Performance Impact of Cordova / PhoneGap?

Question

Recently, I learned about Apache Cordova and PhoneGap and how beautiful it is then to pack your own Android and Ios applications from HTML5 applications.

However, I am trying to understand how this affects performance, security, or any other problems. I’m sure that using Cordova and PhoneGap will not ensure the security and performance of Native Apps, since they can use callback hooks for the OS through packaged applications?

Is it right, if so, how exactly does Cordova / Phonegap bridge the gap?

Answer 1

Cordoba puts the entire HTML5 application in a webview, so performance depends mainly on the characteristics of javascript and CSS. There are smart tricks (for example, using -webkit-translate and -webkit animations) to improve performance, but definitely not everything can work as smoothly as in a native application. Depending on the type of application, this may or may not be a problem. The javascript / css library plays a big role, which you use to create the user interface (or your own JS coding skills if you don't use them). There are no standard user interface components that you can use other than what HTML / CSS offers ( <a> , <img> , css: border-radius, etc.). What is nice, of course, is that webviews run on WebKit, so you can use the latest and greatest CSS3 features.

As for security: imho does not have a significant impact on security, it is still packaged inside a native application, which can be unpacked in the same way as a native application. The point is that your JS code is visible instead of your own compiled code, but hey: security from the unknown has never been a good security measure anyway.