PhoneGap VS Titanium

PhoneGap VS Appcelerator Titanium

From 10,000 feet, PhoneGap and Titanium appear to be similar. They both provide tools for cross platform mobile development. Both also require the use of JavaScript and web technologies in some capacity. Both Titanium and PhoneGap are open source software with permissive licenses.

 

Compare titanium and Phonegap:

• PhoneGap uses HTML5, Javascript and CSS3 for creating application UI and functionality while Titanium uses just pure Javascript for creating both UI and functionality.
• PhoneGap enables using an extensive array of Javascript libraries available in the market including JQuery, JavascriptMVC, graphing and charting libraries, etc...
• Titanium translates Javascript to native code at run-time using a translator embedded in the package for each platform while PhoneGap uses WebView component to run the application.
• For data storage, PhoneGap supports localstorage, IndexedDB, and WebSQL. Titanium supportes SQLite embedded database.
• It is said that Titanium provides better performance than PhoneGap which infer that Titanium translator provide better performance than the Webview. But I haven’t tested that myself. I was going to prepare a benchmarking scenario to assert this assumption.
• Titanium provide native look and feel. While PhoneGap provides consistent UI across all platforms. There are also some UI components for PhoneGap the provide native look and feel but they have to be integrated for each platform separately.
• Debugging PhoneGap application is way better than Titanium ones because they depend on the standard Webkit which can be debugged using web developer tools.
• PhoneGap supports iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian while Titanium supports iOS and Android only.

PhoneGap:

The purpose of PhoneGap is to allow HTML-based web applications to be deployed and installed as native applications. PhoneGap web applications are wrapped in a native application shell, and can be installed via the native app stores for multiple platforms. Additionally, PhoneGap strives to provide a common native API set which is typically unavailable to web applications, such as basic camera access, device contacts, and sensors not already exposed in the browser.


Appcelerator Titanium:

Appcelerator Titanium Mobile is one of several multiple phone web-based application frameworks allowing web developers to apply existing skills (such as JavaScript) to create native applications for iPhone and Android.

The core features of Appcelerator Titanium include:

• Support for standards-based web technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript on all platforms along with PHP, Python and Ruby for desktop platforms.
• Integrated support for popular JavaScript and Ajax Frameworks including jQuery, YUI, MooTools, Scriptaculous and others.
• A platform-independent API to access native UI components including navigation bars, menus, dialog boxes and alerts, and native device functionality including the file system, sound, network and local database.
• API access to native mobile functionality like geolocation, accelerometer and maps.
• Extensibility through open interfaces and licensing, allowing developers to introduce support for additional scripting languages, media codecs and device-specific functionality.