Mobile Application Development

In this article, we will see how mobile applications are developed today. We will also compare the pros and cons of each of these approaches!

What options do we have?

• Native App Development
• Hybrid App
• Cross-Platform App

Native App Development

In this case, engineers leverage a native-to-the-operating-system programming language. It can be Java or since recently Kotlin for Android, and Swift/Objective-C for iOS. Users love native apps for high performance and tailored-to-the-platform UX. For development, engineers get access to the device’s full feature set. This allows them to leverage advanced functionalities. But, the biggest challenge is to run the app on two platforms. To do this, you need to make separate codebases!

Hybrid App Development

Hybrid apps blend web elements with mobile ones. So, you create a codebase using standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Then, you wrap it inside a native container – the WebView. The content within WebView is rendered as a plain old website. It is responsible for UX and access to the hardware functionality (camera, GPS, etc.). The latter, however, is quite limited in the contexts of hybrid application development vs. native application development. Eventually, a user can get a standalone application in the app store.

There are open-source products like Ionic & Apache Cordova which can be used for building hybrid apps

Cross-Platform App Development

It is important to remember that hybrid and cross-platform apps are not the same. Perhaps, the only common feature between them is code shareability.

The cross-platform dev approach uses a native rendering engine. The codebase written in JS connects to native components via the so-called bridges. This provides the close-to-native UX. They offer seamless functionality, easy implementation, and cost-effective production. Yet, do not expect outstanding performance. Customization is also a pain since it is limited to the framework you use.

There are mainly 3 frameworks widely used for building cross-platform apps.

• React-native - An open-source UI software framework created by Meta Platforms, Inc
• Flutter - An open-source UI software development kit created by Google in 2017
• Xamarin - Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned San Francisco-based software company founded in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS, which are cross-platform implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure and Common Language Specifications

Comparison Table