How advantageous is Phone Gap?

Question

I am planning to do an app on all Mobile Platform. I found Phone-gap is a solution for write once deploy anywhere.

The app just have to talk to a webservice and display information in a grid layout grouped under categories.

Anyone who has developed apps in phone gap can share your views and thoughts on this.

Does phone gap really serve this purpose? - Write once and deploy any?

Will the look and feel be the same in Android, iphone etc. (these are 2 platforms I am most interested on.)

How about the performance on different platforms?

What are the other blocks I might hit down the road?

Thank you all in Advance.

Answer 1

if that is REALLY all your app needs to do then I believe PhoneGap can meet your needs. I have been working with it for about 4-6 months now and find it "capable". For my situation I am developing for a specific client and for myself so some of lack of structure around PhoneGap makes it risky when I am pitching it to my client.

I have recently started to look into Appcelerator as another cross-platform tool. It has gotten decent press lately and the tools and the documentation and support around it "appear" to be more polished and professional than PhoneGap; this make it an "easier pitch" to my clients.

That being said, I think BOTH solutions can meet the needs of your application as you have described it above.

Answer 2

The simple answer is - yes, for the API which delves into the lower level stuff. As for your UI, it will probably still need to be tweaked. For example, you might design a back button in your navigation, which may make sense in iPhone but not make sense in Android or WebOS

Answer 3

Depending on the requirements of your app and what you actually mean by "all mobile platforms", PhoneGap may be a good fit.

Whether you go with it or use something else, you'll almost definitely want to create a different UI for each platform you build for so you can mkae your application look like it belong on each platform and uses UI metaphors and design practices & layouts appropriate to the platform.