Best Mobile App Development Tools That Will Make Your Life Easier

In our contemporary world almost everyone has mobile devices, except Bob, but don’t be like Bob. Besides, with the current technologies, you’ve got a real possibility to develop an app without any effort, you lazy guy. Nevertheless, there are so many mobile app development tools out there today such that it’s like an embarrassment of riches. The main questions are: Which single application should you use? How to avoid forking over too much dinero? Do you even need to have opposable thumbs, let alone developer skills to use these applications? Well, if you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, you’ve come to the right place. If not, next door down on the left. Here we’ll look at the best mobile app dev tools and which ones are the most appropriate for you application and piggy bank.

Xamarin

This tool is the best choice for native applications. The software was developed by evil overlords at Microsoft. Due to C# codebase, you can develop Windows, Android, and iOS applications. Generally speaking, in C# you may do everything you can do in Objective-C, Java or Swift. Another feature is that using this tool you can use the same IDE, language and API. What’s superduper cool is that into the Xamarin Studio is built a Git integration. The other advantages of Xamarin are the following: Using Xamari you can share about 75% of developed code across major mobile platforms. As a result, it’ll highly decrease time-to-market and costs. To ensure seamless integration, many devices are provided with a functionality testing and quality assurance.

PhoneGap

This kind of tool is from the category of cross-platform app development. One of the great advantages of this baby is that it allows you to create an application capable of working on all mobile devices. Also, it works on HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. In order to save time and improve functionality, the framework is integrated with several libraries. If you’re not satisfied with the PhoneGap architecture, you can always extend it with the help of plug-in architecture.

Due to the powerful backend system, it increases the speed of applications development. This tool has an Open Source License, which for you folks who can’t Google means it’s a free framework for mobile app development. Around PhoneGap there’s a large amount of developers, who are constantly developing the quality of the app.

Convertigo

Convertigo is an open-source software vendor. This tool provides a mobile enterprise application platform. Convertigo has many slick features. First of all, it’s a cross platform that allows you to run your applications on multiple devices (Android, iOS, and Windows phone). Thanks to Convertigo FullSync data replication technology, you can make your data available without any complex coding even if network is out of reach after they’ve cut the internet off at your mom’s house for your torrenting. Besides, this tool leverages any Cordova plugins and any hardware device’s features. It can be camera, GPS or sensors.

Sencha Ext JS

Sencha Ext JS is everything what a hungry developer needs to build data-intensive, cross-platform applications. One of the gargantuan advantages of this tool, is that it has more than one hundred high-quality, pre-tested, and integrated UI components, such as charts, grids, calendar and so on. Its framework includes a robust data package that’s capable of consuming data from any backend source. This tool will also allow you to prototype, develop, code, and debug as well as test your web application on any browser and on any device.

Appcelerator

Appcelerator is the most appropriate name for this application, as it literally accelerates the app development process. Due to fewer lines of code, developers can create applications in shorter periods of time. Appcelerator is capable of supporting Android, iOS, Windows, and many other browser-based HTML5 applications. It doesn’t matter whether you decided to develop a native or a cross-platform application, this tool will contribute to developing your applications. It’s Appcelerator that is chosen by so many developers, as it has various platform specific API’s, features, and user interface. To build native and hybrid mobile applications, Appcelerator Titanium uses JavaScript and XML. It also may be very very(very) useful for you in case you decided to build a web application. Besides, there’s a huge community of developers and they gather at the Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace. That’s the place where you can sell, buy and share modules, templates, and extensions.

Monocross

This tool is an open-source cross-platform mobile framework. With its assistance you’ll be able to create various beautiful applications for both iOS (iPads, iPhones) and Android as well as Windows Phone and Webkit-enabled devices. Monocross uses C# .NET and the Mono framework for developing apps capable of supporting different platforms. There are the other advantages of this tool. It allows a user to develop a custom user interface for each targeted platform but write logic and code all at once. Monocross flexibly uses the same code whether it’s natively complicated to the device or executing on the server.

Kony Mobile Platform

Kony Mobility Platform is an integrated, cross-platform mobile app development platform. It can be used for building universal mobile applications. Its visual design canvas and tools provide faster cross-platform design and development. The other nice feature is that developers and designers can integrate 100% of the native OS or any other open-source and third-party framework (or select a pre-built template) for a great user experience without loss of speed.

Nativescript

This tool is yet another open-source platform that will allow you to develop native cross-platform mobile applications. What’s brilliant here is that this tool gives you every native APIs in JavaScript of most of the mobile platforms. This tool has the following features. Nativescript is extensible as it allows you to reuse existing plugins from npm, CocoaPods (iOS), and Grade (Android) directly in NativeScript projects, as well as hundreds of NativeScript specific plugins.

Nativescript has beautiful, platform-native, and accessible UI (that can’t be compared with webviews). Define once and let NativeScript adapt to run everywhere, or tailor the UI to specific devices and screens.

RhoMobile

RhoMobile is based on the Rhodes framework. This set of tools will be highly helpful for you in developing multi-platform, data-centered, native mobile consumer and enterprise applications. With the help of RhoStudio, a free Eclipse plugin, developers will be able to develop, generate, debug, and test applications. And you won’t even need no other hardware or emulator requirements.

Codename One

This is another cross-device platform that can be used in developing industry-based applications. One of the greatest features is the fact that this platform supports rapid application environment. That means that you may write your code in Java and your application will be tested and verified with Codename One’s simulator devices and various automation tools. This framework also supports such popular IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ IDEA. Hold on… This is not the most interesting feature. That would be that you can build native iOS apps as well as native Windows apps. And you don’t even need to have a MAC or Windows. Besides, this platform is recommended for developing iOS applications.

BuildFire

This is a high-performance, do-it-yourself mobile app builder that’s capable of supporting iOS and Android phones as well as tablets. This tool may shorten the time to launch by months or even years with the help of pre-built functionality. This includes: more than 40 plugins, direct integrations to Smooth, Segment and others. And, finally, various pre-existing templates to build from.

You may think of it like a Wix or Weebly, though for mobile applications with the actual capability to build an app that’s launch ready in 20–30 minutes.

React Native

With the help of React Native you’ll be able to develop mobile applications using only JavaScript. With the same design as React, you’ll be able to compose a rich mobile User Interface from declarative components.

React Native allows you to build your app much faster without having to recompile it. You can just reload your app instantly. Using Hot Reloading, you also can run new code while retaining your application state.

Another feature of React Native is that it’s capable of combining smoothly with components written in Objective-C, Swift or Java. In case you need to optimize a few aspects of your application, all you need to do is to drop down to native code.

The Bottom Line

Nowadays, we’ve got oodles of mobile app development tools. All these applications vary in complexity, price, usability, and many other ways. However, the main purpose of this article was to motivate you to start using one of these apps and simplify the process of mobile application development. Hope we achieved our goal, and you found something useful. Tell us about your favorite app development tool. We’re just waiting to hear from you!