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Comment by digitalpacman | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame that phones still can't properly handle web views well. My company went with PhoneGap and tried implementing webviews but no matter what, couldn't develop an app that ran well enough on phones. The folly of PhoneGap isn't really PhoneGap's fault, but their premise. Phones are NOT ready for Html5 apps. Tried. Failed. Now rewriting the entire app natively.

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can you give some insight as to what specific issue you were having? Was it HTML5 that was the real culprit? Or javascript performance? Did you try smaller javascript libraries, etc. etc.

I can't speak for the GP and I haven't used Phonegap but the problems I have encountered trying to use webviews in apps revolve around touch latency and animation. When a user touches an element on the screen they expect instant response and I haven't seen that in any app using web technology. Also, animation needs to be comparable to what you see natively. Even trying to scroll images without scrolling the whole view is a recipe for lag and choppiness. I don't want any part of that in my apps.

Google's solution for touch latency: https://developers.google.com/mobile/articles/fast_buttons

Having done multiple native apps on iOS, and a couple of phone gap based apps, the overwhelming flaw is that web apps don't _feel_ like native apps -- it's partially an HTML5, partially a js, partially iOS web view issue. It's the nuances that I as a developer notice, and I feel like my app is always 80% of what it could be, no matter which great 'new' library I try.

PhoneGap reminds me of the anecdote about a carpenter that sands the back of a bookshelf, "why do that" he gets asked, "no one will see it" and his response is "but I will." That's how I feel developing a phonegap app -- most people don't see the partially finished app; but I do.

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