Hybrid mobile application development offers a number of undeniable advantages. One of them is reduced costs, because you don’t need to engage separate teams with a skillset for Android, iOS, and other mobile operating systems. More benefits of choosing hybrid over native include ease of development and shorter time to market, without significantly sacrificing the quality. However, when choosing the technology stack for a hybrid solution, some might be at a loss. Here is an overview of the best hybrid mobile app frameworks for 2018 that will help you build a killer mobile application.

Which Mobile App Development Framework to Choose?

The thing we would like to remind you about is what a hybrid app framework is. It is a combination of JavaScript code with either HTML and CSS (Apache Cordova, Adobe PhoneGap) or native iOS/Java components (React Native). Both options have their upsides and downsides, however, they are not the subject of this article. Let’s check out this list of mobile app development frameworks and their key features.

Cordova

Apache Cordova is an open-source project that offers a set of JavaScript APIs which allow the software access native device capabilities with the help of JS code. A clear advantage of Cordova development lies in the fact that there is no need to add native-specific code in Java, Objective-C, Swift. Whatever the application is supposed to do can be implemented with a special plug-in. These plug-ins make the HTML5 code connect to the native layer of the device, accessing such capabilities as camera, microphone, geolocation, fingerprint authentication.

PhoneGap

This one is built on top of Cordova. Just as Cordova, PhoneGap allows building apps using CSS, HTML and JavaScript. It is also a wrapper framework – it packs the code and makes the application available via native device APIs on the device chosen, using plug-ins, like Cordova.

PhoneGap has a significant advantage over Cordova – it is compatible with PhoneGap Build. It is a cloud service that compiles your code into ready-to-use apps without the headache of installing and setting up native SDKs. This makes PhoneGap an excellent choice for software that requires cloud integration.

Ionic

This open-source solution with an MIT license is built on top of AngularJS/AngularJS2 and supports Cordova, PhoneGap and Trigger.io, again providing an opportunity to develop apps with CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript and ready-to-use Cordova plug-ins. What makes Ionic different from PhoneGap and Cordova is that it has its own native-like controls and services and a simple syntax, which it got thanks to AngularJS core and the SASS extension of CSS. Besides, Ionic has built-in support of Google Material Design, which allows developing great-looking solutions with flat user interface.

All this makes Ionic great for developing applications for smartphones running on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Framework7

Framework 7 is an HTML5-based hybrid mobile application framework. There are some extremely useful features here:

• It supports native scrolling and fast animation.
• No extra JS coding is required for most components.
• A wide array of readily available user interface elements.
• The framework has a set of highly optimized libraries, which helps keep the development life cycle short.

Speaking of optimization, this is what helps to shorten the development life cycle and thus ensure faster time to market. However, if you are looking to build in complex capabilities you should consider combining Framework 7 with another option like Ionic.

Sencha Touch

It is an HTML5 framework for building native-like apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. It is great for enterprise-level solutions. Here are the most useful features Sencha Touch provides:

• readily available widgets;
• a variety of templates;
• opportunity to write your own custom reusable components.

React Native

This one is built on top of ReactJS and presents a set of various components and extensions which allow you to build almost fully native apps. Originally, React Native was meant a JavaScript-based framework for building iOS apps. However, recently it added Android platform support, making it a perfect tool for creating hybrid applications. The apps for Android and iOS built on React Native share over 80% of the codebase, the rest is native components. Basically, it allows building an application that looks and feels like a native solution and has a development life cycle of a hybrid app.

A significant disadvantage of React Native is lack of customizability. Yes, you have an array of great components to work with, which will ultimately make your application a fast-performing solution. But there is little change you can make to the components, meaning it is really hard to create something truly outstanding. However, as this framework is rather young, we can expect it to improve in the future.

Another significant shortcoming of this framework is a steep learning curve. However, if you have previous ReactJS experience, you will feel right at home.

Xamarin

Well, Xamarin serves for cross-platform development, which allows building almost native applications for the most popular mobile operating systems with most of the codebase shared and other platform-specific components added for each operating system. Xamarin works on C#, unlike other hybrid frameworks, which run on JavaScript, and uses Microsoft Visual Studio IDE.

We at Softvelopers give our personal preference to Cordova/PhoneGap development, as these two frameworks provide us with a capability to deliver native-like applications within short timelines and minimal resources, thus delivering great solutions at affordable costs.

Need a mobile application for your business? Contact us to get advice on choosing between native and hybrid solutions and set your project up and running. We at Softvelopers have 18 years of experience in building powerful mobile apps with great UI and exceptional performance.