Evaluating alternatives to native development for handheld computers

Selecting a suitable mobile application development framework is challenging. Multiple frameworks exist with respective strengths and weaknesses, and evaluations comparing the different frameworks are lacking. Each company and developer has its own demands and preferences, thereof, no single development framework poses as a suitable solution for every situation. This study is aimed at contributing to the current foundation of research by examining Android application development for handheld computers. By selecting promising cross-platform frameworks and comparing these with the native development framework for Android this study shows that cross-platform development frameworks can provide the tools required to build sufficient applications for handheld computers. This is particularly relevant for the developers affected by the termination of support for Windows Mobile. The findings of this study show that the frameworks Flutter and Xamarin both pose as promising alternatives to native development