Can you imagine your life without a smartphone? We bet you can’t. People spend hours each day navigating through their smartphones. Multiply this by the total number of smartphone users, and you won’t be surprised by the staggering volume of mobile traffic. And the numbers continuously grow. This makes mobile applications a must for any business that wants to survive and succeed.

Therefore, mobile development has huge potential for growth in the near future. With two dominating OS on the market of smartphones, iOS and Android, there are two main approaches to creating mobile applications. The first one is native mobile development for each OS. The second one is cross-platform development.
But what if business owners need both web and mobile apps with high levels of interoperability? Are there technologies that allow this? In this case, Angular mobile app development may come in handy.

We’ve prepared a guide on Angular mobile apps, the main features and peculiarities of Angular development, as well as the top Angular mobile apps on the market. Let’s start!

What is Angular?

If you are not a software engineer, here’s a brief introduction to this technology. Angular is a free and open-source TypeScript-based framework created and maintained by the Angular Team at Google. It was primarily designed for developing dynamic web apps. However, over time using Angular for mobile apps became popular as well.
Along with React and Vue, Angular is one of the most popular frameworks, forming the so-called Big 3. The main advantages of this framework include enhanced scalability, high adaptability, and an accelerated development process. In addition, Angular-based solutions are feature-rich and simple to use. Summing up, Angular is a great option for building user-centric dynamic web applications.

Apps You Can Build with Angular

As we can see, Angular is a powerful and versatile tool. Using Angular best practices, experienced engineers can build multiple different applications with the help of this framework. But can you use Angular to make mobile apps? Let’s find out. Below we highlighted some of the most popular applications you can easily create with the help of this framework.

Single-Page Applications (SPA)

Single-page applications, or SPAs, are websites built around the dynamic rewriting of the web page which users currently interact with. In contrast to the default method (loading entirely new pages), SPAs offer faster transitions and, consequently, a better user experience.

The Angular framework, with its data management features and routing, allows decreasing loading time and is a perfect choice for building Single-page apps. As a result, the dynamic presentation of all information and excellent lag-free website performance guarantee top UX.

Enterprise Web Apps

At first sight, big institutions and enterprises have different requirements for their web apps compared to the same SPAs. Can Angular meet the requirements of such companies and assist in creating these products? Sure! Gmail, PayPal, YouTube, and Xbox use Angular in their apps.

Why do they choose Angular? The main reason is that using Angular for mobile apps and web apps guarantees a high level of software security. One more reason is Angular’s scalability and code reusability which allow companies to upgrade apps over time.

Mobile Apps

Can Angular be used for mobile apps development? The answer is yes; software engineers often use the Angular framework for cross-platform mobile development. It’s worth mentioning that the popularity of mobile apps developed with Angular is growing.

Front-end code reutilizing between mobile and web components greatly facilitates the development process and decreases the amount of time necessary. In addition, you can combine Angular with NativeScript or Ionic to develop hybrid apps. This allows using the same code both for iOS and Android.

Progressive Web Applications (PWA)

Progressive Web Applications are intended to work on any platform, web or mobile. PWAs, also known as web applications, allow your website to provide an app-like experience via mobile browsers.

Using Angular to build PWAs allows engineers to implement advanced features like responsive design, mobile-like functionality, and offline usability. At the same time, the flexibility of Angular ensures quick app loading and adaptability to the user’s mobile screen.

Server-side Rendered (SSR) Apps

Web applications with rendering on the server side form another group of apps that benefit from Angular. Since the server is responsible for preparing or pre-populating custom user data, using Angular results in increased loading speed. This positively impacts user experience.

In addition, improving the loading speed for Server-side rendered (SSR) apps also boosts the app’s SEO performance. Higher loading speed increases the site’s visibility on the search engine results page. As a result, business owners can interact with a wider target audience.

Interfaces with Beautiful Animations

What makes some apps more engaging than others? What sets popular and successful apps apart? Yes, you are right, it’s an intuitive, unique, engaging, and immersive UI design. Animations play one of the main roles in creating such a design.

They allow you to capture users’ attention, diversify the user experience, and stand out from the competitors. This is where Angular comes into play. Its flexibility and capacity to create exceptional user interfaces offer an opportunity for building a unique animated design.

