Guide To Find The Best Stack For Mobile App Development In 2020

Last Updated on: July 5, 2022

App development is such a mighty mission.

Executing an app idea, engaging target users, and driving revenue is no easy feat. Mobile apps are more in demand than ever before especially after the smartphone revolution. There are more than 5 million apps to choose from, making sure your app stands out can be difficult especially if you are not sure about the best stack for mobile app development.

The most important ingredient in building a successful mobile app is the mobile app tech stack. Using the best tech stack for mobile app development can ensure a smooth, functional, and efficient application. It can help businesses save on development costs, focus on revenue-generation, and hire the best mobile app development agencies. It can most definitely, provide excellent customer experience, and ensure customer retention.

Finding the Best Stack for Mobile App Development in 2020

If you play a game with an aim to win, you most likely will taste the flavor of success. If you know the defining traits of your product and have the vision for strategic implementation, you can architect a powerful and scalable app. Let’s dive deeper and look at the best stack for mobile app development in 2020 that are popularly chosen to create a top-quality app.

Native App Development

Be it a startup growth companies, or business conglomerates, native app development is popular with both. With heavy inclination on performance, security, and responsiveness, native apps prove to be a vital asset for productivity. Let’s start off by getting to know which tech stacks are in limelight today.

Android App Technology Stack

For android app development, Kotlin and Java are always high in demand, with the preferred toolset as Android Studio and Android SDK as the Software Development Kit.

Java

When it comes to the Android App technology stack, Java is bound to top the list. An open source, class-based OOPS language with rich libraries and tools, Java makes it easy to build top-quality apps. 

Some reasons why Java is a developer’s top choice for android app development are:

• Highly secured
• A vast set of core features
• Portable and scalable
• Automatic memory management
• Multi-threading capability
• Faster build process
• Huge open-source support ecosystem

Java is a go-to language when it comes to building robust, scalable, and complex applications. 

Kotlin

Kotlin is pretty new, and came around in 2011. The language can be deemed as a solution that blends simplicity and power. Kotlin is a major part of the Android app technology stack because it speeds up day-to-day development tasks. 

On 7th May 2019, Google announced that Kotlin is officially the preferred language for android app development. Google also seems to be taking a step away from the Java ecosystem with its recent interest in Flutter and Fuchsia OS. So, if you are building an Android application, Kotlin should be your preferred android app technology stack too!

Here are the top benefits of using Kotlin over Java:

• Language is concise and safer
• Open-source
• Extension functions
• Supports full Java interoperability
• Lazy-loading feature
• Multi-platform
• Helps to reduce bugs and errors in the code
• Active community

Here are the top 4 startups that rewrote their Android Apps from Java to Kotlin. Do you want to build an android application in Kotlin?

iOS Development Stack

Objective C and Swift- these two languages rule the iOS development stack. Highly sought-after toolsets are Apple’s Xcode and JetBrains’ AppCode with iOS SDK as the Software Development Kit.

Objective C

Based on C, Objective C is a High-Level Language (HLL) that was predominantly a part of the iOS Development Stack before the inception of Swift by several mobile app development companies for iOS app development for iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, iPad, and more devices. The notable reasons for choosing Objective C for iOS development stack includes-

• Highly approved, thoroughly tested language
• Easy and better use of private APIs
• Compatibility with C++
• Plenty of third-party libraries
• Massive community support
• Simplicity and access to Apple technologies

Objective C is still fairly popular, but after the arrival of Swift, the dynamics have changed. As long as Apple favors Objective C, there will always be a market for it.

Swift

Swift is consistently being used for building high-performance iOS and OS X applications. This young-age tech is becoming a highly-rated iOS development stack among iOS app developers. Here are the top aspects of Swift that are making it ‘trend’:

• Modern and feature-rich programming language
• Operates faster- better performance
• Easy code readability and maintenance
• Safe and less prone to errors
• Compatible with Objective C
• Works with Apple’s Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks
• Dynamic libraries
• Active community support

You can easily hire dedicated Swift developers for your iOS development needs.

Popular Native Apps of 2020 that we love and use regularly based on the best stacks for mobile app development in iOS and Android include Pokemon Go, Instagram, Lyft, Google Maps. 

