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Sencha Touch VS NativeScript

Compare Sencha Touch VS NativeScript and see what are their differences

Sencha Touch logo Sencha Touch

The leading mobile web app framework based on HTML5 for amazing mobile apps.

NativeScript logo NativeScript

Build truly native apps with JavaScript
  • Sencha Touch Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • NativeScript Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

Sencha Touch features and specs

  • Rich UI Components
    Sencha Touch provides a wide range of pre-built, customizable UI components like carousels, lists, and forms, which enable developers to create visually appealing and functional mobile applications with ease.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Sencha Touch is designed to work across various mobile platforms, allowing developers to build applications that run on iOS, Android, and other devices from a single codebase.
  • MVC Architecture
    Sencha Touch follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, which helps in organizing code and improving maintainability by separating the application logic from the user interface.
  • Community and Support
    Sencha Touch has an active community and provides extensive documentation, forums, and support resources which are beneficial for both new and experienced developers working with the framework.

Possible disadvantages of Sencha Touch

  • Performance Issues
    Applications built with Sencha Touch can sometimes experience performance issues, especially on older or lower-powered devices, due to its heavy reliance on JavaScript.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Sencha Touch has a steep learning curve, particularly for developers who are new to the framework or JavaScript/HTML5 development in general, due to its extensive feature set and complex API.
  • Licensing Costs
    Sencha Touch is not open source and requires a commercial license for certain features, which can be a significant cost factor for startups or small businesses.
  • Limited Native Features Access
    While Sencha Touch allows for cross-platform development, accessing device-specific native features might require additional plugins or integrations, which can complicate the development process.

NativeScript features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Development
    NativeScript allows developers to write code once and deploy it across multiple platforms, including iOS and Android, which saves time and resources.
  • Native Performance
    Since NativeScript directly uses native components, it delivers high performance comparable to native applications, unlike some other cross-platform solutions.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    NativeScript offers a rich ecosystem of plugins and modules, making it easy to extend functionalities and integrate with various services.
  • Single Codebase
    Maintaining a single codebase for both iOS and Android reduces development and debugging efforts.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, NativeScript has strong community support and continuous improvements driven by developers around the world.
  • Access to Native APIs
    NativeScript allows direct access to native APIs, giving developers more flexibility and control over platform-specific features.

Possible disadvantages of NativeScript

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The framework requires an understanding of native development concepts, which can be complex for new developers or those not familiar with mobile development.
  • Lack of Third-Party Components
    Compared to more mature frameworks, NativeScript has a limited number of third-party libraries and UI components available.
  • Performance Overhead
    Despite high performance, there is still some overhead compared to fully native applications due to the abstraction layer.
  • Limited Community Support
    Although the community is growing, it is still smaller compared to mainstream frameworks like React Native or Flutter, which might result in slower issue resolution and fewer resources.
  • Maintenance and Updates
    Keeping the framework and its plugins up to date with the latest iOS and Android releases can be challenging and resource-intensive.

Sencha Touch videos

Phone Gap and Sencha Touch

NativeScript videos

NativeScript VS React Native 2019 | performance | community | plugins

More videos:

  • Review - Which one is best for you? Flutter, React Native, Ionic or NativeScript?
  • Review - 7 Things to Know When Learning NativeScript

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Sencha Touch and NativeScript)
Development Tools
21 21%
79% 79
JavaScript Framework
24 24%
76% 76
Developer Tools
25 25%
75% 75
Javascript UI Libraries
21 21%
79% 79

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Sencha Touch and NativeScript

Sencha Touch Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
Sencha Touch has now been merged with Sencha Ext JS. Sencha Ext JS has been one of the most effective JavaScript frameworks to create cross-platform mobile applications. It consists of well tested and good performance UI components like pivot grid, trees, lists, forms, HTML5 calendar, D3 adapters, etc. that help in getting the best of results.
Source: medium.com
9 Top JavaScript Mobile Frameworks To Know In 2020
Sencha Touch(similar to Ext JS) is said to be the only framework that offers optimal solutions to developers create fast and impressive mobile applications that work on Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and more. It comes with lots of creative and useful components that work efficiently on all types of mobile applications. Here is a glimpse of the features.

NativeScript Reviews

Top 10 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform App Development
With the framework, developers get the option to craft a completely native experience even without interfering with the user interface. Those who are familiar with JavaScript can leverage NativeScript to its fullest.
Top 5 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform Development
NativeScript is a powerful framework that empowers developers to build Web, iOS, Android, and Vision Pro apps on a single codebase. If you’re comfortable with web development, especially Angular or VueJS, you’ll find NativeScript accessible.
Source: www.miquido.com
10 Best Open Source Firebase Alternatives
The native apps you develop use the richness of the mobile platform and offer the performance you need for mobile devices. NativeScript uses native APIs and controls to render, allowing you to create more sophisticated apps compared to using a hybrid approach.
10 Best Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps 
NativeScript doesn’t require Angular or Vue.js but works better when used together for cross-platform app development. This runtime framework implements JavaScript, its superset TypeScript and Angular Native, and can render a variety of apps, be they gaming, streaming, geolocation, or chat apps. The user interface is in XML and CSS. A single, reusable codebase can be applied...
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
NativeScript is an open-source, cross-platform, free mobile framework that assists in the creation of a truly native Android and iOS mobile apps. These apps can be built with JavaScript, Angular, Vue.js or TypeScript. Programming using NativeScript reduces the development time and lines of code, to a large extent. Many organizations globally have been implementing it because...
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, NativeScript seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 20 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Sencha Touch mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Sencha Touch yet. Tracking of Sencha Touch recommendations started around Mar 2021.

NativeScript mentions (20)

  • What are JavaScript Engines?
    NativeScript is a good example of a runtime built specifically for cross-platform native mobile application development built using JavaScript. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Gio UI – Cross-Platform GUI for Go
    A long time ago, nativescript[1] seemed to be a strong alternative to reactnative. Is that still the case? [1] https://nativescript.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Ask HN: Flutter or React Native?
    I'm curious about this topic as well. I would also add NativeScript[1] in the comparison. [1] https://nativescript.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Svelte Native: The Svelte Mobile Development Experience
    This is not so much the Svelte equivalent of React Native as it is just NativeScript (https://nativescript.org). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Mobile App Development for both iOS and Andriod
    There is also https://nativescript.org/ which would allow you to use Vue (or several other frameworks) to build a mobile app. Used it myself a while back for an iPad app using Vue 2 and it was pretty straightforward. It seems like there have been quite a few improvements since then so might be worth a look. Source: about 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Sencha Touch and NativeScript, you can also consider the following products

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

Appcelerator Titanium - Appcelerator Open Source

Ionic - Ionic is a cross-platform mobile development stack for building performant apps on all platforms with open web technologies.

Ionic Framework - A front-end SDK to develop applications with HTML5 , CSS3 and JavaScript.

Apache Cordova - Platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Onsen UI - HTML5 Hybrid Mobile App UI Framework - work with Angular, React, Vue, Meteor & pure JavaScript. Material & Flat design.