What is PhoneGap?
PhoneGap is an open-source mobile development framework originally created by Nitobi and was purchased by Adobe Systems in 2011. PhoneGap enables programmers to build cross-platform native mobile applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
PhoneGap’s relation to Apache Cordova
In 2011, PhoneGap codebase was donated to Apache Software Foundation (ASF) as a project incubating at Apache. PhoneGap became a distribution of Apache Cordova under the Apache License, Version 2.0. This ensures PhoneGap’s proper stewardship, this can also help big organizations contribute to the development of the project with ease. With this, PhoneGap remains free and open-source. Those who wanted to be contributors of the project, this site is the place to look for.
For those who are still confused between PhoneGap and Apache Cordova may refer on the blog released by PhoneGap. This blog described Apache Cordova as the “engine that powers PhoneGap, similar as to how Webkit is the engine that powers Chrome and Safari”.
Mobile Devices
- iPhone/iPhone 3G
- iPhone 3GS and newer
- Android
- Blackberry OS 6.0+
- Blackberry 10
- Windows Phone 8
- Ubuntu
- Firefox OS
Last year, PhoneGap was able to make additional support for iOS:
- iOS 8 and 64-bit support in the core and plugins
- iPhone 6/6+ device support
- Xcode 6 support in iOS-sim and iOS-deploy tools
- WKWebView support (still in alpha-testing)
APIs
- Accelerometer
- Camera
- Compass
- Contacts
- File
- Geolocation
- Media
- Network
- Notification (Alert)
- Notification (Sound)
- Notification (Vibration)
- Storage
Awards
PhoneGap has been a popular tool among developers and has won various awards. It won the Dr. Dobb’s Jolt Awards in 2012 as the best mobile development tool. In the same year, PhoneGap also received the 2012 Technology of the Year Award from IDG’s InfoWorld Test Center. It also has been a constant winner in InfoWorld’s BOSSIE Awards from 2012 to 2014 under the Application Development Tools category.
Big companies such as Zynga, Facebook, Wikipedia, SAP, Untappd and Salesforce.com have been using PhoneGap for their mobile apps. For those who wants to know more and use PhoneGap, click here.