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DevelopmentMobile Development

What is the best approach to mobile app development?

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Mar 23, 2023

Last
Updated

Native vs Mobile Web vs Hybrid

vs Flutter vs React Native vs Lightweight Native UI vs Appcelerator Titanium vs Instamobile vs Clappia vs Zoho Creator

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Dev platforms

Windows, Mac and Linux

Desktop targets

announced Windows

Mobile targets

Android and iOS

Popular Language Bindings

Dart

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No: of Apps deployed

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Customers Served Worldwide

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Dev platforms

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Desktop targets

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Mobile targets

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Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac

No: of Apps deployed

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Pricing / User / Month

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Customers Served Worldwide

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Dev platforms

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Desktop targets

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Mobile targets

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Popular Language Bindings

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No: of Apps deployed

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Pricing / User / Month

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Customers Served Worldwide

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Dev platforms

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Desktop targets

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Popular Language Bindings

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Platforms

Android, iOS, Web

No: of Apps deployed

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Pricing / User / Month

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Customers Served Worldwide

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Dev platforms

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Desktop targets

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Mobile targets

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Popular Language Bindings

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No: of Apps deployed

6 Million

Pricing / User / Month

$0 - $35

Customers Served Worldwide

7 Million

Pros + Cons

Pro
Richer user experience

Native apps not only improve the user experience through faster performance, but they also have access to libraries of interface controls specifically designed for the platform. The benefits are twofold - interface controls are mature and well designed, and also provide a consistent user experience to help new users quickly understand how to navigate the app.

Pro
Full access to platform APIs

Native apps have access to the platform's API, which means developers can access device-specific features such as orientation, the accelerometer, the camera, app switching and the local filesystem. This is useful not only for providing new features, but for making sure users have the best possible experience with current ones.

Pro
Superior performance

Native apps maximize use of a device's local resources; they install all of their assets on the device itself, unlike web apps, where parts of the application are downloaded on demand during use. The result is that native apps offer the fastest possible performance, as they only need to access the network to retrieve data. Facebook, Tumblr and a variety of other companies have attempted to build HTML5 web apps; they found that, due to performance issues, web apps do not provide a suitable enough user experience, and ultimately decided to migrate to a native versions.

Pro
Monetization options

Native app developers have the ability to utilise the app stores to either charge an upfront fee or enable the user to make in-app purchases.

Pro
App store distribution channel

The App Store and Google Play provide developers with a substantial distribution channel for mobile apps. The app stores provide several advantages, such as easy installs, payments, and reviews. Users are more able to trust apps on the App Store, as they've been vetted by Apple, or on the Google Play store, as required permissions are listed explicitly, than they are of a web application. Good reviews, as well as other indicators, such as 'Top Developer" or "Editor's Picks" can lend further legitimacy to an application.

Pro
Documentation

There are over 2500 books alone for iOS and Android development, with many more articles, blog posts, and detailed technical threads on sites like StackOverflow.

Con
Harder to make apps cross-platform

Since every mobile platform offers developers their own SDK and app development tools, it's harder for developers to write cross-platform apps. Since they have to develop a different version for their app for each platform they need to support. There's also the problem that different platforms require different programming languages to develop apps for. For example, Android requires Java, iOS requires Objective-C and Windows Mobile requires C++. This adds another layer of complexity when developing cross-platform apps.

Pro
Improved mindshare

The combination of an icon on the homescreen of the device and access the push notification API results in native apps having a significant advantage in gaining user mindshare.

Con
Arduous app approval

Each native app must get the approval of the app store.

Pro
Each native app must get the approval of the app store

so the security and performance of the app is generally assured. Because native apps are associated with an app store, they also are easy for a user to find and download.

Pro
Faster and cheaper to develop

The biggest benefit of developing mobile web apps is that they are significantly easier, faster and cheaper to develop then native applications. It is a lot easier to find (and cheaper to hire) developers familiar with web technologies compared to those with experience with a particular mobile platform. The same trend can be seen with hiring designers, as they are most likely already familiar with HTML & CSS. Another factor to consider is that web apps can share a single codebase with the desktop version by using media queries to switch CSS stylesheets for mobile devices. This can help reduce the technical debt on developers.

