Disadvantages of cross-platform mobile app development using Visual Studio

Question

Microsoft has introduced his new Visual Studio, with compatibility to develop multi-platform applications for Android, iOS and windows.

This is a very good news, for developers, that a large and reliable company produced such a thing. It can make life easier, a lot.

But, as you know, there are always disadvantages when you get advantages. So I want to know:

1) What is the difference between developing native apps for each platform, and using this kind of tools? What is the disadvantage compared to using for example Objective-C or Java for iOS and Android separately?

2) Is there any dependencies in order to running developed apps on different OSs? Something like .NET framework?

3) Is there any performance cost? Or works just like native ones?

4) What kind of apps are supposed to be developed with such tools?

Answer 1

In my point of view , this not good idea to develop android or ios application in XAMARIN. First of all performance issue occurs. You can not achieve performance like native application. There are some dependencies like Xamarin compiles C# to native code, but still relies on the Mono runtime to do a lot of its work.

Native, no cheating – this is native. But there is an overhead, it isn’t like ObjectiveC native. The apps are going to be larger – this minor stuff matters when you are trying to get the max oomph out of your very resource restrictive mobile device.

You still need a mac for ios:-) A huge emphasis on better app patterns like MVC or MVVM, because user interface is still native. You can write about 70% reusable code using Xamarin, but the last 30% or more depending upon your app design and nature, has to be native.

Generally speaking, in my experience, I’ve had better luck finding support and code samples for native, than for Xamarin.

And like I said, you still need to know ObjectiveC and Java – even if you are using Xamarin.

And Visual Studio + Xamarin = $$$$$. Plus a Xamarin developed product, while superior than HTML5 and Packaged HTML5, is going to cost you more. You have to evaluate if your needs justify the cost.

However, in practical application, I don't think it is very useful. Consider this... If you are coding in C# then this code has to be translated into objective-C or Java, and that translation depends on the Xamarin SDK. If Apple releases 4,000 new APIs in the next release of iOS tomorrow, how long will it be before the Xamarin API allows you to call those native APIs? And multiplied by two if adding Java. If you can't wait, then you code what you can in C#, and then write native code for the rest, but now you are supporting three code bases, and the advantage of Xamarin flys out the window.

I provide some links of debate on this topic

http://willowtreeapps.com/blog/xamarin-or-native-development-tools-for-ios-android-projects/

Android Xamarin limitation

https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/advanced_topics/limitations/

https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/121874-5848849341191569409

https://www.quora.com/Why-would-people-build-native-mobile-applications-for-Android-iOS-using-Java-Objective-C-when-they-could-use-Xamarin-C-for-all-platforms-if-license-cost-isnt-an-issue

Why I Don’t Recommend Xamarin for Mobile Development