If you want to ease out the process of developing Android Applications then Xamarin is the Android Framework for you and trust me you will fall in love with Android Development if you start using Xamarin. Wondering what makes Xamarin framework out of the ordinary Android Frameworks then read on about the paramount features of Xamarin:
Ease of Installation
Most of the Android SDK’s are difficult to be installed and generally the installation process is highly sophisticated and time consuming but in case of Xamarin the process of installing this SDK is easier as it has the all-in-one installer which eases the process and you can get access to everything that you need by just a click.
Support for Multiple Platform Development
If you are planning to provide support for the iPad, iPhone in the coming years then you need not worry about it as in case of Xamarin you can reuse near about 90% of the already existing C# code when you are transforming it from Android to iOS through the Xamarin iOS.
Functionality Rich
Xamarin as an Android framework is completely featured and has access to all the common Android Application Programming Interfaces. You can make the best out of the total spectrum of all the functionality rich features provided by this framework.
Xamarin or Visual Studio
You make use of the Xamarin Studio that is completely featured Integrated Development Environment which is exclusively meant for tailoring Mobile Application Development or use Xamarin Android which will render support for end to end Android web development in Visual Studio so that you can develop, build, debug & deploy the applications through the Microsoft’s Integrated Development Environment.
Reuse of Code
You can easily bind all the third party frameworks or libraries by making use of the favorite .NET libraries in all the Xamarin Android Applications. There are several third party libraries which are packed in so that you can adopt them instantly when you need.
Code Auto completion
With this feature of Xamarin you can see the sight of various API’s as you go on typing. You need not worry if you are using Xamarin then you are definitely in a very good company as there are Hundreds of Thousands web developers who are already making use of Xamarin for developing amazing Android Applications.
Easy to Work with XML
With the inbuilt XDocument Class (which is one among the thousands of .NET application programming interfaces) it is comparatively faster and easy to deal with XML when you use Xamarin Android.
Fantabulous LINQ Support
You can make use of LINQ in the Xamarin Android projects for querying, selecting and filtering data from the database (SQLite) or from the in-memory arrays. You can make use of the parallel LINQ so as to involuntarily allocate heavy work such as parsing huge JSON results to both the cores in case of a multi core device.
Event Delegates and Handling
There are several easy handle button presses and other user interface events with Xamarin Android.
Understanding the Working of Xamarin
You merely need to code the application in C# and directly make call to any of the native platform application programming interfaces directly from C#. Now the Xamarin Compiler will bundle the .NET runtime and will generate a native ARM packages and executable output that is nothing but an iOS or Android App.
Code Sharing Amongst Multiple Platforms
When using Xamamrin make sure that you design your app in such a way that the user interface is clearly separated from the rest of the code. With Xamarin framework in place you can deliver a device specific native user experience just by writing code which will call the native Application Programming Interface whilst sharing the business logic, network communication code, data access and lots more.
Make Use of Any Native Application Programming Interface
The binding technology of Xamarin will expose all the Application Programming Interface available in Android and iOS into your web apps just like the ordinary C# class libraries. This implies that the web application developed using Xamarin is capable of doing anything that a device or platform has to offer with local UI and outstanding performance.
Control the Complete .NET Runtime
This framework has support for Mono which is a complete functional implementation of the .NET runtime that is bundled with the web application for your code to execute with all the power of .NET and C# together with reflection, memory management and all the .NET base class libraries.
Local Compilation Support
This framework has a Smart compiler or in other words you can term it to be a very smart compiler as it will generate the right output for each platform. Xamarin Android makes the best use of the Just In Time Compilation directly on the Android Device whilst Xamarin iOS will engage in complete (AOT) i.e. Ahead of Time Compilation so as to generate an ARM binary that is well suited for the Apple’s App store. Hence with Xamarin the code that you share will never have to understand the difference.
Great Performance
The compiler of Xamarin is very smart and will compile your application to a local binary that is neither interpreted nor cross compiled. The best thing about local compilation is that it will provide the users with brilliant application performance even in case of highly demandable situations such as complex data visualizations and high frame rate gaming. By adding just near about 2.5 MB (a small footprint) to the application code and insignificant impact on the startup time of the app one can build applications which run faster on any platform.
Why Xamarin?
With Xamarin Android Framework web developers can write beautiful code that is short, simple and easily maintainable by making the best use of various amazing features such as the Lambdas, LINQ, Anonymous Types and lots more. You can exploit the total power of .NET and C# with Xamarin Android.