When comparing Eclipse + Android Development Tools plugin vs Xamarin.Android, the Slant community recommends Xamarin.Android for most people. In the question“What are the best IDEs for Android development?” Xamarin.Android is ranked 5th while Eclipse + Android Development Tools plugin is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Xamarin.Android is:
Xamarin is a platform on which you can build cross-platform mobile applications for Android, iOS and Windows Mobile and use only one codebase.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Good offline capabilities
Pro Free and open source
Eclipse is a free and open source software, it's released under the Eclipse Public license.
Pro Java programming language and XML editors
Has full support for both Java and XML.
Pro Large selection of plugins
Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins.
Pro Graphical interface
ADT provides GUI access to many of the command line SDK.
Pro Highly customizable
Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable.
Pro Good font rendering
Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal.
Pro Cross-platform
Xamarin is a platform on which you can build cross-platform mobile applications for Android, iOS and Windows Mobile and use only one codebase.
Pro Fast build
Faster compared to Gradle-based systems.
Pro Allows .NET programmers to write Android Apps
Allows .NET programmers to write Android Apps.
Pro Programming in C#
Allows you to write your programs in C#, a language much superior to Java, regarding expressiveness, readability and overall productivity.
Pro Open source
Xamarin.Android and the whole Xamarin SDK is free and open source and released under the MIT license.
Cons
Con A lot of bugs and weak debugger
False errors cannot be removed.
Con Plugins can be unstable
Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources.
Con May lose support in the future
Google recommends moving away from Eclipse for Android Development, plugins and features are adopted much later from Eclipse than from Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA and in the future the ADT plugin may be abandoned altogether.
Con Lacking third-party library support
Having to use third-party libraries in Xamarin can be a real pain. Since Xamarin uses C# and third-party libraries are written in Java, you have to create bindings to use them in a Xamarin app. Which is cumbersome and wastes a lot of time. Especially considering that the Xamarin docs are not very good when it comes to this part.
Con Too large to download
Since core Visual Studio comes about in 543 MB of download size, the Mobile App Development with C++ workload comes about ~4 GB, the issues with your bandwidth and internet connection can cause the components to re-download, wasting a considerable amount of internet.