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Building a native mobile app for each system you're developing for (Using Xcode for Apple devices, the Android SDK for Android devices etc).

Pros

• Native apps generally run a lot smoother and faster than non-native apps.
• A lot of support for development out there (tutorials, guides, forums etc)

Cons

• Can be very time consuming learning new programming languages for the first time (Objective C for iOS, Java for Android etc).
• To build a native iOS app you will need an Apple Mac (No developing on the PC).

I had only very briefly experimented with Xcode and it had quite a steep learning curve. It became apparent that it would take quite a long time to reach the necessary skill-level required for this project.

I then stumbled upon an interesting JavaScript framework called Sencha Touch. It seemed like the perfect choice, initially.

Pros

• Cross-platform compatibility (can be used on iPhone, Android and Blackberry touch devices)
• Built with web standards. Sencha uses HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript so whilst building the app, I'd also be furthering my general web development skills too.

Cons

• Can be very complicated getting started for users inexperienced with intermediate-advanced JavaScript (i.e. me!).
• Whilst there were some good tutorials and examples available, very few of them seemed to show how all of these concepts actually come together. Sencha was also between several different versions; so different coding examples and guides were using different methods of accomplishing things. Very confusing.

Despite really liking Sencha Touch, it became apparent after a long time of going around in circles that I was getting nowhere and, if I wanted the project finished sometime this century, I should probably switch to a technology I was already familiar with.

Adobe Flex is a Framework for Adobe Flash (usually built with Flash Builder) that was designed for creating Rich Internet Applications and adapted for mobile devices recently. Flash gets a lot of bad reputation in the mobile area (with even Adobe themselves dropping general Flash support on mobiles) but there are still some positives.

Pros

• Cross platform, native support. With Flash Builder you can build an app, then with very little code changes, export it to a native(ish) iOS and Android (and Blackberry tablet) version.
• Personally, I had used Flash and Flex on previous projects, so it made the learning curve a lot less steep.

Cons

• Even though Flash Builder converts the code to a native(ish) format, it still doesn't feel quite right and can also run slightly slow if you've not optimized your code.
• Apps created this way require iOS Devices to be running at least version 4.0 (so iPhone 3G and lower and the first generation of iPod Touch).

I ended up choosing Flex due to the fact that I already had experience with the development environment and therefore it would take substantially less time to create the app. Indeed, after a couple of days I had already built more of the app than I had with Sencha Touch in a couple of weeks.