Ionic vs Xamarin: A Quick Comparison between Two Platforms

Mobile app development frameworks like Ionic and Xamarin are very popular. Both aim to speed up, simplify, and open up app development to a broader group of programmers. The major difference between them is the types of ecosystems they support.

Ionic is a platform for building award-winning mobile experiences using well-known web technologies and languages based on industry standards. Ionic is built on top of the larger web and JavaScript ecosystem. Xamarin is a Microsoft product and is fully integrated into the Microsoft environment.

The decision between Ionic and Xamarin is heavily influenced by the approach and community you are willing to put your faith in. Even if you hire .NET developers, the possibilities are limitless, and there's no better time than now to make the switch to the internet.

Benefits of Cross-Platform Mobile Development:

A recent study found that the popularity of Cross-Platform apps is rapidly increasing in the market, with estimates ranging from $25,19 billion in 2015 to $80,45 billion in 2020.

Development for multiple platforms using the same codebase is called cross-platform development.

Advantages of the Cross-Platform Development:

• Cost-effectiveness

It makes it possible to conduct an investigation only once, by a single team.

• A single stack of technologies

One technology stack can be used for a variety of engineering tasks by developers.

• Code that can be reused

Code reuse can save up to 90% of the cost of developing new functionality in a different language.

• Maintainability is a breeze

Maintenance and deployment of the new features are simplified because separate applications are no longer required.

The next step is to choose the tool we'll use to create the Cross-Platform app. There are positives and negatives to every framework. We'll look at some of the most important selection criteria for Xamarin and Ionic frameworks to help us make the best choice.

• Xamarin is a cross-platform mobile app development framework backed by Microsoft that uses C# and Native libraries wrapped in a .NET layer.
• Ionic is a framework that allows you to create a hybrid app with HTML5 and Angular.

Difference between Xamarin and Ionic:

What is Ionic?

For HTML5 hybrid mobile app development, Ionic is a front-end framework to use. Hybrid HTML5 apps are built using Ionic rather than a Cross-Platform framework. Development that is both web- and native-based is referred to as a hybrid. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are used by Ionic to build mobile apps that are shown in a web view on mobile devices. Be a result, the Ionic framework is not referred to as a Cross-platform framework.

Ionic allows mobile app developers freedom, thanks to the Hybrid Application Development Framework.

• Save at least a day of picture preparation by generating icons and splash screens for all devices at once with ionic resources.
• Emulate or run directly on a device to instantly reflect code changes.
• Create and test an iOS and Android app at the same time, and see the results right away.
• Connect with clients, customers, and testers all throughout the world without ever leaving our ionic apps.
• Using ng-Cordova, quickly gain access to all of the device's native features.

What is Xamarin?

Xamarin is a platform-agnostic framework that lets us use C# to create apps for iOS, Android, and the Mac. Xamarin makes use of the C# programming language and the.Net framework.

When it comes to Non-Native applications, performance might be a major concern. But unlike other hybrid platforms like Ionic, Xamarin can take advantage of hardware acceleration to increase performance.

We ran an experiment last year to compare the compute performance of Native and Cross-Platform applications. We discovered that the Cross-Platform framework's performance is on par with that of the Native application development framework.

If the app's performance is an issue, we'll need to switch to Xamarin app development. Adding new features to a Xamarin app is easy thanks to the API access it has. Native interface control is used in Xamarin apps so that they have the same appearance and feel like a native app.

Types of Xamarin Development Platforms

In addition to Android, iOS, and Windows, Xamarin supports a wide range of other platforms as well. It's possible to create an app using Xamarin's Native development environment. These are the software development environments:

• Xamarin. Android: Unlike Native programming, here we use C# instead of Java. Similar to Native development, we may structure our user interface into activities.
• Xamarin.iOS: It develops apps in C# rather than Objective-C or Swift. Xamarin takes care of the build by using Objective-C wrappers to make the code compatible with the iOS platform in a runtime environment similar to native iOS development on the iPhone and iPad.
• Xamarin.Forms: It's possible to create a cross-platform app with Xamarin.Forms, which works with Android, iOS, and Windows. All platforms can benefit from the codes and business UI because they are platform-independent. Otherwise, we'd have had to design distinct UI layers and code bases for each platform.

Responsive UI/UX design in Xamarin vs Ionic:

Image-Slider:
If we create a basic picture slider in Ionic, the slider is initially unresponsive unless the window containing the application is manually nudged. However, responsive design is simple in Xamarin (both Xamarin native and Xamarin.Forms).

Animation
Ionic's implementation of the motion and transition isn't as polished as it could be. Xamarin, on the other hand, delivers animations and transitions that are significantly smoother and operate a lot better. Custom animation is supported by Xamarin as well.

Ionic isn't the best solution for creating games or applications with a lot of animation because of its limitations in this area. When it comes to creating a graphic or transition with a lot of interactivity in Ionic, there aren't many tools at our disposal. However, by utilizing the material design components, it is possible to create unique animations in Xamarin applications.

Performance:

Because of its Cross-Platform development features, which rely on reusing business logic rather than sharing a codebase between the two types of apps, Xamarin's performance is equivalent to that of native apps. Developers can quickly design high-performing apps with Xamarin. The Android ecosystem includes both Xamarin and Android. iOS.Ionic's performance, on the other hand, falls far short of that of a native app because it wraps the app in a webview.

Quality Comparison:

To create a hybrid application, the ionic framework applies web technology. Ionic apps will provide a mediocre user experience and be overshadowed by Xamarin apps in terms of importance. Because of this, Xamarin will be our best option if we want to compete with other app developers in the marketplace. In the following graph, we can see how Hybrid HTML mobile apps compare to Cross-platform mobile apps.

• Cross-platform native apps loaded 25% faster than hybrid apps.
• Large datasets loaded 62% faster in cross-platform native apps than in hybrid HTML apps.
• Hybrid HTML apps need 50% more RAM than Cross-platform Native apps.
• In comparison to hybrid HTML5 apps, native cross-platform apps consume 76% less CPU on average.

Conclusion:

If you are already aware of Microsoft ecosystem and you're seeking alternatives to Xamarin for mobile development, then Ionic is a terrific solution. To put it another way, now is a better moment than ever before to make the leap from native app development to web development in general.

Author Bio:

Tarun Gurang is a Sr. Digital Marketing Manager at .NET development company – iFour Technolab Pvt Ltd (Microsoft Gold Partner), having years of experience in SEO, Google AdWords, Bing Ads, FB advertising and other digital marketing strategies.