Android framework refers to the set of APIs that enable app developers to build their apps on Android. Android framework makes the job for app developers quick and easy and helps them build their apps for android phones smoothly. It consists of a bunch of designing tools like UPI buttons, image panels, text fields, and other system tools like intents, controls for the phone, media players, etc.
In the last few years, more and more business companies have realized the need for developing apps to help enhance their reach and more diverse brand experience. This helps them connect with their clients all over the world better and more efficiently. Companies all over the world, big and small alike are now turning to build apps for a better reach and improved marketing strategies to help grow your business. And it is easier to interact with the customers through mobile apps.
Millions of people today use mobile phones and have access to the latest technology and the internet. They use various kinds of mobile apps every day. Hence it is quite efficient for businesses to try and reach out to their customers through mobile apps.
Businesses generally choose the Android platform for developing their apps. According to reports, over 2 million apps were available on Google Play, the Android app store. The reason for selecting Android is mainly because of its user-friendly nature and easier accessibility. Android provides lots of different frameworks that help developers and provides them with various useful information to develop their apps.
More and more companies all over the world are choosing the path of building apps to develop their marketing strategies, as the online and digital world provides innumerable opportunities and leads for improved engagement with the clients and realizing their wants and needs.
Why Choose Android for App Development?
Android is probably the most popular Operating System that is installed on smartphones today. A lot of phone companies choose Android to be the preferred OS for their devices.
But the best feature of Android is that it is extremely versatile and useful when it comes to custom mobile app building. A lot of app developers dig Android as it is easy to use, customizable, user friendly, and has a huge community that provides product information to the developers regarding app building. It also has many tools that increase app efficiency and makes it easier to perform any task.
This makes Android the best possible platform to select as far as app development is concerned. Developers are always looking for ways to easily and effortlessly engineer their apps. And with all the incentives that are provided by Android, what better option is there to select if not this platform?
Top 15 Best Android Framework for App Development
There are a large number of Android frameworks that are available for app development. Choosing the perfect one may not turn out to be an easy task. This article provides a comprehensive list of 15 such Android frameworks that can be used by developers to create their apps.
1. Ionic Android Framework
Ionic framework was first created in 2012 and is certified by MIT. It is considered to be one of the most popular frameworks, used for developing HTML5 based mobile apps. It is a cross-platform development framework and is free and open-sourced. It permits developers to use modern coding languages and technologies. Few of these being, HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
This is a framework specially designed for developers whose areas of specialization are apps that are hybrid and interactive. The structure of any Ionic Framework based app is quite direct and straightforward. It has an extensive and comprehensive set of tools and elements, gestures, software mechanisms, and animations that allows developers to engineer top quality mobile and desktop apps from a specific codebase.
This framework also amalgamates quite easily with other Android libraries and makes use of functions like Bluetooth, fingerprint authentication, etc.. This makes app development faster, easier, more approachable, and entertaining. It also uses a Command Line Interface or CLI to create apps that appear to have an extraordinary display, offers performance using emulators, logging, and live to reload. It also uses a plug-in known as Cordova and permits developers to access various other components of the framework like camera, GPS, etc. Quite efficiently and effortlessly.
Ionic Android Framework is great for web development companies and small start-ups to use for their app development. By now it has a user coverage of 4-5 million app developers. They have used this framework to create more than 4 million web apps, for growing startup companies, restaurants, pharmaceutical companies, and many more.
2. Unity
Unity is a framework developed by Unity Technologies. This framework is available in both free and professional versions. It is the Android framework that is best known for the development of 2D and 3D multi-platform, alternate and virtual reality games, as well as other simulations.
Unity incorporates the use of C# and UnityScript which is kind of like JavaScript and you can use these languages to create your apps. It is a cross-platform framework that allows game developers to ship their games to multiple platforms like iOS, Xbox, Playstation, Web, Windows, and many more.
Unity is typically a physics engine and it controls the behavior of the game like lighting, momentum, and graphic elements. It consists of a built-in editor that authorizes you to edit and manage images and animation from the “Animator” window. It is an easy to use platform that enables game developers to create entertaining and interactive games and win the hearts of their audience. In 2018, half of the interactive games and about 60% of the augmented and virtual reality games were created using Unity. This platform is a great option for developers who want to create an interactive experience for their audience.
3. Kotlin
This is the brainchild of JetBrains and is a modern programming language framework for Android that incorporates the features of functional and object-oriented programming. It runs on Java Virtual Machine and is 100% compatible with Javascript. It was declared by Google as an official IDE (Integrated Development Environment) in 2017. Kotlin was ranked the fourth most popular programming language for Android, so much so that many programmers adopted it as the primary language for Android.
Applications that are developed with this particular framework run as fast as the one created with Java because they share a similar structure of bytecodes.
Since its launch, Kotlin has created a name for itself as a highly intuitive Android framework for app development.
4. Sencha Touch
Sencha Touch This is one of the best Android development frameworks by Android’s development community. It is an enterprise first framework and is typically built for native mobile app development. It is based on the languages JavaScript and HTML5. It comes with 50 built-in UI components and native themes, allowing the developers to create attractive and interesting apps.
It provides high flexibility, compatibility, response to touch, and fast execution. It also has an extensive collection of themes, enriched UI, an integrated MVC system, and a vast date package. Because of these features many companies today are adopting Sencha Touch to build their apps.
5. The App Builder
The App Builder framework is powered by HTML5 as its main programming language. It supports a codeless user interface which explains that the users do not necessarily have to know coding in any language to create an app. It also has a drag-and-drop interface that enables users to create apps at a fast pace. It also comes with pre-built blocks that include features like feedback, content updates, polls, pushes notifications, etc.
