The world can be such a simple place. Just select a cross-platform tool for mobile applications, write your app and then run it on iPhones, iPads and Android phones. Minimal work for maximum success, right?
If you suspect that, in reality, things aren’t quite so simple, then your intuition hasn’t steered you wrong. The results of a practical application project at the Hochschule Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences demonstrate what currently works – and what doesn’t.
In the context of the project, business information systems students at the university gained practical, real-world experience. In spring, I oversaw the ‘E-Mobility App’ project on behalf of NTT DATA. For this project, the students developed an app for mobile smart devices, particularly smartphones and tablets. The goal was to create an app that would work on all iOS and Android smart devices. The exercise involved finding charging stations for electric vehicles such as cars, pedelecs and the like, calculating a route to reach them and sharing this information with the community interested in charging stations and e-mobility.
Due to the high demand for this technology, NTT DATA even had the chance to oversee two teams, one of which developed a native Android app and the other of which created a cross-platform app. And, if you were wondering, both teams were extremely successful and delivered fantastic apps!
Hochschule Karlsruhe App for E-Mobility
However, the cross-platform team discovered quickly that current technology did not live up to our expectations. The tools PhoneGap and Sencha Touch worked well in combination with one another and promise broad functionality. However, they did demonstrate a number of weaknesses, particularly on Android devices. The main causes for these weaknesses appear to lie in the many number of devices and Android versions available. Since there are no binding standards here, the students faced constantly changing problems, which – once they were resolved for the specific device on which they were discovered – immediately reappeared on the next device in a different form.
Trying to limit the app to what seemed like a bare minimum of standard functions – ‘This MUST work on every device’ – didn’t help, either. In some ways, this situation is comparable to the development of the PC market and the various hurdles posed by drivers and add-on components such as graphics cards and network adapters a number of years ago. Since then, the PC market has become somewhat more consolidated; however, there are still no reliable standards.
Our insight on the matter: The cross-platform app definitely worked, but hiccoughs in the context of the practical application project kept it from being thoroughly convincing. In particular, its dependence on PhoneGap and Sencha Touch posed a problem, as the app relied entirely on the speed and quality of the provider when it came to resolving bugs. There were few to no possibilities for users to troubleshoot.
So the choice is either to rely exclusively on the tools PhoneGap and Sencha Touch and live with the fact that certain functions might not work, or to adapt the code from the tools specifically to individual smart devices. Then the question becomes whether the use of the tools is really cost-effective, or if it wouldn’t make more sense to just develop native apps for each smart device.
The conclusion I drew from the practical application project is that it will take some time before cross-platform development for mobile smart devices really becomes ‘easy’. If you’d like to try the app for yourself, please get in touch with me. I would be happy to send you the install file. martin.fix@nttdata.com
About Martin Fix
Martin Fix is a Managing Consultant at NTT DATA. His areas of expertise include e-mobility, the smart grid, smart city, smart home and traffic management.
Source:
http://emea.nttdata.com/blog/en/2012/08/06/app-development-is-cross-platform-a-cure-all-solution/