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Top 12 Best Mobile App Development Frameworks in 2020

With more than 4 billion mobile users today if you aren’t on connecting with your audiences on mobile, you don’t exist. People enjoy using smartphones so much that it’s come to needing to challenge ourselves to have a no-tech day.

Checking your time, emails, booking a cab, shopping, ordering medicine, getting a legal consultation. Anything you want people to use in 2020, has to be built mobile first.

Keeping this goal in mind, hybrid mobile development frameworks were built to roll-out mobile apps faster across multiple platforms by significantly reducing their development time.

Our the top 12 mobile app development frameworks

1. React Native

React Native is a very popular framework which builds for both Android or iOS apps. React Native allows mobile app developers to build high-performance apps in shorter build cycles with faster deployment times, it is a budget-friendly option.

One of the major advantages of React Native framework is that it lets you develop truly native apps but doesn’t compromise on user experience (UX)

React Native provides a core set of platform-agnostic native components like Views, Text, Images all mapped to a platform’s native UI building block. It supports JavaScript which is a must for the full stack.

Facebook owns React and that means a large pool of developers in an active online community that never stops optimizing & debugging.

Some famous apps built with React Native:

1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. Soundcloud
4. Airbnb
5. UberEats

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2. Flutter

Flutter is backed by Google so it inherits its UI toolkit for building beautiful native applications for mobile & desktop apps from a single codebase. It provides a wide array of customizable widgets to build native interfaces within minutes. Flutter gives a native experience to both the engineer & end user with commendable platform features such as scrolling, navigation, icons, plus fonts. Its built-in material design widget so you can easily create powerful, expressive UI for your applications.

Some famous apps built with React Native:

1. Alibaba
2. Google Ads
3. Reflectly
4. Cryptograph

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3. Xamarin

Xamarin is a Microsoft owned open-source platform for building hybrid mobile apps using .NET and C#.

Xamarin extends the .NET dev platform with tools + libraries for building apps for Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, macOS, and Windows.

Being a Microsoft product, it has more than 60000 developers & contributors along with good customer support and extensive documentation. With an excellent native user interface, you can build natively while providing an amazing user experience.

Some famous apps built with React Native:

1. Azure mobile app
2. UPS mobile app
3. Alaska Airlines
4. Microsoft News App
5. Outback Steakhouse

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4. Ionic

Ionic is an open-source, cross-platform mobile UI toolkit for native Android, iOS and web apps.

The main advantage of an Ionic framework is templates. You can utilize more than 100 default UI components like forms, filters, action sheets, list views, tab bars, and navigation menu in their design. It encourages devs to focus on creating applications rather than getting bogged down working on UI components. On the off chance that the designers know about CSS, JavaScript, or HTML, utilizing the Ionic structure turns out to be significantly more reasonable. It supports Android 4.1+ & iOS 7 and above versions. Additionally, if engineers utilize Ionic with a local versatile application in PhoneGap, it works even better than hybrid applications.

Some famous apps built with React Native:

1. GE Transportation
2. Amtrak
3. MarketWatch
4. Sworkit
5. Instant Pot

5. PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a widely adopted framework for cross-platform mobile app development. The core of the framework runs on HTML5, CSS3 which gives it the capabilities to access underlying hardware like your camera, accelerometer, and GPS. It also uses Javascript to render the backend logic for applications. This gives it a competitive edge as Javascript is very widely used in programming. It allows you to write a single app that is installed as a native app across multiple devices. PhoneGap was powered by Adobe Systems but then handed over to Apache to maintain & keep it open-source. It’s a distribution from Apache Cordova.

Some famous apps built with Phonegap:

1. Wikipedia
2. Health Tap
3. TripCase
4. Paylution
5. Buildr

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6. Framework 7

Framework 7 is a full-featured mobile app dev framework for Android, iOS and web development. Mostly used as a prototyping tool in the industry, this framework has had its share in full-fledged app development as well. With its rich ecosystem of plugins, this framework allows you to use tools of your choice along with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It also comes with the powerful support of Vue.js and React which is icing on the cake. It’s open-source with updates rolled out regularly. A framework with a highly active community of developers is always the way to go for many developers.

