The 5 Best Hybrid Mobile App Development Frameworks

Hybrid mobile application development has always been the developer’s dream, which allows them to build one application that runs on all the platforms. A hybrid application generally features the best of both Native and HTML5 worlds, which means its functionalities are primarily built on HTML5 and JavaScript technology and then it is wrapped with the Native package to provide all the necessary platform-specific resources.

Hybrid app development is a boon for developers since they need to create only one app which supports multiple platforms, such as Android, iOS and Windows with little or no extra efforts. Hybrid apps are a cost-effective, robust and efficient choice in the today’s world. Presently, the market is full of innovative and advanced mobile app development frameworks. Let’s dig into the 5 best hybrid application development frameworks that became highly popular in the recent years.

1 Ionic

Ionic is believed to be one of the best frameworks that has over 38k Git stars and a large community of developers, offering almost every kind of plugin and native feature you want to add in your application. It is an HTML5 based framework that is designed with native-like UI elements. Its advanced features, predefined elements and shallow learning curve make it one of the most preferred choices for developers for creating PWAs. When paired with Angular JS, Ionic provides unmatchable results.

Why Use Ionic?

• Uses many Angular concepts, so developers don’t need to spend a lot of time to learn the framework.
• Apps built are uncomplicated with simple updates.
• Has a live-reload feature that lets you preview application directly on mobile devices.
• Has all native functionalities and loads of UI components.
• It is easy to read, easy to maintain and highly scalable.

2 JQuery Mobile

Born out of the extraordinary success of the JQuery JavaScript library, JQuery Mobile is an HTML5 based optimized framework to make responsive websites that work flawlessly on any device and any platform. The primary purpose of JQuery Mobile is not to develop apps that look like iOS or Android, but to help developers build applications that run equally on all mobile browsers. Since it depends only on JQuery, it is very lightweight, and offers good touch recognition and support for PhoneGap and Cordova.

Why Use JQuery Mobile?

• Very easy to learn.
• Simple to use.
• Support for numerous mobile browsers.
• Enables better mobile-friendly website.

3 Xamarin

Owned and managed by the software giant – Microsoft, Xamarin is one of the most brilliant and popular tools for enterprise mobile app development. Xamarin is written using C# which is more improved and advanced language than Objective-C and Java. What makes Xamarin stand out is that it offers the means for directly including C++, Java and Objective-C libraries. This framework is extensively used to create business mobile apps with native look and feel.

• Since it is owned by Microsoft, it provides all the technical assistance required to learn the framework.
• Over 90% code is reusable across different platforms.
• Consistent performance and stability just like native applications.
• Easy to conduct tests.

4 React Native

React Native is the Facebook’s creation that integrates React approach to mobile solutions. React Native earned pretty good popularity for allowing developers to develop applications like never before. Using a single JavaScript codebase, the developers can create interactive mobile applications for both Android and iOS devices. Not to forget to mention, some of the best applications like Facebook and Instagram are built on React Native, which proves React Native is a high-performance and powerful framework to work with if you have a team of expert and dedicated developers.

Why Use React Native?

• It has reusable components that help in rendering hybrid applications natively.
• Ready to use components that speed up the process.
• Extremely responsive and consumes less memory.
• Easy copying of code between Android and iOS.
• A number of social plugins to showcase grid photos, display feeds, etc.

5 Onsen UI

Onsen UI is a relatively new framework, but it has some really good features to compete against well-known names. Onsen UI distinguishes itself by offering a well-structured documentation, easy learning curve and ability to run flawlessly on the desktop as well as mobile environments. It enables developers to write programs in HTML5 and JavaScript, and then combine the code with Cordova or PhoneGap to create a feature-rich application.

Why Use Onsen UI?

• It is an open source and absolutely free framework.
• Easy to learn and offers semantic markup components.
• Has a number of features, such as screen transition, inbuilt theme roller and much more.
• It supports both jQuery and AngularJS.

Final Words

In this post, we tried to shortlist some of the best available mobile app development frameworks in the market. Choosing the one depends on your personal goals, methodology and what you want to do with your application. It doesn’t matter which you pick, but you have to be sure that you have selected appropriate hybrid app development services based on your requirements from the trusted app development partner like ManekTech that has years of experience and a pool of skilled developers who possess sound knowledge of all the above-mentioned frameworks.