Given the widespread use of the Android operating system running on today’s mobile platforms, Android development has become an excellent choice for enhancing a developer’s skill set. Fortunately for the seasoned .NET developer, learning Android development is not a huge stretch. While there are several avenues for .NET developers looking to break into the world of Android application development, currently the most popular options are made possible by utilizing any of the following technologies:

• Xamarin platform
• PhoneGap framework
• Native Android development via Java

The Xamarin platform provides the ability for .NET developers to harness their C# knowledge, create cross-platform (iOS, Android and Windows) applications, reuse existing code and perform development within Visual Studio. The greatest advantage of utilizing the Xamarin platform is a reduced time to market while supporting multiple platforms. However, due to the additional Xamarin runtime contained within the final application, the footprint tends to be larger — this could be an issue, especially for some Android devices.

The PhoneGap framework is another option for writing Android applications.  The PhoneGap framework is a client-side web application comprised of HTML5 pages using CSS and JavaScript. While it’s possible to utilize Visual Studio to code and test the application, ultimately the code will need to be packaged into a real Android application. This will require an IDE such as Eclipse or JetBrains’s IntelliJ IDEA.  The PhoneGap Build service may also be used to accomplish the application packaging. While the PhoneGap approach will provide multiple platform support, the application type should be given consideration because the PhoneGap framework relies on JavaScript, which may have performance limitations compared with native Java Android applications.

While Xamarin and PhoneGap certainly have their merits for creating Android applications, native Android development via Java provides an opportunity to take advantage of a device’s full feature set with fast execution, all wrapped in a smaller package for more rapid downloads. For a complete discussion of the various mobile platforms’ benefits/drawbacks, please read Eric Svendsen’s excellent article where he provides plenty of depth on the issue.  For now, the remaining content of this post will be to provide valuable insight for .NET developers looking to expand their language set by utilizing native Java for Android development. Read More…