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Your mind must be racing with a question, which one between native vs hybrid development can be the right choice for your business. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of native and hybrid app development approach, know the pros and cons, and settle this question once and for all.
Smartphones have become our to-go devices. We need mobile phones for everything from playing games to chatting with someone, watching movies, or enjoying music. But what is it that has hooked us all to our mobile phones? It’s mobile apps. The US adults spend nearly 90% of the time within apps, and it will be only increasing year over year. Smartphones have become all about apps now. You want to make a call – app, drop a text – app, check social media – app.
The mobile app industry is growing at a remarkable rate and showing significant growth for mobile apps’ future. Considering the ever-growing app users, seeking an app developing company is arguably the way to go for businesses if they want to expand and unlock market reach like never before. However, mobile app development is not as easy as it seems or feels. A lot goes into developing a standout mobile app, from choosing the right platform to the right framework and approach.
As we said earlier, the decision to develop a mobile app comes with many essential choices; the primary among them is the choice between hybrid vs native app development. Each of these two approaches has its own pros and cons. So without any further ado, let’s go over them in detail and find out which approach is suitable for which purpose.
What Is Native App Development?
Native app development is mobile apps developed with their platform-specific programming language. Native apps are compatible only with the corresponding mobile platform. This approach uses Kotlin or Java for Android apps and Objective-C or Swift for iOS apps. Native apps usually have better performance compared to hybrid apps.
Pros of Native App Development
- Rich User Experience and Functionality – Native apps tend to be much more intuitive. Their design easily integrates with the phone’s features, making the experience seamless than ever before.
- Better UX Standards – Native apps follow different UX/UI standards for creating Android or iOS apps respectively, making it easier for users to understand and navigate the apps more flawlessly.
- Fast and Responsive – Apps built with a native approach offer the fastest, most reliable, and most responsive user experience.
- Wider Device Functionality – Native makes tapping into the camera, microphone, compass, accelerometer, swipe gestures, etc., super easy, covering up the innovative functionalities.
- Personalization – Native development is one of the ways to keep the design at a high level and deliver a tailored experience to all your product users.
- Highly-Secured – Native apps emphasize users’ data protection. The powerful software used in this approach makes the developed apps highly secure.
Cons of Native App Development
- More Than One Codebase – iOS apps will not run on Android’s code and vice versa, so with the native approach, different codebases for every platform would be needed.
- Expensive Development – As native app development requires different codebases for different operating systems, two separate developers will be required, adding extra cost.
- Time-Consuming Development – These apps require more time to be built. If you need apps for iOS and Android, you need to think about simultaneous development.
What Is Hybrid App Development?
Apps developed using web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript in combination with native elements are hybrid app development, also called cross-platform development. Emerging cross-platform frameworks play a vital role in building sleek hybrid apps. These apps are a mobile app that contains a web view. In layman’s language, cross-platform apps are platform-independent websites displayed using a native web view.
Pros of Hybrid App Development
- Multiplatform Reach – Going hybrid means you’ll create a single app for all available platforms. That means one app will work on both Android and iOS and various browsers.
- Faster to Build – Cross-platform apps are faster to build compared to the native ones because of one codebase that runs across all the platforms out there.
- Faster Go-To-Market – Built with a single codebase, hybrid apps are less complex to produce, meaning you can launch apps more quickly than native ones.
- Cost-Effective Development – If cost is concerning you, cross-platform app development is your surefire way to go. With one single codebase, the development involves less money comparatively.
- Easily Scalable – Hybrid apps are easier to scale to another platform. Once you’ve built for one platform, you can launch on another with ease.
- Easier to Change and Update – Developers don’t have to work with each platform separately, they can make changes once, and they’ll be applied to all platforms hybrid works across.
Cons of Hybrid App Development
Performance Issue – Because hybrid apps load in a browser-like component called web view, hybrid apps come with the performance issue, and this is one of the biggest disadvantages of cross-platform apps.
- Challenging Development – Cross-platform development is more challenging. Running hybrid apps appropriately on each platform generally takes loads of effort and substantial work.
- UX Suffering – Hybrid apps won’t please both the platforms in terms of the UX aspect. The differences are subtle but can be frustrating for your iOS and Android app users.
- Glitches – Another concern with cross-platform apps is that their loaded content is a bit glitchy. Sometimes the loading time is slow.
When Should You Choose a Native or Hybrid App Approach?
If your app has complex requirements with custom features and multiple functionalities, requires some IoT related functionality, or if you’re looking for a high-performing app that assures great user experience, go for native development without a second thought. If you’re aiming to build a simple app for two platforms at a limited budget price and fast access to two markets, look no further than hybrid app development. If you’re a startup, here are some pivotal reasons why you should go for hybrid app development.
Closing Thought
The debate between hybrid vs native development is never-ending as there’s a place for both and will be forever. You need to choose based on whatever fits your needs. To make the best decision of choosing between hybrid vs native approach for your app, you need to pay attention to the benefits they offer and evaluate them against your goals. We assure you, you’ll be good to go!
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