Xamarin Platform Reviews

Mobile applications for our music streaming service. 

• A much larger portion of shared codebase
• Better usage of software patterns
• Better knowledge sharing among team members
• More streamlined, standardized development and testing processes.

• Cross-platform development saves time and provides consistencies. 
• C#: Simply the language. 
• Native UI: No compromises needed for final users. 
• MVVM: Clear concerns separation. 

The performance needs improvement, especially the dev tools, and also the ultimate output of the mobile applications.

Five years ago, we switched from native development to a cross-platform solution, we have never regretted this move.

The main reason for use is productivity, time gain, and code reuse.

The company that I work for develops white label applications. Xamarin makes it easy to create white label applications for all platforms.

Easy to develop applications for all platforms, including Mac and Windows.

Needs to improve the customization of its screens.

Xamarin provides two ways to build great native apps: Xamarin Native and Xamarin.Forms. We used Xamarin.Forms on many of our solution platforms, but it also can be used on complicated scenarios (with a lot of business logic code), like product configurator apps.

Xamarin.Forms exposes a complete cross-platform UI toolkit for .NET developers. In our case, we used existing C#/.NET knowledge to build native iOS and Android. The advantage is that a single team can target multiple platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows) on a shared C# codebase.

A very good feature of this solution is Xamarin.Forms, which is best for specific types of mobile apps. Based on my experience (and also Microsoft's recommendation), the best scenario for use would be for:

• Data entry apps.
• Apps requiring very little platform-specific functionality.
• Apps where code sharing is more important than custom UI.

For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer.

Our primary use case is to build high performance mobile applications and bring about maximum code sharing between different platforms.

We have a lot of applications, which cater to different types of end users. These have really helped us in creating a connected system, which has enhanced the productivity and usefulness of different products.

• This is close to the native app experience. 
• It brings about good code sharing strategies, which bring down cost and maintenance efforts.

• The android application compilation time needs to be reduced. 
• The deployment package sizes need to be looked into.

We use this framework when the requirements for mobile application development include different platforms.

I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily.

They need to improve performance, especially for the Android platform. Also, some controls are missing in the Xamarin framework when compared to native controls; for example, the checkbox control.

UI Test - Xamarin Calabash framework with c# front end, Testing support on both Local (No execution hours limitation) and Testcloud (limited hours based on subscription)

Xamarin.UI is an automation library, through which you can automate any android and iOS application, without any concern of the language used to create that application. You can test any native (created on native language for example, for android java and for iOS object c) and hybrid application ( created on C#) with Xamarin.UI test.

Easy set up Automation framework with Specflow (BDD Approach) and NUnit. Same code works for both android and iOS (If locators are same). Even though if locators different we can use the same code with different locators (Using conditions). It helped to automate iOs and android apps for our client within show time which helped them for regression testing (daily basis) so manual effort reduced.   

We develop Model X for sports and tourism and for Android and iPhone sport.

We have some projects on the sport-level worldwide, not only in Europe. One of our examining apps is the GDPR tool. We want to expand the GDPR tool to mobile apps for local sports and in other non-profit organizations. That's the reason why we want to develop mobile apps in the Xamarin Platform, so we can connect local organizations to sports, tourism, and non-profit organizations. That's our focus.

The Cross Platform is a great asset. We develop and then at the end, we publish other mobile apps to Android and to iPhone platforms. We develop stand-alone apps for Android and the iPhone and then transfer our development to Xamarin because it's much easier.

We need to think about partnering with IBM because there is a need for a big data partner; someone who has machine learning and can help us connect the app to big data.

The stability of this solution is fine.

I have not used tech support too much. In the beginning, we had some issues, but the support resolved the issues quickly.

The initial setup was easy.

From a developer's point of view, with the help of Xamarin, we can focus on the functionality, rather than spending time coding differently for iOS and Android.

For me, Xamarin becomes more valuable when it comes to forms. Xamarin has come up with a lot of features over time. I love XAML most. Recently, Xamarin has added a lot of features such as Effects, Behaviors, Triggers, etc. This has made the UI user-friendly, lively, and attractive.

I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues.

When I started with Xamarin, I used to face a lot of stability issues. Its memory management was very poor. But now, I don’t face any kind of issue related to stability.

Scalability depends on how one designs his architecture.

Initially, our team used the technical support and it was good. But now, you can find most solutions on blogs, Stack Overflow, etc.

I was into Web development using .NET and C#. I wanted to try mobile applications and, with my knowledge of C#, that is what pulled me towards Xamarin.

Initial setup is straightforward. Microsoft has combined Visual Studio and Xamarin Studio so you just need to download the installer and follows the instructions. That’s it.

For personal use, the Community Edition is free. If someone is a freelancer he can easily use the free edition.

I have been using this solution for the past three years. I have developed many iOS and Android apps using Xamarin classic as well as Xamarin.Forms. In a nutshell, I would say that for those who love C# and mobile, this platform is a blessing.

I would like to rate this solution as a seven out of 10. The reason for this rating is that this solution is definitely better than others. We can share a lot of code among the different platforms and can also use our C# skills, which we love. In addition, we can get native UI, native API access, and native performance. Still, there are a lot of areas in which Microsoft can make it better. And I must say, they are working on it.

Architecture is the key point of every successful project and this is applicable to Xamarin as well. When implementing any project, one needs to be sure the app is following all the design patterns like MVVM, dependency injection, etc.