Some famous apps with Framework 7:

1. Kidoverse
2. Cyberbrain IT Services
3. HICAPPS
4. Blokt
5. Wappler

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7. Monaca

Monaca is an HTML5 based framework built with PhoneGap and Cordova. A key feature of Monaca is that it’s a cloud-based IDE. This allows developers to use Monaca without having to install anything. They can work straight in the browser. There’s now also a desktop application and CLI tool to support working offline. You can always sync your progress to the cloud. Another advantage of using Monaca is its integration with Onsen UI . Onsen is a very powerful UI designing tool for mobile apps. It provides remote build and UI features that are secured in the cloud. Monaca Debugger brings a supreme debugging experience. It adds advanced JavaScript debugging to your Cordova apps, including breakpoints, step in/out and profiler.

Some famous apps built with Monaca:

1. Asics shoe finder
2. SmartEat
3. Hashtiv
4. ScanIt
5. Drive2Chat

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8. Mobile Angular UI

Mobile Angular UI provides essential mobile components switches, overlays, sidebars, scrollable areas, absolute positioned top and bottom navbars. The key feature is that it allows you to take an already developed desktop/web application and make it mobile, and vice versa. An open-source tool with cross-browser compatibility allowing it to automatically handle JavaScript code based on the browser used.

Some famous apps built with Mobile Angular UI:

1. Hotelier News
2. Zaobao Mobile Website
3. Gunks
4. iKeyBox
5. Guezz It

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9. jQuery Mobile

jQuery is a touch-based mobile app development framework allowing developers to code less and build more in less time. It has a ready-to-use JavaScript library having various plugins like Image Slider, Content Slider, and Pop-Up Boxes, and many more. Instead of writing unique applications for every device or OS, the jQuery mobile website allows you to design a single highly-branded responsive web site or application that will work on all popular smartphones, tablets, and desktop platforms. JQuery is used along with PhoneGap to develop the apps.

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10. Appcelerator Titanium

Appcelerator is another open-source framework that allows developers to create true native apps for Android, iOS, and Windows from a single Javascript codebase. It comes with ready to use UI components which allow you to create seamless experiences for the end user. It You can create custom APIs to be used within your application with error free integration. Appcelerator is also connected to the cloud so you can access your code from anywhere, anytime. Pretty neat.

Some famous apps built with Appcelerator Titanium:

1. Avis
2. Blackbaud
3. Family Dollar
4. Comerica
5. MIT

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11. Corona SDK

Corona is a cross-platform framework ideal for quickly developing apps and games for mobile devices and desktop systems. It allows you to create one application and publish it to multiple platforms for devices like Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets, Amazon Fire, Mac Desktop, Windows Desktop, and even connected TVs such as Apple TV, Fire TV, and Android TV. This framework is widely used to create 2D games with bleeding fast OpenGL graphics thus allowing apps to give better performance.

Some famous apps built with Corona:

1. Designer City
2. Gunman Taco Truck
3. Beasts Battle 2
4. Zip Zap

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12. Onsen UI

OnsenUI is a hybrid mobile app development framework most widely used for designing application UI. It is open-source with lots of features like JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS support. It also supports a wide array of pre-designed UI elements like tabs, side menu, stack navigation and components such as lists and forms. These UI elements are supported on both android and iOS platforms and they will automatically optimize to each platform. It also gives you an advantage to the graphics of the application, which is not the case with PhoneGap and Cordova based apps. OnsenUI is easy to learn and also a very powerful tool to create complex mobile apps. Extensive tutorials and learning materials are available for different levels of experience, beginners as well as advanced coders will find useful reads in the onsen site.

Some famous apps built with Onsen UI:

1. Opal
2. Offcourse Golf
3. Ski Patrol Mobile app
4. PopVox
5. Ohalog

How Much Will Your Mobile App Cost to Build?

