Best Mobile App Development Frameworks for 2022 (and Why?)

Walter White once said that there are always two sides to every story. Well, the same seems to be the case for the past two years. The last two years have been both prosperous and a bit challenging to handle. People confined to their homes with little, or no social activities was nothing less than an opportunity for mobile apps and online business to flourish. There was a significant increase in the number of mobile apps centred on the individuals’ needs.

Being on the verge of ending 2021 and the beginning of the new year 2022, with?over 5,000,000?apps in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store combined, we cannot underestimate the potential of mobile app development for businesses and the opportunities for any ambitious?mobile app development company to attract the target audience and gain monetization benefits from the apps they develop.

With that said, it’s no news that enterprises with an established mobile app or those looking to create a new mobile phone app would require in-depth study, comprehensive planning, and analysis for the current mobile environment to flourish in today’s exceedingly aggressive digital market.

Though you might already have some knowledge about several mobile app development frameworks but to help choose one, we are going to discuss a few! Ready to read? Let’s Begin!

1. React Native Framework

Do you know Facebook is the company behind both ReactJS and React Native? When Facebook was struggling to maintain its separate iOS & Android app, React Native made the process of maintaining and scaling both their apps. Interesting, isn’t it?

React Native is one of the most preferred mobile app development frameworks. Utilized by mobile app industry experts, react – a cross-platform app library embedded with JavaScript codes assist in building highly responsive and scalable apps with React library as a component source. React Native enables a developer to code an app once in JavaScript and then deploy it both to Android and iOS, intending to reduce the effort of writing separate codes for Android & iOS from scratch.

Why use React Native?

• Being a cross-platform Framework, Reach Native helps in building both iOS & Android Apps
• Offers several open-source libraries of pre-built components that speed up the development process.
• Working with React Native doesn’t require any particular language expertise, one that knows Java can efficiently develop a react native app.
• The creators of React Native continuously improve the framework, thus making it one of the most advanced and tech competent app development frameworks.
• It’s an open-source, community-driven framework with widely available online support.

What should you watch out for when using React Native?

• Performance Issues?– Planning on building an application with numerous tabs, navigations, animations or third-party libraries can be a tedious task with React Native. It degrades the app’s performance and makes it slow compared to other hybrid apps.
• Updating UI is a hectic task?– While deploying the app, React native offloads all complex functions to the Javascript initial thread, which directly leads to a delay in updating the app’s UI. The app stops responding to user inputs, and ultimately performance starts lagging.
• OS Specific Limitations?– While working with React Native, one of the most noticed drawbacks is that some of the React Native libraries and third-party libraries have platform-specific limitations.

Examples of apps built on react Native

Two renowned apps that are built using React Native are Facebook & Instagram.

2. NativeScript Framework

Another framework that you should know is NativeScript, an open-source framework used to build apps for both Android and iOS devices. NativeScript uses JavaScript and CSS to render the UIs and ensure a native-like app experience. NativeScript enables the development of three kinds: NativeScript Core, Angular, and VueJS to pave the way for the fastest transition from prototype to the final product.

Why use Native Script Framework?

• NativeScript doesn’t use any web view to render the UI. So you get Native UI, and therefore better performance when compared to things like ionic or phone gap.
• It is swift to get started using NativeScript as it saves Costs & is comparatively easy to adopt by newbies who know JAVA.
• Deep integration with popular JavaScript frameworks like Angular or Vue to minimize the learning curve
• NativeScript has an extensive repository of plugins to boost the app development speed.
• Provides a way to split custom content, including CSS styles, into separate files per target platform, enabling the creation of an app with Intuitive UI and a better user experience.

What should you watch out for when using NativeScript Framework?

• Documentation Clarity?– The documentation is not always accurate due to the many different ways you can write NativeScript apps (Vanilla JS, TypeScript, Angular, Vue, Webpack).
• Missing UI Library?– There are no ready-made UI collections, so applications have to be built using the default UI elements and then styled manually.
• App Size can be a problem?– NativeScript includes having a larger app size than native. To escape this when building the APK/IPA, one should run WebPack to reduce the size of the application.

Examples of apps built on NativeScript

App industry leaders such as Workbox, Strudel, BitPoints Wallet are the top models of Native Script framework users.

3. JQuery Framework

Developed by the jQuery project team in 2010 and written in JavaScript, another cross-platform mobile app development framework used by app developers across the globe is JQuery Framework. Compatible with all the latest mobiles, desktop, and tablet screens of iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, etc., this particular framework can ease the development of highly functional and complex applications using the features of both jQuery and jQuery UI.

Why JQuery Framework?

• Provides a vast library of UI components to customize the look of any app
• It is cross-platform and cross-browser compatible
• jQuery minimizes the code writing process and is less complicated to use
• It offers a lot of plugins to optimize apps and websites for SEO
• The overall size of the JQuery Mobile framework is relatively small

What should you watch out for when using JQuery Framework?

• Time-Consuming?– Combining jQuery mobile with other mobile app development frameworks is exceptionally time-consuming and leads to speed lag in the applications.
• Limited capabilities?– Compared to native mobile applications, JQuery apps are bound with Framework limitations refraining the users from leveraging the app features to the fullest.
• Major Anchor Issues?– jQuery Mobile uses Ajax to navigate through pages, leading to some significant anchor issues while using it for mobile app development.
• Appearance?– jQuery mobile applications aren’t as impressive as Native apps. JQuery apps are poor in their visual appearance and might not function in the same way as native apps do.

Examples of apps built on JQuery Framework

Slideshare, Dodge, Disney world, WordPress, Google, IBM are the users of this platform.

