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What are the best systems to deliver native Android and iOS apps from one code?

9
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9 Options Considered

9 Options ConsideredPriceLicenseMobile targets
ionic framework
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Qt
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Flutter
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React Native
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Xamarin Forms
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ionic framework

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Endi Sukaj
Matheus Cardoso
Top Pro

Fast prototyping

•••
Ionic already has many components and layouts ready to go, respecting each platform guidelines, such as colors, animations, elements position, among others. But you can choose to respect or not, because is optional.
IntuitiveTemazcalteci
Top Pro

Free and open source

•••
Ionic is free to use and open source, resulting in an active and helpful community of users and contributors.
Endi Sukaj
Yitz Jacob
Top Pro

Great for web developers who want to ship something compiled for mobile

•••
Endi Sukaj
Yitz Jacob
Top Pro

Access to most native APIs/functionality

•••
Matheus Cardoso
Top Pro

Fast testing

•••
As Ionic is a web technology, You can test your UI app and almost all of you business logic in your browser (Chrome and Safari). With Ionic 3, you can still even mock plugins that access hardware features such as camera ou battery life in the browser.
IntuitiveTemazcalteci
Top Con

Can be buggy

•••
Ionic is still a young framework (version 1.0 was released in May 2015). There are still some quirks and bugs in the framework to work out, which you can see a list of on their Github. However Ionic is under active development and bugs are generally addressed quickly.
Laith Dawahier
Top Con

Performance

•••
Web based solutions do not have good performance as native solutions.
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

Qt

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Endi Sukaj
ExuberantTerpsichore
Top Pro

Good native performance

•••
Ray
IntuitiveTemazcalteci
Top Pro

Smart separation of front-end (UI with QML) from back end (business logic and efficiency with C++)

•••
Bahri Gordebak
Top Pro

Good documentation

•••
Professional, thorough documentation with examples, available either in a web browser or in the stand-alone desktop client called assistant.
Bahri Gordebak
Top Pro

Global community

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The community behind Qt is both massive and approachable. Digia (also owners) are joined by the likes of Intel, KDAB, ICS, Canonical and numerous others in sponsoring development, while communities such as KDE also contribute significantly. Forums are active, mailing lists are open, irc channels ch...
Bahri Gordebak
Top Pro

Open-source

•••
Laith Dawahier
Top Con

Big binary size

•••
Qt applications for android and iOS has around 30+ MB of initial size.
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros

Flutter

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Nicolas Jacob
Top Pro

Great developer tools debug/hotreload/analyser

•••
Paolo
PowerfulVicaPota
Laura Kyle
Top Pro

Based on Dart language

•••
Dart is a Java like language, easy to learn and startup fast for millions of Java developers.
kirbyfan64sos
Top Pro

Open source

•••
Laura Kyle
Nicolas Jacob
Top Pro

A single codebase for iOS AND Android

•••
kirbyfan64sos
Top Pro

Fast

•••
The developer's goal is to allow people to make apps running at 120 FPS.
Endi Sukaj
kirbyfan64sos
Top Con

Still in development

•••
According to the website, Flutter is still in its early stages of development.
Donna Blake
Top Con

Dart is unpopular and never gained serious community traction like Kotlin or Java

•••
Chloe Montanez
Niels Jørgensen
Top Con

Does not support 32-bit iOS devices

•••
If you plan on targeting iPhone 5, 5C or earlier, you can forget about Flutter.
Shai Almog
Top Con

Google has a bad history with product loyalty

•••
See 7 more Pros & ConsSee 7 more Pros & Cons

React Native

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Kristaps
Samuel Robson-Davis
Top Pro

It works really well with angular

•••
It's fast and you can use mostly the same code base as for angular 2+. It also has really nice UI elements (pro UI library).
Endi Sukaj
Matheus Cardoso
Top Con

It's not one code base (yet)

•••
Despite that almost the same code can be reused, React Native, without third libraries, still can not provide one code base between iOS and Android.
InventiveKamrusepa
Top Con

Yes, you need install libraries to build

•••
You need third party libraries to be able to build or "convert" app from typescript to native language.
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Xamarin Forms

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Steven Sagaert
Top Pro

C# or F# as a language

•••
thermoplastics
Big Diddy
Top Pro

Native performance

•••
Monika
WhiteLilac
AmbitiousRaedieahkka
Top Pro

Windows support

•••
Xamarin Forms allows you to create apps for mobile platforms and Windows desktop with one code base as well.
DiplomaticLeucothea
Top Pro

Uses Native UI elements on each platform

•••
Monika
DiplomaticLeucothea
Top Pro

Great documentation and community

•••
Monika
DiplomaticLeucothea
Top Pro

Cross-platform

•••
Monika
thermoplastics
Big Diddy
Top Pro

Open-source

•••
Monika
DiplomaticLeucothea
Top Con

Not easily customizable

•••
If you want to do something that is out of the box, Xamarin forms is absolutely amazing. However, if you want to customize something in an uncommon way, you're stuck writing a custom render for each platform.
Nathan Boyle
Top Con

Binary Size/Compile Time

•••
Binary size is far too big (100+ MB for a relatively small app). The compile times are also way too long (5-12 min for the aforementioned app).
See 7 more Pros & ConsSee 7 more Pros & Cons

NativeScript

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Roman Rhrn Nesterov
Top Pro

Integration with Angular framework

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?

Onsen UI

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Ray
PrincipledOshunmare
Top Pro

Cross-platform; single codebase for both iOS and Android

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?

Codename One

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Shai Almog
Top Pro

Open source with active developer community

•••
Shai Almog
Top Pro

Doesn't use HTML5 for rendering so allows embedding native widgets (e.g Google Maps)

•••
Shai Almog
Top Pro

Doesn't require Windows for Windows Mobile development

•••
Shai Almog
Top Pro

Doesn't require a Mac for iOS development

•••
Shai Almog
Top Pro

Full access to native code (Objective-C, underlying Android VM, C# etc.)

•••
Shai Almog
Top Pro

Write once run anywhere code

•••
Endi Sukaj
Shai Almog
Top Pro

Will feel familiar to Java developers

•••
Build native apps using Java source.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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Titanium Mobile

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Kristaps
Luiz Barni
Top Pro

Access to any native API

•••
Using Hyperloop, Titanium can access any native API.
Kristaps
Luiz Barni
Top Con

Small community

•••
A lot less libraries than other frameworks.

76 Community Recommendations

Matheus Cardoso
Donna Blake
Олександр Балишин
Yitz Jacob
Michelle L Thomas
Roman Rhrn Nesterov
Nicolas Jacob
Luiz Barni
Shai Almog
Samuel Robson-Davis
priolo priolus
+55
Request recommendations from the community
IntuitiveTemazcalteci
IntuitiveTemazcalteci
Contributor for a month
2
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230
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Qt
Recommended a month ago
Good learning curve - lots of target OS available. QML brings declarative programming paradigm which is as fun as efficient.
Pro
 Good native performance
Pro
 Smart separation of front-end (UI with QML) from back end (business logic and efficiency with C++)
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SmartGalene
SmartGalene
Contributor for 11 days
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Qt
11 days ago
Software developers you can leverage high performance by good coding skills if coding in C++. makes it fast that is not a good reason you can code directly to shared memory with C# & Java and get incredicle speeds and response times
1See full
Currently displaying 2 out of 76 total recommendations.
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