Fret Zealot – A Native App Development for both iOS and Android platforms by Systango.

Hybrid App Development

Hybrid app development is done to ensure a faster speed of app development and achieve similar UX experience as that of native app development. Hybrid apps are built using web technologies like JS, HTML, CSS. These are then hosted inside a native app that uses Webview of a mobile platform.

That being said, let’s now talk about the most commonly and frequently used frameworks to fuel the hybrid application process in 2020 – Adobe PhoneGap & Apache Cordova, Sencha Touch 2, and Ionic.

Adobe PhoneGap & Apache Cordova

Adobe PhoneGap & Apache Cordova is a web-based framework used for hybrid app development across multiple platforms using HTML. These tools can help us build applications that are native to iOS, Android, Windows, or other operating systems.

Sencha Touch 2

Sencha Touch 2 is an efficient framework that combines an array of features from technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and ExtJS. If you want to build a dynamic app that works across various operating systems like  Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry, and more. Sencha Touch 2 is the ultimate choice for building highly complex hybrid applications with an interactive UI!

Ionic

Ionic is an open-source, 100% free, angular-based framework using which we can build powerful and versatile applications with amazing look and feel. This tool helps us employ native functionalities within an app to run on different OS and devices. Ionic allows you to build an application once, and deploy it Android, iOS, and Windows devices. The key benefits of using Ionic for hybrid app development include-

• Supports rich and robust development
• Quick development- don’t need to code from start
• Developed using the following familiar languages: HTML, CSS, and JS
• Several ready-made plugins
• AngularJS compatible
• Engaged community
• Lower development cost and maintenance cost

Some popular Hybrid App developments are done using Sencha Touch 2, Phonegap, and Ionic like Yelp, BaseCamp, Untappd.

Cross-Platform App Development

Cross-platform app development allows developers to build or code a single mobile app and use it across the various operating systems. Javascript, an intermediate language, is used for such development.

Building Cross-platform applications opens up ways to share common code (around 80%-90%) across different target platforms, thus saving development time, efforts, and costs. Two technologies that are largely used to mimic the functionality of native apps- React Native and Xamarin:

React Native & Typescript or Javascript

Developed by developers at Facebook, React Native is a wildly popular Open source JS framework, much loved for its cross-platform app development capabilities that are supportable by both Android and iOS. This new-gen React Native makes it easier to craft a class user interface and deliver a seamless user experience, which altogether contributes to driving profits and boosting brand value.

There are numerous reasons to hire React Native Developer for building multi-platform applications, but top-most perks can be listed as-

• Cross-platform compatibility
• Faster and cost-effective development
• High performance- as fast as native
• Live reload feature
• Third-party plugin compatibility
• Highly responsive and fluid UI

Brands like Walmart, Bloomberg, Facebook, etc use React Native for their cross-platform app development needs. We are currently working with Strat-o-Matic to build applications for all of their games on React Native.

Xamarin and C#

Xamarin is a top-rated tool. It is used for native cross-platform app development. Using this tool, app developers can code in languages like C and C# and compile it with native iOS UI or Android UI. Here are the top benefits that whirl around Xamarin –

• Allows to utilise MVC or MVVVM design patterns
• Native user interface
• High-performing and productive code
• TestCloud to test the apps automatically
• Shared app logic
• Supports Android, iOS and Windows platforms
• Fewer bugs

Xamarin is now emerging as a major player in cross-platform applications. Reflectly, Birch Finance are some famous apps built using Xamarin.

Summing it up

To wrap up, we can simply say that choose the best stack for mobile app development that best aligns with the need and vision of your project. Your informed choice will help you succeed in the web world and beyond. Some other important factors in app development are choosing the right mobile app development approach, understanding the cost of app development, and hiring the right tech partner.
We at Systango are the indisputable leader of our craft- we offer the best mobile app development services to help businesses transform into brands with significant ease. We work with the best stack for mobile app development and ensure on-time delivery. If you want to avail of the assistance of the meticulous developers or need a consultation to choose a fitting tech stack, you can contact us anytime!