Do you know how much the app you want to build will cost you? Estimating your price tag is the first step! But that’s not so easy, costs can vary by as much as 70% depending on where you build your mobile app, so don’t rush out to your local software development agency before you read our guide on estimating your cost and picking a software development partner that can deliver the best value – highest quality for the lowest possible cost.

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What you’ll learn!

• How to validate your mobile app idea before you invest your time and money building the MVP‍
• How to identify and assess significant cost factors for building your mobile app and optimize a strategy to reduce them‍
• How to compare development models and talent across different geographies to select the best market for building your mobile app‍
• How to source specialists that will provide the highest quality to cost ratio for your mobile app budget‍
• How to accurately estimate your mobile app development costs then slash those rates by 1/3 using geographic arbitrage‍
• How to hire a top mobile app development team for the cost of a single local hire

I hope this list helps you in choosing the right framework for your application.

Happy Developing!

Apple WWDC 2020

Special Event Keynote and Platforms State of the Union

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off with exciting reveals, inspiration, and new opportunities to continue creating the most innovative apps in the world. Join the worldwide developer community for an in-depth look at the future of Apple platforms, directly from Apple Park.

100+ Engineering Sessions

Learn how to build the next generation of apps with technical and design-focused videos by Apple engineers. Video collections will be posted each day. Watch on the web or in the Apple Developer app on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

 

All-New Developer Forums

Connect with over 1,000 Apple engineers on the all-new Apple Developer Forums. Anyone can search and view the forums or sign in with an Apple ID to ask questions about a variety of development topics. Starting the first day of the conference, eligible members can also connect with Apple engineers over WWDC20 content on the forums.

 

1-on-1 Developer Labs (by appointment)

Request an appointment with an Apple engineer for one-on-one technical guidance on Apple technologies. Get in-depth details on how to implement new features, directly from the engineers who helped build the latest advances in Apple platforms. Eligible members can simply sign in, choose a lab from the schedule, enter a question, and submit. Availability is limited. Requests will be reviewed and you’ll receive an email with your status.

 

Apple Design Awards

Apps and games created by millions of developers around the world have made a positive impact on people’s daily lives. Join us in celebrating the developers who used their ingenuity, smarts, and savvy to build this year’s Apple Design Award winners.

 

Conversations at WWDC20

A Conversation with Lisa Jackson and Former Attorney General Eric Holder
Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, hosts a conversation with former Attorney General Eric Holder on the topic of race in America. This wide-ranging discussion touches on the fight for equal justice, how technology can empower people to change the world for the better, and ways to help in this moment.

 

During its WWDC 2020 keynote, Apple announced iOS 14 for iPhone and iPod touch. The update brings a variety of new features and changes.

iOS 14 New Features

App Library

iOS 14 adds a new App Library view for organizing all of your apps. Apps are automatically organized in the App Library, and you don’t have to keep all of the icons on your actual home screen view. There is also a new list view as well as features for sorting applications based on usage and more.

Widgets

iOS 14 adds widgets to the home screen of the iPhone and iPad for the first time. Widgets are more data-rich than ever and come in a variety of sizes. Apps move out of the way automatically to make room for the widgets. You access these widgets through the “Widget Gallery,” with multiple different sizing options.

Picture in Picture on iPhone

iOS 14 also provides support for picture in picture, works very similar to the iPad experience. Meanwhile, Siri has a new interface that does not overtake the entire screen.

Translate App

A new translate app in iOS 14 is designed for conversations and works completely offline. All you have to do is tap on the microphone icon and the app will translate to your chosen language. There will be 11 languages supported at launch.

App Clips

iOS 14 also adds a new App Clip feature to easily access applications quickly without downloading the full version from the App Store.

“Small part of an app that is quick and easy to access,” Federighi explains.

Launch an app with a single tap and pay and log in with Apple Pay and Sign in with Apple.

New iMessage Features

 

For iMessage, Apple is adding new Memoji accessories (including a new face mask Memoji) as well as pinned messages. New features for group iMessages as well: in-line replies, mentions.

