Mobile Application Development

Native mobile application development is a process of building a mobile app exclusively for a single device, operating system, or platform. Native mobile applications are built with programming languages and frameworks that are directly supported or specific to a single platform. For example, we can develop a native app for Android using Java or Kotlin which are specific development tools for the Android platform. Also, iOS native apps can be built using Swift and Objective-C.

Hybrid mobile application development involves the use of standard web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML – to build mobile apps. Contrary to native apps, hybrid mobile applications run on a web container which provides a browser runtime and a bridge for native device APIs. However, hybrid apps are packaged as every other installable mobile device software and runs like a native application on the device.

Native and hybrid mobile applications have their edges especially in terms of market delivery timing, resource management, scalability, maintenance, budget, robustness, and lots more. However, here are key differences between native and hybrid mobile apps which also show their pros and cons;  Native apps have the highest runtime performance when compared to hybrid apps  Native apps have direct access to device APIs while hybrid apps use middleware such as plugins and modules to access device APIs  Native apps can directly use or support all device-native features while hybrid apps have limited support for device-native features  Hybrid Apps enables the use of single code base for multiple platform (cross-platform) while native apps are platform-centric and will require multiple code base for multiple platforms  Hybrid Apps allows the use of shared code base between web and mobile apps which is not the case with native apps  Hybrid Apps are easier and cheaper to build/maintain compared to native apps