY all your app needs to do then I believe PhoneGap can meet your needs. I have been working with it for about 4-6 months now and find it "capable". For my situation I am developing for a specific client and for myself so some of lack of structure around PhoneGap makes it risky when I am pitching it to my client.

I have recently started to look into Appcelerator as another cross-platform tool. It has gotten decent press lately and the tools and the documentation and support around it "appear" to be more polished and professional than PhoneGap; this make it an "easier pitch" to my clients.

That being said, I think BOTH solutions can meet the needs of your application as you have described it above.

Answer 2

You can develop an HTML5/CSS3/Javascript app, then wrap it in PhoneGap to make it native and put it on the App Store (or Android Market...), as well as publish it on the web.

The added benefit is PhoneGap allows you to do additional things such as parse the iPhone contacts and access the local hardware.

It's great in combination with jQuery Mobile, but you must be very caution to really streamline your images, CSS, and Javascript. Performance is a major issue.

Here are some great links I found to improve PhoneGap / Sencha / Mobile Web App performance.

See this to learn more about Mobile Frameworks: http://www.markus-falk.com/mobile-frameworks-comparison-chart/

Answer 3

Depending on the requirements of your app and what you actually mean by "all mobile platforms", PhoneGap may be a good fit.

Whether you go with it or use something else, you'll almost definitely want to create a different UI for each platform you build for so you can mkae your application look like it belong on each platform and uses UI metaphors and design practices & layouts appropriate to the platform.

Answer 4

The simple answer is - yes, for the API which delves into the lower level stuff. As for your UI, it will probably still need to be tweaked. For example, you might design a back button in your navigation, which may make sense in iPhone but not make sense in Android or WebOS