Real-Time Headphone Audio Alerts

You can measure headphone audio levels in real-time with a new option in Control Center. This new feature has a similar interface to the Apple Watch Noise app, which measures the audio levels of the environment instead of headphones.

 

QR code payments

9to5Mac reported exclusively that Apple is working on QR code payments for iOS 14.

References found in the iOS 14 code reveal that Apple is working on a new method for letting users make payments with Apple Pay by scanning a QR Code or traditional barcode with the iPhone camera.

This information wasn’t announced at WWDC, so it’s possible it won’t launch with the first version of iOS 14 and could come later in the year.

Leaked passwords

Leaked passwords are when you use the same password across multiple websites and one of them gets hacked. iCloud keychain is going to build in a feature to alert you about leaked passwords.

With iOS 14, Apple offers a new “Security Recommendations” menu that shows only your passwords that could put your accounts at risk for some reason. This includes passwords that are easy to guess and even those that may have leaked on the web.

Voice Memos

Apple is also updating the Voice Memos app with iPhone and macOS Big Sur. The most exciting feature this year is the new Enhance Recording functionality. The Enhance Recording feature reduces background noise and room reverberation with a single tap. Once you create a recording, you’ll see a small icon similar to the Auto adjustment feature in the Photos app. Details on exactly how this feature works are unclear, but Apple is heavily promoting the simplicity of the process.

iOS 14 compatible Devices

Apple says that iOS 14 can run on the iPhone 6s and later, which is the exact same compatibility as iOS 13. Here’s the full list:

• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone XS
• iPhone XS Max
• iPhone XR
• iPhone X
• iPhone 8
• iPhone 8 Plus
• iPhone 7
• iPhone 7 Plus
• iPhone 6s
• iPhone 6s Plus
• iPhone SE (1st generation)
• iPhone SE (2nd generation)
• iPod touch (7th generation)

iOS 14 Release Date

When does iOS 14 come out to the general public? While Apple hasn’t released a specific release date, iOS 13 was released on September 13th, 2019. It’s likely that iOS 14 will come around the same time.

Xcode vs Swift

 

Xcode and Swift are two different products developed by Apple for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. While Xcode is an integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS containing a suite of software development tools to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS, Swift is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Linux, and z/OS. So it is clear that they can not be compared with each other. On the contrary, Swift is compatible with Xcode as Swift v 5.1, the default version of Swift is included in Xcode v 11.

In this article, we will go through what Xcode and Swift are in general and cover their features strengths and weaknesses followed by how Swift is compatible with Xcode.

Xcode

It was first released in 2003 as version 1 with the latest stable one being version 10.2.1 released on 17 April 2019. It can be downloaded from the Mac App Store and is free to use for macOS Mojave users. Registered developers may download the preview releases and previous versions of the suite using via the Apple Developer website.

Overview of the major features

• Support: Programming languages such as C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python, Ruby, ResEdit (Rez), and Swift are supported by Xcode with source code along with support for a variety of programming models including Cocoa, Carbo, and Java. Not only that, there is additional support via third parties for GNU Pascal, Free Pascal, Ada, C#, Perl, and D
• Capability: Xcode can build fat binary files that include the code for various architectures in the Mach-O executable format. Known as universal binary files, these allow the application to run on both PowerPC and Intel-based (x86) platforms including both 32-bit and 64-bit codes
• Compiling and debugging: Xcode uses the iOS SDK to compile and debug applications for iOS that run on ARM architecture processors
• GUI tool: Xcode comprises of the GUI tool, Instruments that runs dynamic tracing framework on the top of DTrace, a dynamic tracing framework designed by Sun Microsystems and released as a part of OpenSolaris.

Advantages and disadvantages of Xcode:

Xcode is designed by Apple and will only work with Apple operating systems: macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Since its release in 2003, Xcode has made significant improvements and the latest version, Xcode 10.2.1 has all the features that are needed to perform continuous integration.

