Xamarin Review: Cross-Platform Mobile Development from a Business Perspective

We've put together this brief Xamarin review to help you decide if your company should invest in what has become a very popular cross-platform app development solution. It doesn’t matter if you have in-house developers or outsource, as this review will enable you to take more informed decisions when selecting partners to build your enterprise apps.

The Xamarin development platform uses C# programming language, which holds the number four position in the Worldwide Popularity of the Programming Language Index, with an 8% developer share according to Statistics Times.

C# is commonly considered to be more robust than some other languages, particularly Java—the language used for coding native Android apps. One of the reasons for this is that C# uses static type checking, a feature that prevents many errors from ever making it into the production release of an app.

Since C# is a part of the .Net framework, programming in Xamarin works well with various .Net features (LINQ, Lambdas, etc.). The same is true for iOS and Android SDKs, which are accessible via the C# syntaxis.

Whether the language used by the Xamarin development platform matters to you or not, what should awaken your interest is the fact that logical algorithms have only to be coded once in C#, and can then be used to construct identical iOS, Android, and Windows applications.

What makes the resulting apps basically ‘native’ to any platform is that by design code written in Xamarin C# gets compiled down to native components, ensuring high speed and performance.

In this Xamarin review, we're focusing on the software and service components which, as a business leader, you're likely to consider vitally important. That's why we've highlighted the use of a single language and the increased code-sharing capabilities delivered by Xamarin.Forms.

It's also the primary reason why we just have to mention the testing capabilities that become available when developing apps with Xamarin. Nothing can derail cross-platform project development more than inadequate testing, but with Xamarin there's really no chance for bugs and errors to increase your development effort and expenditure.

Along with static type checking, which enables errors to be caught early, a comprehensive support service is available to help developers work through issues:

• The Xamarin Test Cloud allows apps to be tested automatically on around 2,000 real mobile devices. Developers can test apps with fragmentation, CI, and object-based UI testing.
• Using Xamarin Insights, a real-time testing module, developers can monitor app activity and catch errors as they happen.
• Since Xamarin is a part of Microsoft Visual Studio, Visual Studio App Center with its various cloud testing possibilities is also an option.

Especially useful is the ability to select test devices by their market share, ensuring that your app runs perfectly on the devices most likely to be used. This matters even more if your company follows the bring-your-own-device policy.

In an earlier article, we covered Xamarin pros and cons in some detail, so rather than duplicate those in this Xamarin review, a brief list should suffice, outlining issues that could be solved with a little attention in Xamarin’s future versions, namely:

• Extra software overhead that can slow app download and startup times.
• The ability of Xamarin.Forms to work only with relatively standardized user interfaces.
• A tendency for Xamarin-based apps to take up more space than true native apps.
• The fact that Xamarin code can only be used within the platform and cannot be reused for HTML5 or native apps.

You will of course draw your own conclusions as to the weight of these issues for your business, and balance them against the benefits of app development with Xamarin. Most software solutions have their drawbacks, but if you have a good team of developers (or work with a high-quality development company), the ways and means can usually be found to mitigate these challenges.

If you weren't familiar with Xamarin as a business app development suite before reading this review, we hope it's been useful in bringing some of its key features to your attention. There's obviously a lot more to learn about the cross-platform development toolkit than we've been able to share here, but we'll be sure to elaborate on it in future articles.

To actually decide whether a cross-platform development is the best option in each particular situation, a brief review of the Xamarin framework is not enough. To ensure the right choice and development strategy, drop a line to our team of consultants and mobile development experts.