You don't need Phonegap to write apps in html5/css/javascript. We did it with Zite using a WebUIView wrapped in a native app with a little bit of glue to hold

You don't need Phonegap to write apps in html5/css/javascript. We did it with Zite using a WebUIView wrapped in a native app with a little bit of glue to hold things together. Obviously it is a matter of opinion whether the performance is on par with native, but I think it reaches about 95% of the native experience on an iPad 2. We did have to spend a significant about of time optimizing css transitions to make it happen. (It's highly and multitudinously rated, FWIW.)