Experiences on mobile cross-platform application development using PhoneGap

Cross-platform mobile application development frameworks are an attractive alternative to native application development, with potential for improved asset reuse and reduced development costs. Few reports exist, however, on determining their suitability for a given type of application or identifying their potential pitfalls. To address this, we report our experiences from implementing a hybrid web application demonstrator on Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8, and desktop platforms for cloud-based content sharing and co-creation. The hybrid web application approach was found adequate for implementing the demonstrator. Notable challenges discovered during the process were platform dependent variation in HTML5 feature support, differences in the way browsers interact with platform services, and lack of platform specific debugging tools. Based on the results, emphasis on debugging tool support is suggested, as well as early and frequent testing on all target platforms.