Mobile app developers are spoilt for choices with a variety of tools, frameworks, and platforms to support their development journey. Developers, in their initial phase, are likely to find tools such as Mobile Roadie, Appery.io, and TheAppBuilder highly useful to build apps with minimum effort.
Then you have the professional smartphone app development companies engaged in the development of a variety of mobile apps using frameworks like React Native, Flutter, Ionic, PhoneGap, and Xamarin. Amongst these, Xamarin forms an integral part of mobile development as it offers exceptional features and facilities, which are highlighted below.
It is a Microsoft owned framework
Translation: Xamarin gives you full support for Microsoft’s .NET and C# based apps and the Azure platform. A part of Microsoft’s portfolio, there are over 60,000 Xamarin developers and contributors, thus showcasing that Xamarin forms a sizeable portion of the developer community, making it a vibrant fraternity that is enriched with constant innovations that increase the functionality of smartphone apps.
One framework – different mobile platforms
Many frameworks do allow for development of apps on both iOS and Android platforms, but Xamarin developers are empowered to build apps for:
- Android
- iOS
- TvOS
- WatchOS
- MacOS
- Windows
Microsoft News and Alaska Airlines mobile apps are based on Xamarin.
Rich repository
The Xamarin repository, based on .NET and C# gives more control and design flexibility to app developers, and, in addition, it is a powerful framework for mobile API integration too, including cross-platform and third-party libraries. It is easy to develop apps with deep linking and indexing.
Reusable logic
Given that iOS and Android are based on different platforms, a hybrid app development tool would find it difficult to transport business logic layers and data access across platforms. However, Xamarin does it beautifully, whether the app is deployed on Windows, iOS, or Android platforms. All platforms share a single .NET codebase.
Apps look native
Considering just how important the UI is for user experience, you will find it is a common issue that hybrid apps do not look native on Android or iOS, depending on which tool you have chosen. As for Xamarin built apps, they look native to the operating system and environment. For instance, when deployed on iOS, the buttons and layout would be in consonance with other apps on the platform.
Fast performance
Smartphone app developers who wish to bring apps quickly to the market will find it in their favor to take a strong, deep look at this platform. Xamarin Apps work fast using specific hardware applications to deliver native performance. Some tools offer cross-platform capability but at the cost of delays caused by interpreting code during runtime. Some hybrid apps run within a browser shell and, even when done well, there is a delay, which can be annoying for users.
Development is easy, especially for Microsoft professionals
Xamarin lets you use Visual Studio on Windows or Visual Studio for Mac. Smartphone app development is a joy since Xamarin developers can create UI, write and edit code, debug and publish without moving out of the IDE. This means faster development, fewer bugs, and a rich experience.
One platform, different languages
If you develop smartphone apps for iOS then you use Visual Studio and write code in Razor, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Typescript, C#, F#, XAML, and XML, whichever is suitable and convenient. Importantly, when you proceed with the development, you benefit from advanced Intellisense built into Visual Studio. It describes APIs and uses auto-completion.
Debugging is just as easy in Visual Studio. Further, app developers find it easy to manage code in GitHub or other repositories from within Visual Studio.
Repurpose code
It is a drag to have to write code all over again each time the smartphone app development company gets a new project. Thankfully, Xamarin includes intelligent repurposing. This means code written for one app previously can be restructured using Extract and Rename.
Translation? Xamarin developers save substantial amounts of time and this means reduced costs for mobile app development for customers besides providing higher accuracy.
Thorough tests
A bug in the mobile app could have consequences for users who will find it disappointing which affects the company’s reputation. Xamarin developers will find full support for testing frameworks like MSTest and Nunit, even automate the process. For smartphone app development companies, this means they can give assurances of fault-free apps with full confidence and earn customer trust.
Best of the .NET world
You have the .NET framework for native Windows applications, Xamarin for mobile apps, and tools such as Visual Studio for Mac and for Windows in a common interface. However, the best thing is the .NET core for cross-platform development and runtime that transplants .NET apps to other platforms. Mono is the API port that makes it feasible for Xamarin apps to run on three platforms.
Code can be written in .NET and then compiled to intermediate language code and then Mono bridges it to native code for iOS or Android or Windows. Mono works the magic behind Xamarin’s reputation as the best smartphone app development platform for iOS/Android/Windows.
Building UI is easy
If the underlying code for cross-platform operation is important and easy to achieve in Xamarin, building UI is just as easy. Xamarin.Forms is an important tool that creates a layer of shared UI across platforms that get translated to native format at runtime. This means that Xamarin developers spend less time on custom UIs for each platform. At the same time, developers can choose to develop custom UIs for each platform.
One developer source for desktop applications and mobile apps
Choose a smartphone app development company that provides Xamarin services. One reason they use it for smartphone app development is that they are already working with .Net and C# for extended desktop applications as required by medium and larger enterprises. You have app development for mobiles and desktops from one single source and that makes interworking and interaction easy when you deploy the app as an extension of a larger software environment.
To sum it up, Xamarin is an evolving, stable, and mature platform belonging to the Microsoft suite and it delivers native experiences for users when used for smartphone app development besides the facility of connecting to other windows based or MacOS based software.
If you are looking for Xamarin services, contact Smart Sight Innovations and let our developers provide you with a free quote to build Xamarin apps.
