With a whopping userbase of 2 billion people and near to 1.5 billion downloads every month, Android sits cozily at the number one spot for mobile operating systems. If you?re looking to make customized apps, Android is the best platform as it?s market share is predicted to skyrocket to over 87% by 2022. Not only the smartphone market, but it?s also ready to take over tablets, PCs, cars, set-top boxes, smartwatches, home appliances, and more.
As Android is considered a highly customizable operating system with a massive global support community, lots of developers prefer making Android apps. Due to the growth of Android and lots of development frameworks coming in, the process of selecting the right framework for an Android project or app development, in general, has become a complicated question for many.
In this read, we help you select the right Android framework with a comprehensive list that you can consider for your app development projects in 2020.
Here is a more detailed overview of all the Android Frameworks and how can you choose the right one for your project.
Ionic:
Ionic is a free and open-source framework certified by MIT that enables developers to use modern web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. It is suitable for developers who want to build hybrid and interactive mobile apps. It is the most developer-friendly platform and has a rich toolset of elements, gestures, & animations that help you build high-quality mobile/desktop/PWAs from a single codebase.
React Native:
Voted as the 3rd most wanted framework in a recent survey of more than 90,000 developers, React Native is one of the widespread open-source platforms. Developers say that it makes customized app development easier and faster. It uses native platform-based interface components & APIs that are built-in for inducing a natural look and feel which is performance-friendly. It solves issues like codebase differences, imperative programming and iteration period while making custom-code reusability simplified.
Flutter:
This is Google?s free & open-source mobile UI SDK framework for building apps in a unique approach compared to other frameworks. Considered best for hybrid app development, it uses a single codebase and allows developers to test, perform UI, unit and functionality tests without encountering errors. It?s hot reload feature is used for continuous testing without the need for restarting an application. Other features include a screen reader, faster development cycle, quicker rendering and themes for Android & iOS.
Native Android:
The Native Android SDK provides developers with API libraries and tools necessary to build, test, and debug quality apps for the Android platform. Developers who need to implement parts of their applications in native code using C & C++ will prefer working on Native Android as it provides full flexibility in delivering innovative applications and games for mobile devices.
Xamarin:
Xamarin is an open-source platform for building performant and modern apps for iOS, Android & Windows with .NET. It features a friendly development environment that allows you to build native apps, with shared UI code written in C#/XAML. It is mainly for those developers who intend to share code, and test business logic across platforms writing cross-platform applications in C# with Visual Studio.
Native Script:
If you look to accelerate your app development process, NativeScript SDK is another great choice as a framework for hybrid apps. It helps developers craft mobile apps with Angular, Vue.js, TypeScript or JavaScript while sharing the application code across platforms. Developers who are looking to make multi-platform apps in little time and lesser cost, then they should go for NativeScript. It also features direct access to iOS and Android APIs and the reuse of CocoaPods and Android SDKs.
jQuery Mobile:
This is an HTML5-based cross-platform development framework that provides one of the easiest ways to develop mobile and web applications. It promises highly responsive applications that work on smartphones, tablets and desktop platforms. The jQuery mobile builder offers added support through including a custom JS file and structure-only style sheets for creation usage. Plugins like popup boxes, image sliders, and content sliders make web pages simpler, user-friendly and interactive.
Framework7:
This is the newest full-featured development platform designed for Android, iOS and Desktop apps. It is an open-source mobile HTML framework that just needs an HTML layout and CSS, JS files to get it up and running. Developers who know HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript can easily flow with Framework7 which focuses on crafting optimum experience and simplicity.
Corona SDK:
This cross-platform development framework is free and used to create apps and games for mobile, desktop and TV devices on a single code base. It leverages the use of Lua, with more than 1000 built-in APIs, a massive selection of plugins and extensions that help make your development experience easy. It helps you see changes instantly in the simulator and can iterate extremely quickly.
Appcelerator Titanium:
Appcelerator Titanium SDK allows making native apps using web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS without having to learn Java or Objective-C. Apps made by this framework show performance equal to apps written using native APIs and it supports operating systems including Android, HTML5, Universal Windows & Blackberry with a single JavaScript codebase.
It must be kept in mind that every project or application has a different requirement likely to be fulfilled by a specific framework. This choice is to be made considering the advantages of using one framework over the other. Make sure you explore the different frameworks to enhance your app development experience.
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