Mobile applications are unarguably an important part of our personal and business life in this edge of the internet. Either you want to hear the latest music or want to book a cab, either dating a match or looking for yoga teacher near you, either want to track your sales representatives in the field or want to claim your insurance, mobile apps are everywhere. When you think about an application, it mostly available for download from app store either be it Google Play Store or Apple App Store sounds easy right?
But it is actually a challenging task to make your app available for all devices and platforms your users are currently using. There are loads of brands available with a wide range of Android smartphone whereas Apple too is launching new iPhone and iPad versions time to time. Keeping your business or startup app available for users of all these would be really a time consuming and expensive process. Also keeping a balance between customized user experience and updates on both web and a native application is another challenge.
Thanks to the hybrid mobile application development frameworks available which ease the process of developing mobile applications for various platforms and devices of different size. There are many hybrid mobile application development frameworks available in the market where Xamarin, PhoneGap and Ionic Frameworks are few popular names.
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Features of Hybrid Applications:
- Uninterrupted service regardless of internet connection.
- Ability to access device hardware resources like storage, camera, speaker, mic, etc.
- Flawless integration with API services.
- An embedded browser to improve access to dynamic online content.
We at Rockers Technology have chosen Ionic Framework as hybrid mobile app development for a couple of reasons and one of them is Ionic guarantees that rapid development and advancement along with the hassle-free, boundless and customized client experience that similarly comes through native application development.
Ionic is built on top of Angular.js and Apache Cordova, likewise other hybrid mobile application development and native application development frameworks, Ionic offers a rich set of libraries, tools, and services for developing hybrid mobile apps using Web technologies like CSS, HTML5, Javascript and Sass and comes with lots of significant performance, usability, and feature improvements over the past versions.
Once your hybrid application is built with this Web technology, it can be distributed in the Apple, Google, and Windows App Stores just like any other native mobile application.
Every path which takes to your goal has its own pros and cons. Similarly, Hybrid application development using the Ionic framework has its own advantages and disadvantages over native mobile application development as well as other hybrid application development.
Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of the Ionic Framework.
Pros:
- Ionic Framework is completely free and open-source.
- Code it once, use on all supported platforms(mostly Android, iOS, Windows).
- Use your existing knowledge and skills of web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JS.
- Developing a hybrid app is relatively easier and low-cost process comparing to native apps.
- Good availability of Cordova “plugins” to help you perform OS-level operations.
- Big and helpful community forums with experts ready to troubleshoot your issues.
- As Ionic is based on AngularJS, it will help you build high-performance mobile apps.
- CSS and JS support give you higher customization options for stunning user interface design.
Cons:
- Old version Android OSes cause low-performance issues.
- Poor app performance when it comes to 3D Graphics, Virtual Reality, and Video Games.
Lack of availability of plugins for your specific requirements, you’ll need to program it for all the target OSes. - Ionic is rapidly changing technology in terms of support, library, versions, and standards hence you need to be an early adopter to make it work for you.
- Lack of seamless experience you might only get in native apps.
- Not all native features available in Ionic event though Cordova like Render Script feature which used to accelerate the app when it needs more computational power.
Conclusion:
Ionic is a robust, reliable and cost-effective solution for your mobile application development project if you are looking for quick and easy app development but it has its own pros and cons as mentioned above so choose wisely.
Projects we have done using Ionic Framework:
