What is PhoneGap?

PhoneGap also known as Apache Cordova is an open-source framework designed specially for mobile application development. PhoneGap is a software development framework by Adobe System that is used to develop mobile applications. It is the solution to a lot of mobile app developers’ problems, as it offers a streamlined way to develop an app from scratch. This framework gives developers the opportunity to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create complete apps, which will be considered as supreme applications once they are published for download on phone. While the framework cannot create every kind of application, it is useful for making mobile with full access to following features:

• Notification 
• Geolocation
• Compass
• Storage
• Network
• Contacts
• Camera

PhoneGap is an amazing cross platform framework, that lets the developers to develop applications that run evenly on multiple platforms like iOS, Android, windows and more. Now let us go through an excellent features of PhoneGap Frameworks

• Strong and Robust Backed – PhoneGap has a robust backend system that highly speeds up the development process and decreases developers efforts.
• Open Source – The PhoneGap community compiles new codes and modules which are available for free because of its open source license.
• Flexibility – It offers significant flexibility to the developers as they can develop any class of mobile application without any crucial efforts. Developers who have basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can get started with PhoneGap, there is no need to learn additional languages.

Why to Use PhoneGap? 

It is very essential for developers to know the reason why they should choose PhoneGap when there are so many frameworks available. Let’s go through some points:

• Cost Effective : If there is a shortage of budget and want to get maximum advantage with less investment then PhoneGap is perfect. One can write a single program for an application to run it on various platforms.
• Large community Base : The Cordova development community is one of the biggest communities and is growing continuously. There are plenty of examples and so many experienced members with good support. 
• UI Libraries improve the user interface : With UI libraries present in PhoneGap, the user interface of the apps and web pages are highly improved. This assists in providing a better visual experience for targeted users. 
• Easy sharing of Apps :PhoneGap allows users to share the app as soon as it is ready, by sending a link to friends and family. Recipients can download the app directly to their mobile devices without accessing the laptop. 

Advantages of PhoneGap

• Compatible on all platforms – An impressive uniformity can be maintained when the apps are developed for different operating systems. An app developed for iOS platforms frequently functioned and looked different from one developed for android platform. PhoneGap effectively nullifies this problem by giving the app an uniform look and feel across all platforms.
• Easy Development – PhoneGap works on HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. This makes it simple and easy for business owners to use their own firm’s development as all these browser-based skills do not require expertise or professional.
• Two advantages in one go – PhoneGap is the most popular cross platform. PhoneGap plays an important role in both business and development. By using PhoneGap, the business and developer products are on a roll within the shortest possible time to market less effort and less cash.
• Each application can act like a Native application – When PhoneGap applications take advantage of utilized properties and cell phone’s equipment then they work as native applications. They use some properties like geolocation, accelerometer, camera, etc. This system provides fabulous UX across all time. And in fact users will hardly realize that it is cross-platform.
• Simple to Work Plugins – The PhoneGap and Apache Cordova plugins help to expand native functionalities while developing applications.

Drawbacks of PhoneGap 

• Doesn’t Support Plugins with hook – PhoneGap doesn’t support plugins with hook, so at some point they can block with functionality. For example, WordPress has hooks that encourage developers to connect their code with the centre code base, plugin and themes in WP.
• PhoneGap may not align with Hardware Intensive App – PhoneGap with all its complications of plugins and APIs may fail to deliver while building up a game application. The developers of the games are possibly going to encounter ‘drop’ and ‘stop’ issues after messages pop-up from their application.
• Lack of UI widgets –  Users want native app experience but the due to lack of availability of compatible UI widgets raises a challenge for PhoneGap Developer. The PhoneGap frameworks provide limited pre-built UI elements and thus mostly they have to rely on external resources. This many times fails the delivery. 
• iOS development requires a Mac – The reason that iOS requires a mac in building iOS applications and this cannot be designed without downloading its SDKs which is mandatory in PhoneGap.
• Plugins could be outdated – The plugins in PhoneGap could be outdated, and this could obstruct with application functionality. For certain features, we don’t have related plugins.

Conclusion

As discussed above, phoneGap boosts up resourceful stages, which enable web developers to create code using current aptitude and send it to multiple stages. The PhoneGap hybrid technology is best for creating mobile applications that are cross platform compatible and are cost effective because the framework uses a single code base to build apps for a variety of mobile devices. When it comes to building multiple native apps that do not require heavily built graphics and animation and also don’t use native features, then PhoneGap is a great choice.