What is Angular Mobile Development

As we can see, engineers often select Angular and Angularjs for mobile applications development. You can use frameworks like Ionic, Onsen Ui, Monaca, and NativeScript as additional tools. Angular js mobile app has Angular on the client side of mobile applications due to front-end code reutilizing between mobile and web platforms. At the same time, you can choose any server-side programming language like PHP, Java, or Python to write the back-end.

Angularjs mobile app development is mainly used to save time via simplification of the time-consuming, laborious, and repetitive work of coding. In addition, Angular allows building one hybrid mobile app rather than creating separate apps for each OS.

What is a Native Mobile App (Android and iOS)

In contrast to web apps that can be accessed via a web browser, native mobile apps function as independent programs on a particular mobile device. Many of them need access to different features of the device to work properly and store relevant data on your phone.

In a more narrow context, unlike, for instance, Angular mobile apps, a “native mobile app” means any application written to work on a specific device platform. Android and iOS are the two main mobile OS platforms. Consequently, engineers have to customize native apps to ensure they work properly.

Native mobile apps have some advantages. They are installed on your device, are easy to access, and most of them don’t necessarily require an internet connection. Since native apps can be customized in ways websites can’t, they offer a better UX. Therefore, native apps are more convenient and, thus, more engaging.

Key Features of Using Angular for Mobile Apps

Mobile apps Angular development is growing in popularity. Here are some of the main features of this framework:

• A huge community of developers supports the framework due to its open-source nature.
• Front-end code reusability between web and mobile components.
• Built-in support on HTML, AJAX, etc.
• Incorporated compartmentalized user interface and business logic functions
• Improved support for error handling
• Seamless updates via the Angular CLI

Let’s now take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using Angular for mobile app development.

Pros of Angular for Mobile App Development

We have already covered some of the main pros of Angular with regard to building mobile applications. Below you can find more strengths of using Angular for mobile apps.

• High-quality and secure mobile app development due to maximized performance.
• Easier and more efficient development process due to fast routing.
• Angular’s team, backed by Google, supports the most vital libraries and solutions.
• Angular offers all development tools “out-of-the-box” and unifies the architecture and the code.
• The two-way data binding syntax: data can move both ways, defined as the source and the controller.
• Easy localization process.

Cons of Angular for Mobile App Development

At the same time, Angular mobile app development has several disadvantages, including:

• It is older than its main competitors, ReactJS and VueJS.
• Angular has multiple versions, and its SEO compatibility could be better.
• Angular can be quite complex to use. Software developers, especially beginners, often find it challenging to deal with such features as DI, factories, or values.

What Makes an Angular App Mobile Compatible?

As we have found out, Angular’s primary purpose is to enhance web application development. Nevertheless, engineers actively use Angular for mobile apps as well. So, what makes Angular applications mobile-compatible?

Bult and Vetted by Google

Google is one of the largest tech companies, operating multiple products with a huge audience. The majority of these products can be easily accessed via mobile phones. The fact that the Google-backed team created Angular and continuously updates it means this technology has immense potential for future evolution and improvement.

Efficient Design Architecture

Angular’s modular, cross-platform architecture enables quick application development. It also improves app loading speed. Moreover, it allows engineers to implement immersive, almost native-like, UI design that improves customer experience.

Code Reusability

Using modular code design, developers can easily reuse code. For instance, mobile and web components’ reusability speeds up the development process. This feature is especially important for small and medium-sized businesses.

Faster End-to-End App Development

Angular’s model-view-controller (MVC) architecture facilitates application development by integrating this logic into the development, testing, maintenance, and updating of applications. This allows businesses to reduce the time-to-market.

Directives

Angular includes directives that allow manipulating the structure of the Document Object Model (DOM) trees and, in this way, altering their behavior and data. This technology also improves the app’s performance.

Built-in Support

Multiple pre-built code libraries and components help engineers in everyday activities. Such libraries as RxJS facilitate the development process. In addition, many APIs and fron-tend libraries extend functionality so that developers have no need to use extra tools.

Angular vs. Angular JS: What is the Difference

You can often find mentions of Angular and Angularjs for mobile apps development. What’s the difference? In fact, AngularJS is the first version of the framework, introduced in 2010, and Angular is the framework that followed it. New challenges and approaches in software development demanded upgrades, and Angular 2 was released in 2016. The new technology took over the Angular name, while the old one remained AngularJS.

