Top 10 Mobile App Development Frameworks to Consider in 2023
Most of us, nowadays, largely depend on mobile apps.
Take this scenario for example. You hit the snooze button far too many times in the morning and now you’ve no time to cook your lunch.
What do you do?
You order lunch from Uber Eats.
This is just one example of how mobile apps have made our lives easier.
From ordering food and getting laundry done to transportation and shopping online, mobile apps have made almost everything available at just a few taps.
But, have you ever wondered what goes into making such mobile apps that make our lives so much easier?
A few years back, Mobile app development required lots of money to hire mobile app developers, which only large-scale businesses & corporations were able to afford.
But thanks to mobile app development frameworks, it’s not the case anymore.
Today, there are a plethora of mobile development frameworks available to choose from.
And the best part? – These mobile app development frameworks allow building mobile apps in limited time & budget.
Although, since there are lots of options available, choosing the best framework for app development is tough.
There is a lot to think about.
But to help you in making this decision, below we have listed the top 10 mobile app development frameworks along with their features, pros & cons, and a few app examples.
Top 10 Mobile App Development Frameworks
Let’s learn about each mobile app development framework individually.
1- React Native
React Native is one of the most popular mobile app development frameworks. It was built by Facebook and is used for developing both, Android & iOS applications.
From startups to Fortune 500 companies, it allows building high-performance mobile apps in a short time.
In simple words, this mobile development framework reduces the time it takes to build a mobile app that is both powerful and reliable.
React Native does this because it’s actually a cross-platform mobile app development framework that uses the same code base for both iOS and Android applications.
Best Features:
- Cross-Platform framework
- Easy Maintenanibility
- Re-usable components
- JavaScript
2- Flutter
Flutter is more of a software development kit than a mobile app development framework that is popular for faster coding.
It was built by Google and is also a cross platform mobile app development framework that uses a single code base for both iOS and Android app development.
Apart from being a cross platform framework, Flutter also allows developers to modify old widgets & create new widgets effortlessly.
Best Features:
- Flexible UI
- Native Performance
- Fast Development
- Cross-Platform Framework
3- Ionic
Ionic is also a popular, open-source mobile development framework which also supports cross-platform development.
It supports iOS 7 and Android 4.1 to the rest of upgraded Android & iOS versions.
The biggest benefit of using Ionic for mobile app development is its UI elements. Ionic provides a set of default UI elements such as action sheets, tab bars, forms, filters, and navigation menu, which helps developers focus on the development part rather than on UI elements.
In fact, Ionic also has its own CLI (Command Line Interface) tool that makes the app development process easier.
Best Features:
- Cross-Platform Framework
- Platform Independent
- Easy to Adopt
- Built on Angular
4 – Xamarin
Xamarin is also an open-source, cross-platform mobile development framework, which also uses the same code base for iOS and Android applications.
It was founded in 2011 and five years later, Microsoft acquired it in 2016.
Xamarin provides an excellent user interface and comes with almost all important tools that are needed to build a mobile app.
One thing you need to know about Xamarin is that it uses C# programming language, which means there is no need to learn Swift or Java to build iPhone & Android apps.
Best Features:
- Native API Access
- Native UI Support
- Huge Community (1.4 million developers)
- Targets Every Platform
- Easy API Integration
5 – Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap was built by Nitobi and was initially launched as Apache Cordova.
However, when Adobe purchased Nitobi in 2011, they changed its name to Adobe PhoneGap.
PhoneGap is one of the only few mobile app frameworks that support using smartphone hardware such as GPS, Storage, Accelerometer, Phonebook, Camera, and much more.
It uses HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to build mobile apps without any hardware restrictions. Although, that’s not its main benefit. PhoneGap provides best-in-class app performance and it can build apps for almost every major operating system out there in the market.
