Xamarin - Cross Platform Mobile Development

Xamarin - Cross Platform Mobile Development

Xamarin is one of the most popular cross-platform frameworks at the moment. Xamarin development allows you to develop Android, iOS, OS X, and Windows applications using Visual Studio and C#.

It allows you to share code between your Android and iOS app and compile it into native code. It also provides the advantages of native UI, native performance, and access to specific device features.

Xamarin-Supported IDE

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s modern, sophisticated IDE with many features for creating mobile, desktop, and web applications. It supports the development of mobile with .NET (Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS), Mac desktop apps, .NET Core applications, ASP.NET Core Web applications, and Cross-platform Unity games.

It includes a rich editor, debugging, native platform integration with iOS, Mac, and Android, and integrated source control to name just a few of its many features.

Visual Studio for Mac replaced Xamarin Studio (Xamarin Studio 6.3 is the final release) and offers all the features of Xamarin Studio, plus cloud and web development, and contains improvements for cross-platform mobile development.

Xamarin-vs- Native App

Multi-Platform:

    Xamarin delivers multi-platform mobile apps and target all major platforms like iOS, Android and Windows. There are no discrepancies in functionality between platforms. Beyond that some of the most popular frameworks that are used to create cross-platform mobile apps are PhoneGap, Ionic, Titanium, etc. Whereas Native application doesn’t support all platforms.

    Here winner is Xamarin because it targets all major platforms.

Mobile Apps Development Time:

    Xamarin or Native, which one takes less time while developing mobile apps – it completely depends on how much technologies are required at time of development. Using Xamarin, entrepreneurs can skip the extra development time for each platform. This is also excellent for testing and saving development cost.

    Again winner is Xamarin apps are accessible for wider audiences at lower cost as compared to Native apps.

Performance of an Application:

    If we talk about performance, then Native applications are leading. Some of common challenges of Xamarin/Hybrid apps are: screen transitions are not smooth, buttons are not responding well as compared to native buttons and reaction time is higher.

    In the landscape of performance, Native apps have already won.

Specific Framework/Tool:

    Sometimes, operating systems require specific framework in order to access existing framework such as TouchID, push notification, Bluetooth connections, motion data, GPS data. If Xamarin developers need any one of above framework when creating an application must build a bridge between app and framework – the result will additional cost. In that case, you need to develop Native application.

Conclusion is totally depends on your requirements.