Phonegap developer and built app differences

Question

I am making a mobile app using phonegap. Now, for testing I use phonegap developer program, which allows me to phonegap serve the folder with html/js and instantly load that on ios and android devices. The question is, is it guaranteed that what I see after connection to the server in Phonegap Developer is identical to what I am going to get after building apk/ipa? In other words, can I skip testing built apps and release them being sure that everything works and looks exactly as in developer?

Answer 1

I think the short answer is yes, what you see using the PhoneGap Developer app is the same as how it would look if you were to install it with the build file. At least that is what is written at the end of the second paragraph of this blog.

however...

If your app requires plugins or uses a backend database / local storage then it would not be an intelligent thing to do.

Plugins

When you phonegap-serve the app PhoneGap will include the core plugins but not third party ones, so it would be a good idea here to use a build process to install it onto a device so that plugins can be tested properly.

Backend servers and local storage

If your app needs to synchronise data between a backend server and the app's local storage you won't be able to test how the app handles this in offline mode because setting your device to being offline will lose the connection to the web server created using the phonegap-serve command. To do this you would require the app be installed and use Android's ADB or something similar.

Config

The config.xml file may also contain errors or may be missing settings that could cause problems with your app. The only way to truly find out is by building it and installing to the device. So for example you may miss whitelisting configuration for your API access or your plugins may be referenced wrong or missing.

There could be more issues involved but these are the things the first come to mind without doing too much research into it.