The first noticeable difference is the programming language. AngularJS uses JavaScript, a text-based language used to create interactive elements. Angular 2 uses TypeScript, a subset of JavaScript created by Microsoft that incorporates static type definitions.

The next dissimilarity lies in the architecture, the way how these frameworks structure the application. AngularJS uses MVC architecture, while Angular 2 uses MVVM or model-view-view-model architecture. The first one divides the application into three primary interconnected elements. The second one aims at simplifying the interface.

Another thing to mention is mobile compatibility. AngularJS release took place prior to the boom of smartphone popularity. Consequently, AngularJS is less compatible with creating mobile applications in comparison to Angular for mobile apps.

Finally, we can’t but mention the ease of use. In general, systems used in AngularJS are easier to learn than those in Angular 2. The development environment for Angular 2 is much more challenging to establish too. So, it’s wise to compare the size of the project and the complexity of development. AngularJS is better for smaller projects with less experienced developers, while Angular 2 is a good choice for larger projects.

5 Top Angular Mobile Apps

Still wonder if you should be using Angular for mobile apps? Here are five incredibly successful projects created with the help of Angular.

Gmail

Gmail is the most popular email service, used by more than 1.5 billion people. Do you remember what we told you about localization? The Angular framework allows Gmail to support more than 100 languages.

YouTube

Another leader but in the domain of video-streaming. Its applications, for example, the PlayStation version of the YouTube app, actively use Angular and AngularJS.

Xbox

You’ve definitely heard of Xbox if you like video games. The website and mobile app of this online gaming and content distribution service share an immersive and highly appealing design and interface.

Mixer

Mixer, the video game streaming software and service released by Microsoft, adopted Angular into its video streaming application, primarily for real-time single-page data updates.

Forbes

If you like reading business magazines, you know Forbes, a true industry leader. Do pages load quickly? Is the app easy to use? Angular JS in the front-end part boosts page loading speed and ensures an excellent user experience.

Summing-Up

We hope this guide provided you with a general idea about Angular mobile app development. Angular is among the most efficient technologies for building different applications. Its unique features, such as code reusability or enhanced security, allow the creation of competitive web and mobile solutions.

The versatility of Angular allows businesses to acquire powerful applications equally suitable for web and mobile environments. In addition, active community and support from Google guarantee its continuous development and evolution.

Fireart is among the leaders when it comes to Angular software development. Healthcare, fitness, e-commerce, finance & banking—a client from any industry can expect a powerful and unique Angular-based product of the highest quality. In-depth target user research, experienced engineering and design teams, and excellent management ensure cost-effective and best-of-breed solutions with no last-minute surprises.

Finally, flexible Angular mobile app development, including market research, product conceptualization, designing and prototyping, programming, testing, maintaining, etc., guarantees complete transparency. So try it yourself and get your top Angular mobile apps.

FAQ

Any questions about Angular mobile apps?

What is the difference between React Native vs. Angular?

When it comes to the comparison of React vs Angular for mobile apps, the main differences are:

• Angular is a full-featured MVC framework, while React is a library
• To use React, you need JavaScript programming language. Angular uses TypeScript.
• React uses one-way data binding, while Angular uses two-way binding
• With React, you can use React Native to build native, cross-platform mobile apps. In the case of Angular, you’ll use Ionic, a hybrid mobile framework.

Can Angular be used for mobile apps?

Yes, it can be used to build hybrid web and mobile apps.

Is Angular good for mobile app development?

Yes, it allows quickly building flexible mobile apps due to code reusability and advanced UI.

Can Angular be used for Android?

You can use Angular to build the front-end part of mobile apps. You can combine Angular with NativeScript to build applications for Android.

Is Angular mobile-friendly?

All the popular mobile browsers like Safari and Opera Mini support Angular. Moreover, it can be used to build hybrid or even native-like mobile apps.

Why do you need to use Angular for robust web app development?

Angular is a perfect option for building strong, scalable web applications due to its fast development speed, flexibility, and efficiency. In addition, due to the modular structure, you can easily reuse Angular programming code, which facilitates integration with other platforms.