The App Builder allows its users to directly submit their apps to Google Play and includes interaction through social networks. The app builder is generally used by businesses to reduce expenses.
6. SproutCore
It is an open-source framework that uses JavaScript. It is mainly used to develop super-fast applications that include advanced features. This framework was developed by Apple. This HTML5 driven framework uses an MVC design that authorizes the optimization of performance and application scalability.
SproutCore incorporates a comprehensive set of tools like routing, UI components, testing, and deployment tools and has more than 50,000 items in its toolset. It has pretty much become the top-notch framework for Android app development.
7. ReactNative
ReactNative is an open source app development framework that is supported by Facebook. It is based on React, which is a JS library for web solutions. Most of its APIs are cross-platform which enables the developers to write the code only once to run it anywhere. This is the main contributor to time reduction and cutting expenses.
It provides a special option called hot-reload which allows the developers to link files that are updated while keeping the current state of the app. The developer community of this framework has been growing at a fast pace.
Today, around 1600 developers use this particular framework. Companies like Tesla, Airbnb, Instagram, etc., use ReactNative as the framework for their app development.
8. Xamarin
Xamarin is owned by Microsoft Corporation and has been named one of the top Android app development frameworks. Using Microsoft’s cloud testing service, the apps built using this framework can be tested on several devices. It also has a code-sharing feature.
It offers a set of advanced tools that help developers build native apps for several mobile platforms that share a C# codebase. It is a favorite among developers as it reduces coding time and bugs in the process of app development.
It is the oldest Android cross-platform framework and is used by 1.4 million developers across 120 countries all over the globe. It became a part of Visual Studio IDE and the number of developers using this framework increased a lot over the years. Xamarin is now being incorporated by multiple countries all across the globe.
9. Flutter
This framework is essentially designed and maintained by Google. It is known for being a multi-platform mobile app SDK and is used for building a variety of applications. But this is different from other Android app frameworks. It makes the cross-platform process much simpler and incorporates the Dart language. It is the best choice for hybrid app development.
Flutter uses a 2D rendering engine called Skia for visuals. It also has a solid testing framework and permits developers to carry out UI, unit, and functionality tests. Flutter has been a favorite choice among developers for a long time now.
10. PhoneGap
PhoneGap is an open-source Android app framework that is supported by Adobe and Apache. It enables developers to engineer apps using web development languages like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
PhoneGap is generally used for the development of hybrid applications and provides good performance as well as the liberty to work without any device-specific limitation.
It is also used for developing apps for several other OSs other than just Android. The latest version comes with a built-in Cordova WebView for assimilating its code in other bigger native apps. It also has an extensive plug-in library and third-party software mechanisms. All these features set it out from other Android app development frameworks.
11. NativeScript
NativeScript is an open-source framework that is mainly used for developing hybrid apps. It also allows developers to create various apps using Vue, TypeScript, and Angular. This Android framework is backed by the Bulgarian software company Telerik.
It includes a wide array of plug-ins like Gradle and CocoaPods that can be reused from directly in the projects with NativeScript.
This framework is the best for developers who are well versed in languages like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS as well as the Native UI markup. It offers UIs with the main platform’s offering engine which leads to native-like UIs and great performance.
12. Appcelerator Titanium
It is an open-source platform for the development of native applications with only one JavaScript codebase. It allows the creation of multi-platform mobile applications using about 60-90% of the existing code.
This framework incorporates a JavaScript programming language to promise the high performance of the apps which are developed using this.
Appcelerator Titanium is also a great option for developing games. The mobile apps that are built using this particular framework use hardware-specific features like Android menu buttons, OS centric controls, and platform-appropriate notifications.
Other than these, it also provides many other effective features like automated testing on mobiles, monitoring of applications, and regulation of performance.
13. jQuery Mobile
jQuery Mobile is a cross-platform development framework based on HTML-5. It provides the easiest ways to develop Android-based apps and web applications. It is used to create apps that run on all devices and platforms like smartphones, tablets, and desktop platforms.
It also provides added support through a custom JS file and structure specific style sheets for creation. It includes plugins like pop up boxes, image sliders, content sliders, etc. This makes the apps simpler, more user friendly, and interactive.
14. Cordova
Cordova is another open-source Android-based framework and enables app developers to build multi-platform apps. This is done by using a single code base like Appcelerator Titanium. This is a hybrid framework as well that ensures app development which is based on normal web technologies like JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. Cordova also acts as a link between mobile and web applications.
15. Framework7
Framework7 is probably the newest and fully featured application development framework. This is mainly designed for Android, iOS, and desktop apps. It is an HTML framework that is open-sourced and needs an HTML layout and CSS or JS files to run it. Framework7 is good for developers who are well versed in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Framework7 mainly highlights the simplicity and generates the optimum experience for app development.
Conclusion
The above examples are only some of the few Android frameworks that have been listed. Various other frameworks can be used to develop applications on this platform. These frameworks provide the developers with some information and incentives to effortlessly create apps that are attractive, visually appealing, user friendly, and interactive.
They make it so much easier for developers to carry out the function of android app development. And in today’s world where application development for mobiles has seen such a boom among companies, big or small alike, these frameworks only carve out opportunities for the developers to create more and more apps as demand rises.
The app store and in this case the Google Play Store contains a plethora of apps and many more and new ones are coming up each day. With the development of these frameworks, it is only becoming easier for developers to build new and better apps every day. These frameworks make the process of app development way less time consuming and also reduces the costs making them an attractive option for app developers all across the globe.
Ridhi Pethani
Ridhi Pethani is Sr. Android Application Developer at USS LLC. She likes to share Android app development tips & tricks.