I have been interested in learning to develop mobile applications for a long time. This interest comes to me from the data known every day about the growth of the massive use and the infinity of ideas and projects that exist.
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To cite some data that arises, 68% of the people worldwide use mobile devices, of which 77% use the Android operating system and 14% use iOS. 78% of consumers check their phones within the hour after waking up, an average of 50 times per day and 80% of users have smartphones. Mobile devices are proving to be an indispensable part of daily life.
By 2022, it is expected that 70% of the interactions they will carry out on the web will be carried out by mobile devices. Users increasingly use mobiles and prefer to use the apps rather than visit the sites optimized for these small screens.
During the research about mobile application development, I found that there are two ways to go. One is the development of applications with “native code,” and the other is the development of ”hybrid applications.”
I write this blog to briefly understand the differences between these two paths, the advantages and disadvantages of each other and additional information that will help you if you ever have to choose one of these paths.
Native Mobile Apps
Devices’ native programming language is used for its development. They are Objective C or Swift for iOS, Java for Android and .Net for Windows Phone. It is a 100% platform-dependent model, and the Apps are not portable. You have to develop one per platform.
For native mobile apps, it is necessary to learn about three platforms, three languages and developing a version of the application for each platform is required. This situation results in native Apps are in the worst position in terms of development cost, tripling this development cost compared to hybrids.
Advantages
- Good performances.
- The native code is still faster than javascript and HTML. This is important to develop applications with high graphic demand, such as games.
- It has no dependencies with third parties.
- Great library of native resources.
- Unlike a hybrid application, you don’t need to install any plug-in to work with the native libraries.
Disadvantages
- Only for Android and iOS platforms developments.
- High development time. Long development cycles.
- It handles multiple languages.
- Native talent is hard to find
Hybrid Mobile Apps
They are applications developed using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, deployed within a native container like Phonegap / Cordova, which provides access to the capabilities of the device in a totally neutral way with respect to the operating system. It is a neutral model in relation to the platform and with maximum portability. It is very difficult to differentiate a hybrid application from a native one.
Hybrid applications are able to access almost all the native features of the device, such as the camera or the gyroscope, using open-sources plugins like those of Cordova (very popular). This adds an additional level of complexity to our application that is considered problematic.
Because of the existence of the web, it is indisputable that the abundance of resources in HTML, CSS and JavaScript widely exceeds other platforms, especially if we consider the lower learning curve of this alternative.
Advantages
- Fastest development in multi-platform.
- Better support: The web developer community is 30 times larger than the native app developer community
Disadvantages
- Higher consumption of resources (The growth of the power of the devices makes this factor less considered).
- For the use of 3D games or use of general 3D is not the best option.
General Differences Between Native and Hybrid Mobile Apps
| Natives | Hybrids | |
| Skill | Objective-c, iOS SDK, Java Android SDK | HTML,CSS y JS + some framework |
| Distribution Method | AppStores | AppStores, Desktop Browser, Desktop App(Electron), Mobile Browser |
| Development speed | Slow | Fast |
| Maintenance Cost | Medium / High | Low/Medium |
| Graphic Performance | High | Medium/Low |
| App Performance | High | Depends on the use case |
| Access to Native functionality | Complete Library | Almost complete library through plugins |
| Consistency between different platforms and devices | Requires separate app | YES, with the same code |
In conclusion, it can be said that one path is not better than another but are different. We should analyze before starting development, considering which is most convenient for the project. Equally, the native code development path should be the last path to choose because there are more advantages in terms of cost and time of hybrid applications over native ones.
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