Let us have a look at the pros of using Xcode: 

• Equipped with a well designed and easy to use UI creator
• Excellent for code completion
• Using Xcode, a developer can learn profiling and heap analysis in a natural way
• Xcode’s simulator lets you easily test your app while you build it in an environment that simulates your iPhone
• The app store has a wide range of audience who are willing to pay for apps.

Now, the cons: 

• Clunky and outdated Objective C makes it more frustrating if you are habituated to use a modern language
• No support for tabbed work environments makes it difficult to work with multiple windows
• Hardly any information can be found online to solve problems due to a previous Apple NDA on Xcode development
• It is a complicated process to export your app onto a device
• Will only work with Apple operating systems
• The App Store approval process can be annoyingly lengthy.

 

Swift

Swift was launched at Apple’s 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference as a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Linux, and z/OS Being a new entry these operating systems, Swift accelerates on the best parts of C and Objective C without being held back by its compatibility. It utilises safe patterns for programming, adding more features to it, thus making programming easier and more flexible. By developing their existing debugger, compiler and framework infrastructure, it took quite some time to create the base for Swift. Furthermore, Automatic Reference Counting was used to simplify the memory management part. The framework stack which was once built upon a solid framework of Cocoa and Foundation has undergone significant changes and is now completely regulated and refurbished.

Developers who have worked with Objective-C do find Swift quite similar. Objective-C’s dynamic object model and its comprehensively named parameters provide a lot of control to Swift.

Developers can use Swift to have access to the existing Cocoa framework in addition to the mix and match interoperability with an objective C code. Swift uses this common rule to offer multiple new features in combination with object-oriented and procedural portions of the language.

The idea is to create the best possible language for a wide range of uses, varying from desktop and mobile apps, systems programming, and scaling up to cloud services. The designing of Swift was done to make sure that developers find it easy to maintain and write correct programs.

Coding done in Xcode is safe, fast and expressive.

Swift offers a host of features that give developers the control needed to make the code easy to read and write. Furthermore, Apple made Swift to be easily understandable to help developers avoid making mistakes while coding and make the code look organised, along with the modules that give namespaces and eliminate headers. Since Swift uses some features present in other languages, one of them being named parameters written with clean syntax that makes the APIs much easier to maintain and read. Here are some of the additional features of Swift:

• Multiple return values and Tuples
• Generics
• Short and quick iterations over a collection or range
• Structs that support extensions, methods and protocols
• Functional programming patterns
• Advanced control flow
• Powerful error handling.

These features are systematically designed to make them work together resulting in creating a powerful but fun-to-use language.

Advantages and disadvantages of Swift: 

Pros of using the Swift Programming language: 

• Easy to read and maintain: The Swift program codes are based on natural English as it has borrowed syntaxes from other programming languages. This makes the language more expressive
• Scalable: Users can add more features to Swift, making it a scalable programming language. In the future, Swift is what Apple is relying on and not Objective C
• Concise: Swift does not include long lines of code and that favours the developers who want a concise syntax, thus increasing the development and testing rate of the program
• Safety and improved performance: It is almost 40% better than the Objective-C when speed and performance are taken into consideration as it is easy to tackle the bugs which lead to safer programming
• Cross-device support: This language is capable of handling a wide range of Apple platforms such as iOS, iOS X, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
• Automatic Memory Management: This feature present in Swift prevents memory leaks and helps in optimizing the application’s performance that is done by using Automatic Reference Counting.

Cons of Swift: 

• Compatibility issues: The updated versions Swift is found to a bit unstable with the newer versions of Apple leading to a few issues. Switching to a newer version of Swift is the fix but that is costly
• Speed Issues: This is relevant to the earlier versions of the Swift programming language
• Less in number: The number of Swift developers is limited as Swift is a new programming language

Conclusion

So as we discussed both Xcode and Swift, it is clear that they cannot be compared to each other. In fact, they both complement each other to deliver impressive results without any headaches. Apple relies on both quite a lot and it is certain to have Swift and Xcode the perfect combination of a robust application and a user-friendly programming language.