I have had a couple of colleagues recently make statements that PhoneGap shouldn’t be used for new projects.
When I go do the reading myself, I don’t draw the same conclusion. PhoneGap looks well supported and viable. The other part for me is - there is a Giant investment moving to something like React - in learning curve and total elapsed time. At the same time, at least Some will argue that for some classes of apps, native apps are becoming less important, as long as the experience inside the browser is a good one. So for me, I ask: why then bother with React at this time? Why not PhoneGap for now?
You can find articles supporting all sides of this debate on the web.
PhoneGap is supported by Adobe. React is supported by Facebook. Both are also supported by open source communities, and both are widely used. I don’t think either is in any risk.
We like PhoneGap for many of the reasons you list. It allows you to turn a normal web app into a native app, it has a much shorter learning curve and is much easier to use. It’s more in keeping with the AppStudio’s culture and philosophy.
The recent support for PWA by the major browser developers tell me there’s a solid future for web apps. I’m seeing apps which used to be native now being reimplemented as PWAs. AppStudio 7.4 produces PWAs by default, so we ended up in the sweet spot.