Choosing a Mobile Framework

If you’re just getting into mobile development, you’ll want to choose a framework that will work within your technical conditions: platforms, languages, support, etc.

Markus Falk put together a nice chart to compare the technical features of more than 30 mobile frameworks available. Check out his chart to get started.

After going through technical specs, we settled on 6 tools that we thought might do the trick: PhoneGap, Appcelerator, Appcelerator with Cloud Services, SproutCore, Corona, and Unity. To make our final selection, we researched some additional criteria that helped us figure out which tools we could pick up quickly, and which tools we thought we could support best. Here are the results:

Client Frameworks

These frameworks are designed to help you build native applications without an external or cloud server.

	PhoneGap	Appcelerator – Titanium Mobile
Device Support	iPhone, iPad, Android,Blackberry, Symbian	iPhone, iPad, Android
Languages	JavaScript, HTML, CSS	JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Official Support	API, Getting Started, Blogs, Wiki, Additional supporting JavaScript, Paid packages	API, Blogs, Own IDE, certified training, conferences
Last Stable Release	1.7.0, May 2, 2012	Studio (IDE) 2.0.2 May 31, 2012
Current State	1.8.0 RC1, May 30, 2012	2.1.0 nightly build, continuous build server
License	Open Source	Apache Public License
Cost	Free	Free-ish, cloud services are paid
Native UI	No, need CSS framework	Yes

Client & Server Frameworks

These frameworks integrate servers with a native application.

	SproutCore	Appcelerator – Titanium Mobile
Device Support	Web	iPhone, iPad, Android
Languages	Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS	PHP, Ruby, Python (with Appcelerator Cloud Services), JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Official Support	API, Blogs, Guides, Examples,	API, Blogs, Own IDE, certified training, conferences
Last Stable Release	1.8.2, May 12, 2012	Studio (IDE) 2.0.2 May 31, 2012
Current State	GitHub, last commit May 29, 2012	2.1.0 nightly build, continuous build server
License	MIT	Apache Public License
Cost	Free, host wherever you can host Ruby code in the cloud	Free-ish, cloud services are paid
Native UI	Uses its own styles to mitigate differences between platforms	Yes

Game Frameworks

These frameworks are designed for game programming. These include physics engines and generally do not support native user interfaces

	Corona	Unity
Device Support	iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, Nook	iPhone, iPad, Android, Flash, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, Web Players (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
Languages	Lua	.NET, JavaScript, C#, and Boo (Python dialect)
Official Support	API, Template games, Videos, Guides/Docs, Blog, Purchase support, training and certification	Tutorials, Assets, Projects, articles, paid support, online training
Last Stable Release	2012.827, May 31, 2012	3.5.2,
Current State	Continual, 1 month stable release, 3 month public release	Unknown
License	Proprietary	Proprietary
Cost	$199/platform	Free, purchase licenses for more functionality
Native UI	Yes, but not all UI are	Not really – plugins for iOS UI

Tags: Android, iPad, iPhone, Mobile Development