Best Features:
- Robust Support
- No Hardware Restrictions
- High Compatibility
6- Corona SDK
Corona is a free, open-source, and powerful cross-platform framework that allows building apps to most of the platforms including Android, iOS, macOS, Tablets, Android TV, Fire TV, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire.
It is a Lua based framework, which is a popular scripting language and is mostly used for developing apps as well as games.
In fact, many popular games like Warcraft and Angry Birds, for example, have utilized the Corona framework.
Best Features:
- Plugins Availability
- Lua Programming
- Predominant APIs
- Native Library Support
7 – Mobile Angular UI
Mobile Angular UI, as the name suggests, is a UI framework that helps to build mobile apps with combination of bootstrap and Angular framework.
It is licensed under MIT so it’s an open-source mobile development framework using which you can build rich internet mobile apps.
Apart from this, Mobile Angular UI also consists of various components such as overlays, switches, and sidebars that greatly contribute to delivering a robust mobile experience to users.
Best Features:
- Interactive Components
- JavaScript
- LightWeight
8 – Intel XDK
Intel XDK is another cross-platform development framework that is mostly used for building web applications and hybrid mobile applications.
The biggest plus point of this mobile development framework is its drag-and-drop user interface, which allows developers to build mobile UI really fast.
Apart from this, Intel XDK also has an inbuilt app debug & profiling options that make the mobile app testing on a large device range considerably easy.
Best Features:
- Device Testing
- Drag-and-Drop UI
- Integrated Development Environment
9 – JQuery Mobile
JQuery Mobile is HTML5-based cross-platform development framework that allows building both mobile as well as web applications.
It supports an extensive range of operating systems including Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Kindle, Blackberry, Firefox, and a few others.
Apart from this, JQuery Mobile also comes with different plugins such as Pop-Up Boxes, Image Slider, Content-Slider, etc., which make the web pages simpler, user-friendly, and more interactive.
Best Features:
- Built on JQuery Core
- Automatic Initialization
- Powerful Theming Framework
- Lightweight
10 – Appcelerator Titanium
Appcelerator Titanium is a hybrid app development framework that allows to build mobile apps for all platforms.
It is actually built on an Award-Winning open-source project called Titanium, which is basically a JavaScript-based SDK having 5000+ APIs for HTML5, Android, iOS, and Windows.
In fact, if you’ve hands-on experience in web app development, then you can easily learn to build mobile apps using Appcelerator Titanium.
Apart from this, the Appcelerator Titanium framework also allows developers to reuse 90% of the code, which helps to save a ton of time and resources.
Best Features:
- API Management Features
- Efficient Code Modules
- Eclipse-based IDE
Conclusion
With this, we’ve come to the end of this list of top 10 mobile app development frameworks.
We hope that you found this blog useful. And as far as the choice of the mobile development framework is concerned, the final decision largely depends on the requirements of your project.
Therefore, it’s recommended to consult with a mobile app development company to make sure you’re choosing the right framework.
General FAQs on Mobile App Development Frameworks:
Q:1 – What is mobile app development framework?
Ans: A mobile app development framework is basically a software framework that is created to support mobile application development.
Q:2 – What is hybrid mobile app framework?
Ans: Hybrid mobile app frameworks are same as mobile app development frameworks, the only difference is, a Hybrid app development framework allows you to build hybrid apps.
Q:3 – What is a hybrid app?
Ans: A hybrid mobile app is just like any other mobile application. What differentiates a hybrid app from a native mobile app is that the hybrid apps are basically web apps deployed in a native container with a mobile WebView object. Native apps, on the other hand, is a smartphone application developed using a specific programming language and for a specific operating system.
Q:4 – Which framework is best for hybrid app development?
Ans: There are lots of hybrid app development frameworks available in the market. But one had to pick, the following frameworks are considered the best in the market right now:
- PhoneGap
- Ionic
- Onsen UI
Q:5 – Which framework is best for mobile app development?
Ans: The following 3 mobile development frameworks are best in the market right now:
- React Native
- Flutter
- Xamarin
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