I’m currently investigating development tools for the iPhone that will also allow me to re-target the same “code-base” that makes the application to Android mobile phones like the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One or HTC Magic (e.g.).
To that end, I tried out phonegap by nitobi (I think that’s a real company :-/), but didn’t like that the end product is essentially just html with a few extras. One thing that is good about phonegap, though, is that you (by which I mean “I”) can add functionality easily as it is “open-source” and can be modified without fear of repercussions from copyright folk.
I also tried the native Objective-C “SDK” as designed by Apple, but found that it was too steep a learning curve trying to figure out the incantations to do certain things (such as displaying a date picker) along with a language that I’ve never before played with.
So in the end I’ve settled upon a framework by a company founded in 2006 called Appcelerator. Their framework is called Titanium, and can also be targeted at normal PC applications as well as iPhone and Android. Soon the same code will also be able to be targeted to Blackberry handsets, too, in the to-be-released latest version of Titanium. (Titanium is claimed to be open-source like phonegap, released under the Apache License, but I can’t seem to find the source-code download on the Appcelerator website.) Titanium allows me to program my application(s) in the language of the “Web” called JavaScript, and hides alot of the detail required in the Objective-C/Java world of the native iPhone/Android (respectively) development tools.
And what am I developing for the iPhone, Android, and possibly Blackberry cellphones? Well that I will leave for another day, instead leaving you with the tantalising codename I’m using for it: FoF. Some select people have already seen screen-shots of early prototypes, and I’m hoping that they will keep quiet until I’m ready to reveal the project to the world at large.