4. Meteor Framework

Meteor or MeteorJS is another popular open-source JavaScript mobile app development framework written in Node.js. MeteorJS assists in creating cross-platform mobile applications for Web, Android and iOS. Mobile app development using Meteor provides access to competent libraries that turn the prototyping of challenging applications into an impressive mobile application by enabling only one language – JavaScript for implementing the front-end, backend, and database. Meteor as a mobile app development?framework offers a lot out of the box compared to others and is more like an ecosystem than a simple framework.

Why use Meteor Framework?

• Single-line code runs on both front-end and backend to do things differently with optimistic UI updates.
• Highly efficient, productive and Easier to Learn framework
• It offers the facility of deploying and experiencing Real-Time Applications by Default
• Extensive support from the online community.

What should you watch out for when using Meteor Framework?

• Pre-built packages –?While using Meteor Framework, developers have to rely on pre-built packages, which sometimes can conflict with one another extensively.
• Competence?– You can’t make a mobile web app run as efficiently as with Native.
• Lack of control over loading files?– Meteor disorganizes the sequence files sometimes while uploading.

Examples of apps built on Meteor Framework

Pintask, Telescope, Reaction Commerce, Wishpool are the users of Meteor Framework.

5. Xamarin Framework

Another top-rated open-source mobile app development framework – Xamarian, has various libraries that allow engineers to code once and use the product across different operating systems (OS). Compatible for all platforms, be it macOS, Windows, tvOS, watchOS, or iOS, this framework is ideal for developing mobile applications. The only condition to work exception is for .NET, as for .NET Xamarin framework needs to be combined with Microsoft’s IDE and Visual Studio.

Why Xamarin Framework?

• Can run a single codebase across multiple platforms saving both valuable time and money.
• Being natively compiled, it is a go-to option for developing new-generation apps that look and feel native.
• Robust, scalable & stable solution without compromising on cost.
• Enables testing of apps in the Xamarin Test Cloud
• It offers an incredible collection of UI controls, themes, charts, graphs, cloud services.

What should you watch out for when using Xamarin Framework?

• Time-consuming UI Development?– It is often hard to create a portable version of the app’s core UI using Xamarin Framework.
• App File Size?– use of Xamarin’s core libraries and functionality burdens the app stores with unjustifiable app file size.
• Lack of community support?– Xamarin, a new framework, lacks the online support community compared to other well-established online communities of app development frameworks.
• Sharing Code is Difficult?– While developing mobile apps using the Xamarin framework, developers can’t share codes with other developers or teams using only Swift, Java and Objective CA code written using C# and Xamarin.

Examples of apps built on Xamarin Framework

Captio, CA Mobile, The World Bank, Fareboom, APX, MRW are the top Xamarin Mobile Apps built to serve different business models.

6. Flutter framework

Did you know, according to Statista, Flutter is the second most popular cross-platform mobile app framework by developers worldwide? Flutter – Google’s free and open-source UI framework is the best framework for?developing mobile applications for Android, iOS, or both devices. It uses the programming language Dart and incorporates Material Design and Cupertino widgets.

The primary reason behind Flutter becoming one of the most preferred Frameworks is its single codebase that contains widgets, a rendering engine, debugging and integrating APIs, and resources to assist developers in creating and deploying robust cross-platform mobile applications.

Why use Flutter Framework?

• Offers incredibly customizable ready-made widgets for fast UI coding
• It is portable and platform-agnostic that saves both time and resources.
• Backed up by Google, Flutter apps work smoothly and fast, without hanging and cutting while scrolling.
• The hot reload feature of the framework elevates programmers’ productivity, helps with quick iterations and allows you to experiment without long delays.

What should you watch out for when using Flutter Framework?

• App Size?– Flutter apps are generally deployed into larger file sizes than other app framework file sizes.
• Support & Libraries?– Google’s support for Flutter is commendable but still isn’t as productive compared to other Native frameworks.
• Limited Capabilities?– Being a comparatively new mobile app development framework, there might be a few tools or functionalities missing that one might encounter. It will take some time to create tools and expand functionality.

Examples of apps built on Flutter Framework

Alibaba, Cryptograph, Google Ads, Reflectly are some fantastic apps built with Flutter Framework

7. Ionic Framework

Created in 2013, Ionic is another open-source mobile application framework based on Angular and Apache Cordova that assists web developers in building robust and feature-rich iOS, Android, and Progressive Web Apps with one shared codebase centred at modern web standards.

The Ionic Framework facilitates access to every single native API on each platform. It can do anything a traditional native app can do with the integration of UI elements like list views, filters, forms, action sheets, navigation menus, etc.

Why Ionic Framework?

• Ionic is platform-independent, thus can perform amazingly on any OS iOS, Android, Windows irrespective of the programming language.
• Once the code is written for any functionality, it can be utilized across all the other platforms.
• Strong developers’ community to help cater to any query about the app development framework.
• Complete control over app building and deployment.
• Equipped with an entire suite of tools, with native compatibility

What should you watch out for when using the Ionic Framework?

• Performance?– A graphics-heavy feature-loaded mobile app might have significant performance issues when built with Ionic. Ionic is used to construct a single codebase for all other platforms, resulting in slow performance compared to native apps.
• Debugging?– Debugging an app built with Ionic can be challenging and time-consuming.
• Security?– Security might be one of the major cons of the Ionic framework-built apps compared to native app security solutions.
• Not Suitable for Gaming apps

Examples of apps built on Ionic Framework

Among the brands that have used Ionic for app development are Nationwide, Amtrak, NASA, Sworkit, Untappd, Dow Jones MarketWatch, and McDonald’s.

Wrapping It Up!

We hope you have learned a thing or two about the mobile app development frameworks that can be suitable for your mobile product. If you need any help in choosing which framework will be the best to build your mobile product, feel free to set up a no-obligation meeting here.