Is there a multi-platform application development platform for iPhone / Android?

Question

I am interested in writing applications for the iPhone and the Android platform. I was hoping to find a middleware / framework that diverted some differences in the API and allowed me to specify the target platform during build. Are there such frameworks, existing or planned?

Answer 1

Telephony is a javascript / css / html-based framework for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. It (at least on iphone) can be added as a native application. The user interface level for these applications is usually built in html / javascript and can be slower than a true native application.

phonegap

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React Native allows you to build world-class application experience on your own platforms, using consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on the effectiveness of developers on all the platforms you care about - study once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in several production apps and will continue to invest in React Native. The user interface for real applications is their own controls - so your user interface is usually faster than the simple HTML / javascript approach for managing the GUI.

Change root

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Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies and used to develop video games for PCs, consoles, mobile devices and websites. Unity is distinguished by its ability to target games across multiple platforms. Supported platforms: Android, Apple TV, BlackBerry 10, iOS, Linux, Nintendo 3DS, OS X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Unity Web Player (including Facebook), Wii, Wii U, Windows Phone 8, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Unity

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OpenFL is the open source port of the Flash API. Desktop, browser, Ios, Android, Flash, HTML5, etc .. and this is an opportunity to consider for those who come from the world of Flash. It also works with source binaries and target browsers (Flash / HTML5).

openfl

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MonoGame is an open source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4.x Framework. This allows XNA developers to create cross-platform games with an extremely high level of code reuse. It currently supports iOS, Android, Windows (both OpenGL and DirectX), Mac OS X, Linux, the Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, and the OUYA console.

monogame

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Adobe Flash And believe it or not, Adobe Flash can publish source binaries for ios, android, desktop and, of course, on the Internet. Performance is reasonable but not unbelievable. If you have a Flash game, you can easily transfer it to your mobile. And it does not require any plugins. It actually creates its own standalone binary file that runs on each platform.

adobe

Answer 2

Change Since this question was asked, a number of viable solutions were developed. Although the tone of this answer may still be accurate (in order to get 100% of HW / OS, you probably need your own application), you can find several possible answers below this question.

Both Android and iPhone have very strongly defined user interfaces. Even if you find a framework that overcomes huge differences at the lowest level levels (Android is programmed in Java on top of a user virtual machine, iPhone is native code programmed in Objective-C) and at higher levels (iPhone applications are completely isolated and an isolated, Android object model is distributed, and classes are freely called between applications and libraries), your final application will feel alien and inappropriate in any of them. Think about the lack of multi-touch on Android or the lack of special hardware buttons on the iPhone.

It would be best to develop a user interface on the platform and have a model and the main logic of your application in some scripting language. Then find the interpreter in simple C (for iPhone) and one in Java (for Android). Schema, Lisp, and Javascript can match the score. Just make sure that the interpreter is not open to end users or that you violate the iPhone NDA ...

If your application is heavy, you can follow the model of many iPhone applications and develop your own user interfaces for iPhone and Android and have all the application logic on a remote server. The user interface becomes the only installed part of the application, and everything else is hosted on the network. This has the added benefit of being able to offer roaming profiles between different devices and the web interface.

Answer 3

Adding another service to the heap: Rhomobile wants to create just that. It sounds like a dumbfounded quote - think on the Internet in the early 90s. But this may be the easiest way to port your favorite application to every major mobile platform.

Read more: Rhomobile promises: Create once, deploy to any smartphone

(Note: I do not work for Rhomobile, just stumbled upon this story today.)

Answer 4

I don’t have direct experience with iPhone or Android, but I just read an article about Titan, and then when I visited their site, I found this:

http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile/

Answer 5

I work a bit (ed) with the native solutions of Obj-C and Java (4 Android). I also create an app with Appcelerator for iPhone and Android that works great. Appcelerator APIs are quite extensive. The Appcelerator Kitchen Sink app shows a lot of elements and features that you can incorporate into the app ( https://github.com/appcelerator/KitchenSink ). However, since the Appcelerator application is not too complicated, I do not like to recommend it at all. A colleague told me that their development team tried this and they were not satisfied. However, he could not name the real reason. However, I will continue to test it to see where the limitations are. One of the big limitations is platform support (currently only iOS and Android).

