RhoMobile Suite vs. Titanium vs. Xamarin vs. PhoneGap vs. Telerik Platform vs. Codename One

Question

I, like many others, am looking to venture into mobile app development. I am familiar with HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, .NET but not Java or Objective-C. To be honest, I'm unlikely to become a mobile developer guru and the apps I will develop are unlikely to push the limits of Hybrid to such an extent that I ought to go native anyway. So the challenge for me is to gain enough knowledge to confidentally align myself to one of the mainstream Hybrid development platforms - knowing that I made the right decision according to my requirements.

I've been reading similar posts on SO and researching the currently popular Hybrid Mobile application development 'solutions' including:

Xamarin Titanium Rhomobile PhoneGap The Telerik Platform

I've come to the conclusion the decision on which to go with is not so simple. In fact, I'm no closer to making a decision than I was when I started. I'm therefore turning to the community to recommend which options based on my specific criteria (which I believe reflects most self-employed developers working on a small project-by-project basis rather than a larger corporate development team with the ability to fund licence costs etc.)

The apps I will build will need versions for Android and iPhone and should be able to access to the basic core phone functions including: Camera, Accelerometer, Geolocation, Alert, Local Storage, G-Sensor etc. but not much more.

So, this post is not a subjective 'Which one is best?', instead I'm looking for recommendations according to the following requirements:

1. Free (preferrably) but at least affordable to the little man so: 1a. Affordable monthly subscription (if I have to) 1b. No hidden licence fees when it comes to distributing my applications - this is a biggy.

2. Dev platform should install on Windows and Mac (so I can build for the platform myself) 2a. Alternatively, any integrated online build services should be affordable

3. Environment should be straightforward to install and configure (is there such a solution? Nearly all I have tried seem to have some kind of issue whilst locating reference files, versions, launching emulators etc.)

As a .NET MVC developer, Xamarin seems the obvious choice but the starter cannot invoke 3rd party libraries - I imagine I would need this - and the barely affordable 'Indie' at $299 is per year per platform and I'm not certain it would offer all the functionality needed. The Enterprise version at $1899 per year per platform is way beyond budget.

Rhomobile Suite with its MVC Ruby approach seems a good fit for me but the documentation need attention (out of date) and there does seem to be massive ambuguity around the licensing of it. I can't find a definitive answer and they haven't responded to a straightforward request. I found this: "Use of RhoElements does require a license key, to make use of just the non-enterprise features (i.e. a Rhodes app) just remove app_type:rhoelements from your build.yml." - of course it is likely I would need RhoElements! Looking at the Application Licensing (on docs.rhomobile.com site) it seems you can get them from Motorola Solutions (or a heap of other resellers) but typically I cannot find a price. This concerns me - I can forsee me being hit with a $10,000 fee when I distribute to the app stores.

Titanium also has ambiguity over the licensing. Some are claiming they are been chased for $5000 licences by UK resellers others suggest that is simply wrong and there are no licence fees. Again, no idea...

In comparison, PhoneGap does appear to tick the boxes and I don't see concern over licensing but compared with the other solutions it comes across as needing more of a manual process with unpolished results - although that could be more to do with the apps I've seen in examples rather than the capability of the platform.

The Telerik Platform seems good on the face of it but I doubt the 'developer' offering at the current price of $39 a month (marketed as "ideal for tinkerers and hobbyists") is enough so I'd be looking at a commitment of $79 a month paid one year up-front - ouch! I'm also unsure if this cost covers all licensing of complete applications (I would hope so).

As one of my key criteria is ease of install, configuration and build, I am leaning towards Rhomobile or Telerik depending on the final costs to me as the developer for building and submitting these apps.

All things considered am I on the right track or still very uninformed?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I work for Motorola Solutions, that release the RhoMobile Suite.

The RhoMobile Suite includes different product:

• RhoStudio: IDE based on Eclipse
• Rhodes Framework: Free, MIT license, to build B2C applications
• RhoElements Framework: B2B licensed framework, built on top of rhodes offering support for data encription, barcode scanning, Windows Mobile and Windows CE support
• RhoConnect: Synchronization and integration framework (need license)
• RhoHub: hosting of RhoConnect and build server for Rhodes/RhoElements (need license for commercial use)
• RhoGallery: Enterprise app store. (need license for commercial use)

The application you're going to build needs only Rhodes API. You can find on this table which API requires a RhoElements license. So you can build your app with Rhodes, deploy it on AppStore and PlayStore without having to buy any license.

You can find some support using the free user community on Launchpad.

Regarding paid support and RhoElements/RhoConnect/RhoHub/RhoGalley licenses, this will change during the summer to be aligned to the subscription model used by other cross-platform framework on the market.