Amar E. Chakravarthi’s Blog

I finally had a few hours tonight to wrap up my study on comparison of mobile application platforms that allow developing cross-device applications easily using familiar technologies. Here is a quick braindump of all the links and resources I went through -

Rhomobile

• Google TechTalk on Rhodes – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2pztOky_L0

http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/

http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/07/cross-platform-mobile-apps-with-rhomobile/

http://www.rhohub.com/

Notes

• Dual licensed. Though license is cheap – $500
• Code is written in html and ruby  (though a python interpreter would have gotten more smileys from me   )
• interesting approach – uses the native browser component of the cellphone itself to render the html and a web server to host the app – so javascript support will be random based on the phone browser support
• sqlite support
• Supports iphone, windows mobile, blackberry, android, Symbisn etc
• Basically rhodes runs a mini ruby web server and an html rendering engine all in 2.3MB
• Supports native capabilities like camera, gps, PIM data, SMS etc

Phone gap

http://phonegap.com/

Check the video on their site

Notes

• Fully open source and free
• Code written in html+javascript
• Supports iphone, blackberry and android

Pyxis Mobile

http://pyxismobile.com/platform/technical-overview/

• Build one configuration and deploy to BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile all at the same time
• Skinning, scripting, localized languages, complex workflow management, push, hotkeys, mapping & LBS, camera support, signature capture, GUI calendar, disambiguation, hotkeys, and much more

Titanium Mobile

http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile/

• This is an upcoming mobile platform by appcelerator
• I am quite familiar with the company since we already use their Titanium Desktop and have two fulltime contributors to it

Quick Connect

http://quickconnect.sourceforge.net/

Comparison sites and articles

http://blog.twinapex.fi/2009/09/30/cross-platform-mobile-application-development-and-payment/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_development

http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/building-native-mobile-applications-open-source-mobile-platforms-735

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/iphone-development-tools-work-way-you-do-309

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10202598-94.html

http://www.slideshare.net/inouemak/rhodes-and-phone-gap

http://techboise.com/multi-platform-mobile-development-and-quickconnect

Some others

http://quickconnect.pbworks.com/

http://www.mobinex.biz/smartface-platform.html

http://qt.nokia.com/products/qt-for-mobile-platforms

http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/