Top 15 Mobile App Development Tools for Building Optimal Apps

Mobile applications are an integral part of our lives, be it personal or professional. Mobile application development has become a much-in-demand technology, thanks to the numerous mobile app development tools available in the industry. The growth of mobile apps is enhanced by the increasing demand and popularity of smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.

Organizations today look forward to creating effective and robust mobile apps with the help of the best mobile app development tools. However, there are so many of them that users are bound to get confused about which to choose and why.

This is where our article can help big time in ascertaining the characteristics of individual mobile application development tools to offer a transparent evaluation. An in-depth study could help readers perceive the salient features of each of the mobile development tools and thereby, make decision-making faster and more efficient.

Mobile App Development: An Overview

Mobile connects the physical and digital worlds and transforms your business beyond just personalized experiences and brand awareness. Mobile app development delivers superior user experiences across devices and platforms through custom, futuristic, and secure mobile apps. It nurtures customer relationships, strengthens your brand, and expands your reach.

To garner the best out of mobile app development, enter mobile app development tools. These tools are software components designed to help in the creation of mobile apps of different varieties. These could belong to different categories like native mobile app development (specialized apps of excellent quality on the designated platforms), cross-platform mobile app development (generic app for multiple platforms that works simultaneously), etc.

15 Leading Mobile App Development Tools to Look For

• Flutter
• React Native
• Ionic
• Xamarin
• Mobile Angular UI
• Cordova
• Appcelerator Titanium
• Sencha Ext JS
• IntelliJ IDEA
• Xcode
• Android Studio
• Felgo
• Onsen UI
• NativeScript
• Kendo UI

Flutter:

Powered by Google, Flutter is an open-source UI framework to build native-like, flexible, and graphically enhanced cross-platform apps for web, mobile, and desktop using a single codebase. As one of the best mobile app development tools, it is apt for creating advanced, highly functional applications for streamlining business processes, by converting your requirements into a practical business-ready application, with an attractive and high-quality user interface.

Key Features:

• Cross-platform development framework
• Customizable user interface design
• A large variety of enriched widgets
• Hot Reload feature for fast development
• Same UI and business logic in all platforms

React Native:

As one of the apt mobile app development tools, React Native is an ideal choice for today’s businesses as it saves cost and time by delivering native experiences using one codebase for different platforms. Organizations can leverage cross-platform capabilities to reach a wider audience through React Native app development services. You can create natively rendered web, mobile, and desktop experiences using React Native, a powerful UI software framework.

Key Features

• Code sharing on different platforms
• Large community support
• Easy creation of dynamic applications
• Increased development speed and efficiency
• Using React framework with native platform capabilities

Ionic:

Ionic is a complete open-source SDK for hybrid mobile app development for building modern, fast, top-quality cross-platform native, and Progressive Web Apps from a single codebase. It is an HTML5 mobile app development framework that uses web technologies to create cross-platform mobile applications. As a popular UI toolkit, it is considered one of the best-fit mobile application development tools.

Key Features:

• Can be deployed across multiple platforms
• Created on standard and reliable web technologies
• Simple, accessible, and easy to learn
• Helpful commands through Ionic CLI
• Focus on performance, extensibility, and compatibility

Xamarin:

As one of the popular mobile development tools, Xamarin offers a whole range of tools that can be leveraged for the development of cross-platform mobile applications. It is an open-source framework from Microsoft used to create cross-platform apps for iOS, Android, and Windows using a unified C# and .NET codebase. It is a cross-platform development tool that lets developers build native iOS and Android apps, Windows and Mac apps.

Key Features:

• Seamless backend integration
• Native API access and user interface
• Complete sharing of code across platforms
• Direct addition of components from IDE
• Easy to develop and maintain

Mobile Angular UI:

Mobile Angular UI is an open-source framework for the creation of hybrid mobile apps, by making use of Twitter Bootstrap and AngularJS that assists in the creation of attractive HTML5 hybrid mobile and desktop apps. It depends upon robust libraries like fastclick.js and overthrow.js to achieve an enhanced mobile experience. It offers basic mobile components that are missing in Bootstrap 3.

Key Features:

• Dropdown, Navbars, Scrollable areas
• Effective UI mobile components
• Easy to learn and implement
• Usability of Ionic components along with
• No jQuery dependencies

Cordova:

Apache Cordova is an effective mobile app development tool apt for creating mobile apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Developers can target multiple platforms with one code base. It empowers developers to create hybrid web applications for mobile devices using CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript, instead of relying on platform-specific APIs. It contains a set of pre-defined plug-ins that offer access to the camera, GPS, file system, etc.

Key Features:

• Offers different core components
• CLI is responsible for creating processes and installing plugins for platforms
• Easy to learn and implement
• Fast for prototyping
• Variety of community add-ons with libraries

Appcelerator Titanium:

Appcelerator Titanium framework allows developers to write native mobile applications in JavaScript. The compiled apps make use of native UI components with a connection layer that connects the native UI elements with JavaScript code. It empowers developers to create cross-platform apps with JavaScript, iOS apps, and Android apps without the knowledge of Objective-C and Java/Android API respectively.

