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  5. Android SDK vs NativeScript

Android SDK vs NativeScript

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Android SDK
Android SDK
Stacks27.6K
Followers20.7K
Votes800
NativeScript
NativeScript
Stacks533
Followers1.1K
Votes516
GitHub Stars25.3K
Forks1.7K

Android SDK vs NativeScript: What are the differences?

Key Differences: Android SDK vs NativeScript

Android SDK and NativeScript are two popular platforms for developing mobile applications. While both offer ways to build native mobile apps, there are several key differences between them. Here are the top six differences:

  1. Language: Android SDK uses Java as the primary programming language, while NativeScript supports JavaScript/TypeScript. This means that developers familiar with Java will find it easier to work with Android SDK, while those with experience in JavaScript/TypeScript may prefer NativeScript.

  2. Development Approach: Android SDK follows a traditional native development approach, where apps are built using the Android framework and APIs. On the other hand, NativeScript enables cross-platform development, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it across multiple platforms.

  3. UI Framework: Android SDK uses XML-based layout files for designing the user interface. NativeScript, on the other hand, utilizes a declarative UI framework, where the UI is described using XML for Android and XML-like syntax for iOS. This allows for code reuse and a more unified development experience.

  4. Performance: Android SDK offers better performance as the apps are built with native code specifically optimized for Android devices. NativeScript also provides good performance by using a native bridge to access device APIs, but it may not be as fast as Android SDK in certain scenarios.

  5. Development Tools: Android SDK has a comprehensive set of development tools provided by Google, including Android Studio, a powerful IDE for Android development. NativeScript also has its own set of development tools, such as NativeScript CLI and plugins for popular text editors. Developers may prefer one set of tools over the other based on their familiarity and personal preferences.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Android SDK has a larger and more mature community, as it has been around for a longer time and is backed by Google. This means that there are more resources, tutorials, and libraries available for Android development. NativeScript, although newer, has a growing community and a wide range of plugins and extensions to enhance the development experience.

In summary, the key differences between Android SDK and NativeScript lie in the programming language used, development approach, UI framework, performance, development tools, and community support.

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Advice on Android SDK, NativeScript

Omran
Omran

CTO & Co-founder at Bonton Connect

Jun 19, 2020

Needs adviceonKotlinKotlin

We actually initially wrote a lot of networking code in Kotlin but the complexities involved prompted us to try and compile NodeJS for Android and port over all the networking logic to Node and communicate with node over the Java Native Interface.

This turned out to be a great decision considering our battery usage fell by 40% and rate of development increased by a factor of 2.

622k views622k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Android SDK
Android SDK
NativeScript
NativeScript

Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

-
100% Access to Native Platform API;NativeScript is free of charge as an open source project;Code with JavaScript. Style with CSS;Cross-platform UI abstractions;Shared business logic and data models
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
25.3K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.7K
Stacks
27.6K
Stacks
533
Followers
20.7K
Followers
1.1K
Votes
800
Votes
516
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 289
    Android development
  • 156
    Necessary for android
  • 128
    Android studio
  • 86
    Mobile framework
  • 82
    Backed by google
Pros
  • 75
    Access to the entire native api
  • 47
    Support for native ios and android libraries
  • 46
    Support for javascript libraries
  • 46
    Angular 2.0 support
  • 44
    Native ux and performance
Cons
  • 5
    Lack of promotion
  • 1
    Slower Performance compared to competitors
Integrations
Java
Java
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Android SDK, NativeScript?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

Ionic

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

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