Pro
Platform agnostic

Web Apps make it simple to support multiple platforms with a single codebase.

Pro
You can use the web for distribution

Mobile web applications can use your existing website as an effective distribution channel. Users can be automatically be redirected to a mobile friendly version of the site with no installation required. This has the added benefit of an improved on-boarding experience compared to native apps as shown in the image (source). Distribution via the web has the added advantage of being able to constantly push updates to the app without waiting on both approval by the app store and for users to install the update. This is especially handy for quickly fixing bugs and rapidly iterating.

Pro
Users can access without needing to install

"Installation" is a whole funnel step that can be avoided by building for the mobile web, resulting in far more users reaching your service.

Con
Cannot access the mobile platform's API

Mobile web apps have a limited scope in accessing the platform's internal API. This means that they cannot fully use every feature of the mobile platform on which they are operating.

Pro
Use the same code on multiple platforms

The code you write can be re-used without much modification across the various platforms (like iOS, Android, etc) that are available today.

Pro
Gives the best of both worlds

The ease of development of mobile web combined with the performance of a native app.

Pro
The Future

Projects like React Native provides near native performance and is being adapted by many companies/developers due to ease of management.

Pro
Native apps work well with a device’s built-in features

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Pro
Developing a hybrid app is very similar to developing a website

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Con
Hybrid apps are not very efficient

Hybrid apps can never be very efficient performance-wise. This is because you are always executing the code in a browser context instead of a native one.

Pro
Open source

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Pro
Based on Dart language

Dart is a Java like language, easy to learn and startup fast for millions of Java developers.

Pro
Unlike JavaScript-based Frameworks compiles Code and therefore runs much faster

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Con
Still in development

According to the website, Flutter is still in its early stages of development.

Pro
Great developer tools debug/hotreload/analyser

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Pro
A single codebase for iOS AND Android

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Con
Does not support 32-bit iOS devices

If you plan on targeting iPhone 5, 5C or earlier, you can forget about Flutter.

Pro
Lots of good packages

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Pro
Build native mobile apps using JavaScript and React

React Native lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich mobile UI from declarative components.

Pro
A React Native app is a real mobile app

With React Native, you don't build a “mobile web app”, an “HTML5 app”, or a “hybrid app”. You build a real mobile app that's indistinguishable from an app built using Objective-C or Java. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps. You just put those building blocks together using JavaScript and React.

Pro
Don't waste time recompiling

React Native lets you build your app faster. Instead of recompiling, you can reload your app instantly. With hot reloading, you can even run new code while retaining your application state.

Pro
Use native code when you need to

React Native combines smoothly with components written in Objective-C, Java, or Swift. It's simple to drop down to native code if you need to optimize a few aspects of your application. It's also easy to build part of your app in React Native, and part of your app using native code directly - that's how the Facebook app works.

Pro
Allows you to develop native apps

React Native allows you to create native apps by generating native views with JavaScript instead of using a web wrapper.

Pro
More predictable control of the state

The one way data flow, makes it more predictable and easy to control.

Pro
Write once, run anywhere

The portability of this solution often exceeds even HTML5 since it isn't limited by browser fragmentation.

Pro
Native performance

Solutions often use low level graphics API's optimized for native games to produce the performance level of games while compiling the application to native.

Pro
Deep customization and control

These solutions usually allow the developers to customize every aspect of the app to the finest details since everything is rendered by the solution

Pro
Doesn't depend on OS whims

OS providers often change widget themes and behaviors on whims causing incompatibility and breaks in design/code. This isn't as much of a problem in such solutions.

Pro
Ability to access native functionality

Solutions in this space can still call native code directly and sometimes even embed native widgets in place

Con
Non-native look

Such solutions don't always have a 100% native look, these can range between not at all to "almost there". Some applications can provide a feel that's superior to native functionality.

Pro
Examples

Many examples in the documentation.

Pro
Provides a native experience

Through using Titanium's API and UI components similar to that of the platform's native UI, Titanium provides a native experience.

Pro
Language: Javascript

You can use Javascript to develop your cross-platform app.

Pro
Examples

Many examples in the documentation