Android

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel.
Android's source code is released by Google under an open source license, although
most Android devices ultimately ship with a combination of free and open
source and proprietary software, including proprietary software required for accessing
Google services. Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready-
made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices.

Android

Native Hybrid
Apps Apps

Native Apps: These are built specifically for an operating system. Like Android
application can only be accessed by Android users and is developed using Java,
Windows, C++ etc. whereas app meant for iOS application using
XCode/Objective-C etc.
Advantages:
1. Speed, performance and user interface are optimized.
2. Works without Internet connection.
3. Best User Interface because these are developed only for single operating
system having predefined hardware capabilities and screen size.
4. We can access Hardware Capabilities like proximity sensor, gravity
sensor, bluetooth, GPS etc better than hybrid apps.
Disadvantages:
1. Must build a specific app for each operating system.
2. Takes more time to develop and deploy.
3. These apps require higher development costs.

Tools that are use to develop and deploy native apps are as follows:
Android Studio: Android Studio is the official integrated development
environment (IDE) for the Android platform. It was announced on May 16, 2013 with
version 0.1 in May 2013.The latest version is 2.3.2 released on April, 2017.
Hybrid Apps: These are the latest HTML5 apps. Native app shell with feeds
from the website. Websites are packed into native wrapper.
Advantages:
1. Easier to deploy cross-platform than native apps.
2. Downloadable from app stores.
3. Caches content, so it works offline to a degree.
4. Lower cost than native apps.
Disadvantages:
1. Doesnt run as smoothly as native apps.
2. Offline performance can be inconsistent.
3. We need plug-ins to access hardware capabilities.

Tools that are use to develop and deploy hybrid apps are as follows:

Sencha Touch: It is an open source cross-platform mobile app development tool

written in JavaScript. It is a user interface JavaScript library or framework built specially
for the mobile Web.

Apache Cordova: Apache Cordova (formerly known as PhoneGap) is an open source

mobile application development framework originally created by Nitobi. After Nitobi was
bought out by Adobe Systems, the company redesigned PhoneGap and released the
software as Apache Cordova, which allows developers to use Web technologies like
HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript for cross-platform development. The core of Apache
Cordova applications makes use of CSS3 and HTML5 for rendering, and uses
JavaScript for logic. In order to access hardware like the accelerometer, camera and the
GPS, HTML5 is being used.

Appcelerator Titanium: It is an open source mobile app development framework

from a single JavaScript code base. Appcelerator provides JavaScript API and native
platform-specific features across devices. In addition to providing a development
framework, it offers value add-ons including app analytics, Backend-as-a-Service
(BaaS) and others.

Qt: It is an important cross-platform mobile application framework mostly used for

developing application software that can run on various software and hardware
platforms with little or no change in the underlying code base. It is mainly used for
developing various application software with or without GUI interfaces. It chiefly uses
C++ with signal and slot extensions, which makes it easy when handling events and
helps in both developing the GUI and the server applications. It supports many
compilers like G++ and even Microsoft Visual Studio. It has a declarative scripting
language called QML, which facilitates using JavaScript being integrated with any sort
of development. With activated support for the development of various apps and
software for desktops and mobile platforms, Qt declares the UI layouts using QML-
JSON like declarative languages.
Xamarin SDK: It has created a robust cross-platform mobile application development
platform using Ruby or C#. With the C# shared code base, developers use Xamarin
tools to write native Android, iOS and Windows apps with native user interfaces and
shared code across multiple platforms. Xamarin offers two commercial products:
Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. Both are built on top of Mono, an open source
version of the .NET framework .On iOS, Xamarins Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiler
compiles Xamarin.iOS applications directly to native ARM assembly code. On Android,
Xamarins compiler compiles down to the Intermediate Language (IL) which is then
Just-in-Time (JIT) compiled to the native assembly when the application launches.

IONIC: It is one of the most promising HTML 5 mobile application frameworks. Built
using SASS, it provides many UI components to help develop rich and interactive apps.
It uses the JavaScript MVVM framework, AngularJS to power apps. Two-way data
binding, interaction with backend services and APIs makes AngularJS a mobile
developers common choice.

Mobile Angular UI: It is an HTML 5 framework which uses bootstrap

3 and AngularJS to create interactive mobile apps. Responsive media queries are
stripped out of bootstrap as separate files, you only need to include what you need.
Mobile Angular UI doesnt have any jQuery dependencies, all you need are some
AngularJS directives to create awesome mobile user experiences.
Intel XDK: It is a cross platform application tool developed by Intel. Getting started
with Intel XDK is easy, all you need is to download their application which is free and
available for Linux, Windows and Mac. It provides a number of templates to get started
and supports a number of UI frameworks such as Twitter bootstrap, jQuery
Mobile and Topcoat. Intel XDK provides a live preview on the connected device whilst
you are developing alongside many other useful tools.

Teleriks Kendo UI: It is an HTML 5 framework for creating cross platform mobile
applications. Kendo UI relies heavily on jQuery and has a number of jQuery based
widgets. Learning Kendo UI is not difficult, developers familiar with jQuery will find
Kendo UI easy to learn. Kendo UI has open sourced most of Kendo UIs toolset and
JavaScript framework features.