Ask HN: How reliable is PhoneGap to develop Native Apps?

I started building apps for Android and iPhone simultaneously with a very early version of PhoneGap. The latest versions require less hacking to get up and running. It was very straight forward to get solid apps done on both platforms.

Out of the three apps out for iPhone and Android there have been no crashes and no complaints from users on bugs or unreliability. The apps make use of hardware (camera, gps and a few other things) as well as interfacing with a RoR backend for user systems, data syncing and upload pics taken in-app.

All in all, I've had no problems with it even after digging pretty deep into it and testing on Android 1.5-2.2 and old iOS through the latest versions.

I've used PhoneGap to build an app not so long ago. I had a few early niggles getting it set up but those were mainly down to myself (I'd never used a Mac until then).

I did have to leave out a few features I would've liked due to it running too slow (same app rebuilt in Titanium is much faster) but overall it was a pleasant experience and the mailing list is very helpful & friendly.

The only things that pushed me to Titanium were the speed issues with the more complex stuff I was doing (perhaps my fault?) and the fact that Titanium enables you to use proper native widgets rather than simulating them with jqtouch or whatever - This was massive for me but no one in the real world has ever noticed :)

We just completed a Titanium-based-App for iOS and Android and are much more happy with the result than we would have been with PhoneGap, what we used earlier for apps. Titanium is not only more powerful and speedier but also makes development cleaner and flexible.