Over the past few years, there have been discussions that generally tend to compare the advantages of native and hybrid platform app development. This discussion has spawned innumerable arguments among the mobile application developers and organizations alike.
While many can dispute over positives and negatives, what many organizations fail to comprehend is, at the peak of these applications, is the customer experience comes along with it. However, let us not dig more into it and try to figure out that which platform is considered to be good, native or hybrid?
Getting confused? Want to know more? Read the below section for a detailed difference of native and hybrid platform.
Native-Platform App Development
Since the inception of App store, React Native application development has been the standard in mobile phones, which are written particularly for mobile operating systems like iOS and Android.
Pros
- Access Native APIs: Native applications makes it possible to access exclusive native APIs in mobile phone’s operating system like camera, push notifications, and in-app purchases, which would otherwise be forbidden, or given in a cumbersome way on a mobile web application.
- Performance: The programming technologies used in the development of native applications are platform-specific, giving direct access to native operating system features, as well as functionality. Therefore, these apps have fast interactions with the OS of native hardware and devices. It enhances the overall performance of native apps when rendering multimedia content or graphics taking place. Native apps also cut down the risk of crashing or freezing like bottlenecks of performance in advance.
- User Interface: Native code has direct access of mobile phones OS, so apps are capable of generating user interfaces, according to the code commands, and with the complete support of native OS components and UI layouts. It results in smooth user experiences and better engagement of users.
- Monetization: Native apps have their respective marketplace to access the targeted audience effortlessly. For example, Apple has an App Store whereas, Android has Google Play Store, in order to publish the apps, greater visibility, and get ranking. In addition, apps stores are imposing numerous restrictions over bad practices and promoting high-quality apps to enter and sell in the marketplaces.
Cons
- Affordability: Native app technologies cost much for the App development organization and hence, the clients. In case the app has a large target audience and utilizing different mobile devices or OS, app development needs more than one platform to cover all, which eventually proves expensive.
- Time-Consuming: These app development need apps for the different platform, and the similar code is not applicable to all other mobile Operating Systems. Therefore, it takes more time, in order to rewrite the code or begin from the scratch for every platform.
- Need More Resource: Another con of native app development is that it requires the platform-specific skills in using and coding the tools. Hence, the app development business or organization has to hire new talent at high rates, invest in infrastructure and tools, and even allocate the skilled resources as per project scale. This is because native coding is lengthy, as well as time-consuming as compared to easy web development technologies.
Cross-Platform App Development
According to Paul Solt, iPhone app expert, “Apps that were not built from the beginning for cross-platform would require a ton of re-engineering in order to get the code to work on multiple platforms.” These are some pros and cons of this kind of app:
Pros
- Fast: In cross-platform, coding for the app is only done one-time, and with this single code it can be run in several platforms with some minor tweaks. As a result, it saves time spent on designing and programming for multiple platforms following the platform-specific plans.
- Cost-Effective: As a matter of fact, cross-platform favors ‘Write once and run everywhere’ procedure, it saves a lot of money and time from spending on different platform-specific development processes.
- Profitable: The hybrid app development cuts the cost significantly. Particularly, on programming designing, hiring talents, time, and other infrastructural facilities, resulting in the increase of overall margin on mobile app development and proves profitability.
- Simple: Cross-platform app developers need to learn only a few technologies and they can get the command over some development frameworks, such as Titanium, PhoneGap, Ionic, etc. Moreover, it cuts the deployment cost and time on numerous marketplaces, upgrade, and updates.
Cons
- Performance Issues: We all know that cross-platform apps run on mobile browsers by utilizing the capacities of browsers. It stops hybrid app code to use the OS, as well as the hardware support directly, resulting in a number of performance glitches, such as lagging and freezing the app during some intense or specific operations.
- User Experience Problems: Due to insufficient OS and hardware access and performance glitches, the users have to face some issues. For example, accelerometer, touch gestures, microphone, GPS capability and many native apps functionality and features are not fully accessible for the hybrid apps that are browser-based.
- Updates & Upgrade Delays: Whenever mobile Operating Systems release the new updates, native applications integrate those effortlessly. However, in hybrid apps, developers have to depend on third-party supports, which takes time, along with the money.
Wrap It Up
In the complete discussion on native vs. hybrid-platform app development, it can be concluded that if you want to impress users with rich functionality, lighting fast interface, and overall performance, then native apps is what you all need.
Moreover, you will get better security and stability and for this, you need to hire two dedicated teams for each platform. Small Businesses may not be able to afford to develop an application for both the platforms.
While, cross-platform apps can be developed for iOS, as well as Android, wherein the complete process is a one-team job. Also, cross-platform apps are easy in terms of deployment and maintenance, allowing you to spend more money and time on marketing and attracting new customers.
However, one of the biggest disadvantages of these apps is lower performance, which is crucial if you are designing an application with features that need deep hardware integration.