3 Best Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools

There was a time when porting apps between the two major Smartphone operating systems i.e. Apple’s iOS and Android was a tough and lengthy process because of the fact that their development environments that are Xcode and Eclipse were very different. Apart from that, their programming languages, Objective C and Java also differ a lot. Another thing that makes porting tough is the fact that there has always been the fragmentation of devices and screen resolutions on Android devices to deal with. All these things combined made porting apps between the two OS quite time consuming and irksome.

But now – thanks to all the latest cross platform development environments – developing apps for both iOS and Android simultaneously has become quite an easy and quick process. We have for you some of the Best Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools available out there. So check them out and pick the one you like the best.

Unity 3D

As the name suggests, this app is particularly useful for developing 3D apps/games. It is one of the most popular and widely used tools for 3D app development. It allows building apps for iOS, Android and the web. This tool is an intuitive one that provides more visual aid for reducing the amount of coding you are required to do and for creating apps. Instead of writing lengthy codes, it allows making connections between objects simply by dragging them from one to another. It lets you view graphical representations of objects in 3D.

Although, this tool requires some practice but once you get used to it, it becomes quite handy to use. For coding, you can select from any of the following scripting languages: JavaScript, C# or Boo. The usual language is JavaScript, so people who already know it won’t have to learn anything new.

Purchasing a license is required and costs $400 per platform. But unless you purchase the Pro version of Unity 3D, priced at $1500 per platform, a Unity splash screen will appear whenever the app loads.

Corona SDK

Corona SDK is quite easy to use. It is also based on the Lua scripting language, which is quite easy to understand and learn. It allows you to easily and quickly build an app in the text editor and run it on the inbuilt Android simulator. Game developers can take advantage of the Box2D physics library.

Corona, unlike the other two tools mentioned here, requires your uploading your project to their server for compiling it into a usable app, while other apps let you develop on your PC.

A free unlimited trial of this tool is available, but you have to pay $199/license/year for publishing to the App Store and Android marketplace.

Gideros

This one allows building apps for both iOS and Android easily and quickly. It has a user friendly and integrated development environment (IDE). It boasts an inbuilt player that lets you test your apps on your PC at various different screen sizes/resolutions. One of its best features is that it can be installed onto your iOS or Android device and you can create the app to it wirelessly. This allows modifying and testing your app instantly.

Gideros is also perfect for game developers as it boasts an implementation of the Box2D physics engine.

This tool is based on the easy to learn Lua scripting language. You can use it free of cost, but it would apply its splash screen to your apps. You can pay $149/year for removing splash screen from your apps.