Xamarin Platform Reviews

Name: Xamarin Platform
Brand: Microsoft
Rating: 4 (37 reviews)

4.0 out of 5

37 reviews

587 followers

What is Xamarin Platform?UNIXBusinessApplication
Price:

Xamarin is an open-source platform for developing modern and performant applications for iOS, Android, and Windows using.NET. Xamarin is an abstraction layer that manages how shared code is communicated to the platform's underlying code. Xamarin is for developers with the two following goals:

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Featured reviews

Mark Reynolds

Software Engineer (Xamarin/MAUI Mobile, .NET APIs, Azure Cloud) at rseg

Aug 8, 2022

The solution struggles a little bit with binding libraries. If you want to use something like Google Maps or a third-party component that's been built for Android or iOS but isn't part of the actual Android or iOS platform, you have to build these things called binding libraries. It's a tedious process and the tooling doesn't do a lot to help you with it. The really common libraries usually have bindings already built that you can use, but if you get stuck having to build binding libraries, it's a lot of work. I'm a Mac user and I'm not a huge fan of the Visual Studio for Mac because it's not as strong of a tool as the Visual Studio for Windows, and you don't have the same features on both. That's why I have to resort to a different IDE. I generally work in JetBrains Rider because it's a much better IDE for Mac. The IDE support on Mac lags, but they do have a new version of Visual Studio out, so I can't say I've given it a fair chance yet.

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Miroslav Kouril

Mobile Xamarin Developer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Sep 22, 2022

The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds. The solution does not allow for use of the latest or premium version of Visual Studio so we have to use the 2019 version. The layout interface and designer for Android Studio is more advanced than the iOS Builder. Most of our layouts have to be built in Xcode but broken connections and file updates are continuing issues. Standard libraries have not been updated in four years because the focus has been on newer products like Xamarin.Forms and .NET MAUI. To continue to use the solution, we have to bind SDKs after new Android or iOS platform releases. No support is offered that would make our lives easier so we rely instead on Rider as an ID for development because it includes ReSharper. The auto update system is not trusted because it has broken our builds on occasion.

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Nishan Timilsina

Mobile Engeneer at ServiceLInk inc

Aug 3, 2022

The product has a lot of features. The common UI is great. You can just write one XM channel core and it'll be used for both iOS and Android. That is a strong feature. It's just natively compiled on the device like other platforms. It can work across platform technology and is natively compiled to build onto both platforms. You can access the native features through the custom vendor, which we call Dependency Services. Dependency Service is another vital feature to access the native functionality of the different platforms, including iOS and Android. It's not too difficult to set up.

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Pricing

"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"I think the solution is free."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."

Valuable Features

"Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production."
"The solution is easy to understand and has banking integrated. The shorter development time, the bugging and as well as availability of a lot of documentation on the web. Also the native integration is easy."
"The initial setup is very simple."

Room For Improvement

"The major I see with Xamarin right now is that there is no visual editor"
"The monitoring of the remote devices is not good as it should be extended along. It would be useful if the log is more integrated with the central console. I am not sure it can be accessed but it would be better."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."

Pricing

"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"I think the solution is free."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."

Valuable Features

"Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production."
"The solution is easy to understand and has banking integrated. The shorter development time, the bugging and as well as availability of a lot of documentation on the web. Also the native integration is easy."
"The initial setup is very simple."

Room For Improvement

"The major I see with Xamarin right now is that there is no visual editor"
"The monitoring of the remote devices is not good as it should be extended along. It would be useful if the log is more integrated with the central console. I am not sure it can be accessed but it would be better."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Xamarin Platform Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Learn more about Xamarin Platform

Cross-platform sharing of code, tests, and business logic.
Writing cross-platform apps in C# with Visual Studio.

Xamarin allows developers to share an average of 90% of their program across platforms. This enables programmers to achieve native performance, look, and feel on each platform while writing all of their business logic in a single language (or reusing existing application code).

Xamarin applications can be created on a PC or a Mac and compiled into native application packages, such as an .apk file for Android or an .ipa file for iOS.

Xamarin Platform Features

Xamarin Platform has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Complete binding for the supporting SDKs: Xamarin includes bindings for almost all of the underlying platform SDKs in iOS and Android.
Java, C, Objective-C, C, C++ Interop: Xamarin gives you the ability to use a variety of third-party code by providing tools for directly invoking Objective-C, Java, C, and C++ libraries.
Modern language constructs: Xamarin applications are written in C#, a modern language with many capabilities that Objective-C and Java do not have, like lambdas, LINQ, parallel programming, generics, and more.
Strong base class library (BCL): Xamarin apps use the .NET BCL, a large collection of classes with streamlined features, like powerful XML, database, serialization, IO, string, and networking support, among others.

Xamarin Platform Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing the Xamarin Platform. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Native UIs and APIs: Xamarin delivers comprehensive access to each platform's native SDK and UI controls, projecting the entire native API of each device into C#. Therefore, the apps you develop are native instead of write-once/run-anywhere programs that look alien on every platform. Xamarin provides you access to all of the capabilities that distinguish each platform.

Share code between platforms: With Xamarin, you can share all code across platforms while providing a native user interface tailored to each individual device. With Xamarin, you can execute the same C# code on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. With Xamarin, your software is compiled to a native binary rather than being interpreted, in contrast to other cross-platform frameworks. Even in the most demanding situations, native compilation provides users with excellent app performance. Xamarin provides responsive, multi-user input and feedback, fluid scrolling, sophisticated graphics and animations, complicated data visualization, and realistic high frame rates for games.

Code with C#: Write shorter, more concise, and more maintainable code by leveraging advanced language features, such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ), delegates, lambdas, events, garbage collection, and many other features. With Xamarin's fully extensible platform, you can include libraries written in C, Objective-C, C++, or Java. In C#, you have access to the entire native ecosystem of components and libraries.

Xamarin Platform is the #5 ranked solution in top Mobile Development Platforms. PeerSpot users give Xamarin Platform an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. Xamarin Platform is most commonly compared to Tricentis Tosca: Xamarin Platform vs Tricentis Tosca. Xamarin Platform is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 58% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 17% of all views.