As for Rhodes, this solution looks pretty impressive on paper, especially in terms of supported platforms. I see some problems with this though. Firstly, for demo and sink applications, a lot of disk space is required, a little choppy and sometimes funky (at least on Android). Secondly, there are very few real-world applications. I mean applications that have been downloaded at least 1,000 times and serve the needs of the real world, except for demonstration purposes only. Ease of use for me takes precedence in mobile (consumer) applications!

I see great potential in HTML / CSS / JavaScript / PhoneGap applications. I recently read several articles about larger companies using HTML (5) to build their applications (e.g. Netflix http://mashable.com/2010/12/03/netflix-html5/ , Zynga http://www.spielsucht24 .de / 2010/12/21 / zynga-launches-html5-mafia-wars-atlantic-city-for-mobile-web / ) There are still some usability and instantness issues that need to be solved when creating mobile applications using the web -technologies. Another issue may be testing, debugging, and maintaining enterprise-level HTML applications.

Answer 6

The Rhomobile Framework Infrastructure does this. Rhodes apps are native to every single smartphone

Answer 7

Mytopia has an unreleased structure called RUGS. They recently introduced TechCrunch 50, and their technology looked very interesting. They were able to compile an application that runs on all platforms for smartphones (and were able to take advantage of every ... accelerometer on the iPhone, for example). Unfortunately, their site says that you need to send them an email if you want more information. It may be worth removing them by e-mail if you really want to develop the smartphone of the target system on an advanced platform.

I watched their presentation through the TC50 webcast, but unfortunately I can’t find a video for you right now.

Please write here where you can familiarize yourself with the frame that you decided to use, and why you chose it.

Answer 8

QuickConnectiPhone allows you to write your application in JavaScript, but it is still available for installation. Currently, the Android version is in the unreleased Alpha.

If both of you create your application in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, call the phone on your iPhone or Android device for device behavior such as vibration, GPS location, etc.

The iPhone version can be downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/projects/quickconnect/ , and if you contact me, I can send you an Android version.

Answer 9

Even if you really wanted it, it would be inappropriate to create your own platform with several platforms - iPhone is its own code, Android is Java.

Of course, you have nothing to stop, for example, sharing the basic C / C ++ logic in a desktop application with your iPhone partner.

Answer 10

Check this:

http://www.xmlvm.org/overview/

This is a project that tries to cross-compile programs written in different source languages ​​into a variety of target languages. One of the first test cases was to write Java programs and run them on an iPhone. Watching a video on a site is worth it. They discussed the possibility of being able to focus on Android.

Having said that, I have not tried. The project seems to be pretty beta, and there is not much of SourceForge on their site.

Answer 11

You can develop Java applications for the iPhone with iSpectrum. That way, you can reuse the agreed upon amount of your application code between Android and iPhone (and possibly desktop applets or J2ME MIDlet depending on what you do :))

Additional information at http://www.flexycore.com

Answer 12

Your best bet is AirPlay, visit the AirPlay website

One click and deployment for Android, Iphone, Samsung Bada, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BREW, WebOS and Maemo.

Answer 13

My HTML5 book for iOS and Android allows you to take web applications created in HTML, JavaScript and CSS, and turn them into standalone applications that can be downloaded to application stores (free or sold) - http://html5formobile.com - wrappers for this, the iOS and Android SDKs are freely available on the website, and you do not need to know about any programming language if you follow the instructions in the book.

Answer 14

I understand that this question is quite old, but it arises when searching Google, so I thought it would be nice to update it.

I think that a good framework right now, aimed at both platforms and actually running on a native basis, allowing you to write good executable games, will be Corona.

Link: http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/

Answer 15

I just wanted to mention that a web application using the Gears plugin can use Geolocation ( No longer available ) (GPS and Wifi location services), and it works on Android (the browser on the G1 comes with built-in Gears support).

I'm not sure if there is hope for gear support on the iPhone, but this is another useful approach to creating webapps with additional features that still have wide access to devices.

Answer 16

we had success with the Ice-Touch middleware to have both iPhone and Android devices talking to the same servers. with pretty decent code generation for network objects and methods. but local logic still needs to be written in the language of the phone. Thus, we could take advantage of each user interface, while our model lives on the same server, and our controllers are automatically generated.

link text

Answer 17

Such a structure, by its nature, could not use the features of the iPhone, such as an accelerometer or multi-finger gestures. It may also void the terms of the Apple SDK.

As Anyuk suggested, consider writing a web application. Basic functions, such as calling someone, may be available this way.

Answer 18

There is nothing there (it is worth relying, if at all), and I doubt that there will ever be something officially planned.