Evaluating .NET MAUI as a replacement for native Android mobile application development with focus on performance

Abstract: Background: These days when developing applications for mobile platforms, therehave been two main branches to pick between as a developer. The first option– denoted native development – targets only one specific mobile operating system(OS). The other is cross-platform development which can target multiple platformssimultaneously. A common concern with cross-platform development, however, is itsperformance when compared to native frameworks. Objectives: In this thesis, the objective is to compare the performance of applica-tions created for Android using the native framework and the cross-platform .NETMAUI framework by Microsoft. Methods: The method used in this thesis was a combination of a literature (map-ping) study and an experiment. The purpose of the mapping study was to identifyrelevant performance metrics. The experiment then observed those how those met-rics, CPU and memory (RAM) usage, differed between the applications created usingboth frameworks. Results: Overall, the .NET MAUI framework was significantly worse than the na-tive framework on both measured performance metrics in 9 out of 12 tasks tested.The .NET MAUI framework was significantly better in 1 task, while 2 other tasksended up with differences that were statistically insignificant. Conclusions: An experiment was conducted to compare CPU usage in % andmemory (RAM) usage in MB between the native framework and the .NET MAUIframework for Android development on a variety of tasks. The outcome of the ex-periment significantly favored the native framework statistically. However, due to ofthe small sample size in selected tasks as well as specific design choices it is unclearhow real-world use would compare.