Key Features:

• Reusability of code across platforms
• Cross-platform app development with JavaScript
• Ideal for rapid application development
• Visual designing component
• Smooth integration with continuous delivery tools

Sencha Ext JS:

Sencha Ext JS is a popular mobile development tool and a JavaScript framework for constructing data-intensive, cross-platform web and mobile applications for any advanced device. It comprises multiple pre-integrated and tested high-performance UI components. Web and mobile application development can be fastened with an enterprise-ready framework, components, and tools that work in complete sync with each other.

Key Features:

• Development of a single-page application
• Supports OOPS with JavaScript
• Data binding, routing, and state management
• Supports all modern devices and browsers
• High-performance HTML5 framework

IntelliJ IDEA:

IntelliJ IDEA is an ideal option for developers since it makes Java and Kotlin development a pleasant experience. It is an integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for building software applications written in Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and other languages. It assists in increasing productivity with features like intelligent coding assistance, consistent refactoring, immediate code navigation, inbuilt developer tools, etc.

Key Features:

• Inbuilt tools and integrations
• Quick navigation in and out of projects
• Static code analysis and inspection
• Easy configuration and tunability
• Shortcuts for almost all actions

Xcode:

Xcode is a popular mobile application development tool/IDE tool for the creation of amazing apps for multiple Apple platforms like iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV and Apple Watch. It uses Swift programming to develop applications. For an enhanced user experience, the Xcode IDE is responsible. It is seamlessly integrated with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks.

Key Features:

• Code writing with a professional editor
• Inbuilt interface builder
• Easy documentation and search facility
• Effective issue reporting and fixing
• Graphical debugger

Android Studio:

Being the official integrated development environment for Google’s Android OS, Android Studio offers the swiftest tools for creating applications on all Android devices. It depends on IntelliJ IDEA and encompasses its code editing and developer tools. It has been a developer’s delight because of the various types of functions that work in an integrated manner.

Key Features:

• Creation of dynamic layouts on multiple screen sizes
• Customization of builds for Android devices
• Testing apps through an Android device emulator
• Visual layout editor
• Intelligent and fast code editor

Felgo:

Felgo is a native, cross-platform app development tool that builds attractive apps for the desktop, mobile, and web with its SDK and other services. It is based on the Qt framework. Developers can build flexible and robust apps that are compiled natively through a singular codebase. With its Hot Reload feature, development speed can be increased, and a lot of coding effort can be saved because of service integration and native UI/UX, etc.

Key Features:

• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
• Cross-platform leaderboards
• Multiple plug-ins for faster performance
• Connect players from all over
• Live Code Reload

Onsen UI:

Onsen UI is an open-source, mobile application development tool that is an ideal framework for creating hybrid mobile applications. It is easy for developers to develop native apps or PWAs with this tool. The main library is written in JavaScript and can be leveraged with any of the frameworks. There are other binding packages that can be used to implement APIs with the other frameworks.

Key Features

• Enriched set of UI components
• Simplified user interface development
• Based on Apache Cordova
• Tabs, lists, forms, side menu, stack navigation, etc.
• Readily implementable features

NativeScript:

As one of the best mobile app development tools, NativeScript is best utilized for the development of native iOS and Android mobile apps. Being a JIT-compiled framework, it executes on a JavaScript virtual machine and makes use of V8 engine runtime for iOS and Android platforms. It is based on JavaScript and TypeScript. It allows developers to access native APIs from JavaScript in a direct way.

Key Features:

• Seamless integration with other JavaScript frameworks like Vue, Angular, etc.
• Complete code sharing between web apps and mobile platforms
• Access to the comprehensive feature set
• Delivers a smooth user experience
• Sharing code through a single codebase

Kendo UI:

Kendo UI is a comprehensive mobile development tool that consists of four JavaScript UI libraries that are created natively for Angular, jQuery, React, and Vue. They have their own stable API and theming for a fast, modern, and responsive user interface. It goes by modernized web protocols and works seamlessly with other frameworks. It possesses readily usable user interface components that satisfy your requirements.

Key Features:

• Easy to get started with and implement
• Customizable as per user needs and screen size
• Assured performance results
• Advanced user interface features like data grids etc.
• Inbuilt and custom data binding instructions

Good Read: App Ideas: Top 20 App Development Ideas To Explore In 2022

As We Conclude

When we come across a multitude of mobile app development tools, it is important to ascertain and analyze the parameters that must be considered prior to choosing the tool. Going through factors such as integration components, project deadlines, usability, architecture, price, scalability, budget estimates, upgradation, and application lifecycle is crucial to deciding the tool.

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Our task force is well versed with modern technologies, mobile application development tools, hardware, devices, OS, and platforms to build custom native apps, cross-platform applications, and hybrid apps as per your unique requirements.

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You can hire mobile app developers from our competent mobile app development team, to enjoy optimal standards of quality, performance, and security with the perfect blend of technical proficiency, market intelligence, and business insight.

React out to us for implementing any kind of mobile app development services and we will be happy to help!