The number of mobile apps is increasing so fast in the last few years, right now there are 4.4 million mobile apps deployed in both the Appstore and Google play. Many businesses are building mobile apps to target their potential customers and clients because the user experience on mobile apps is usually better than on the web.
The first decision that you will have to make when you want to build a mobile application is to choose between cross and native platform mobile app development. Choosing one of these platforms will be based on a lot of factors such as time, cost, user experience…
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Native platform app development means that the app will be developed for one platform (Android, IOS or Windows) . The mobile application will be built using programming languages that are specific to a single platform, for example JAVA and Kotlin for android, Swift and Objective-c for ios.
One of the best features about native app development is that it has direct access to the hardware elements such as microphone, camera, sensors… That means native mobile application languages are so close to the hardware part so the performance of the application will be so high and improved. Native apps have a set of UI components that are reusable and customizable, and they also have better user experience because of their ability to access the hardware much faster.
Let's talk a little bit about the advantages of native mobile app development.
One of the most important factors for the success of a mobile application is the performance and the speed because if the performance is high and the app is so fast then the user experience will be great which means the users will love the app and will absolutely come back to use it again and again.
Native apps are great when it comes to user experience because they provide a very fast, interactive and high performance experience.
Native mobile apps can be as big as you want and can hold many many functionalities and features, so they are more scalable because of the flexibility in the resources (hardware) management and accessibility.
Native mobile apps have much more features because of the access to API devices without any problems and they also have offline features that can be used in some cases.
Let's talk a little bit about the advantages of native mobile app development.
As we described earlier native apps are specific to one platform (Android or IOS) which means you need to hire teams to develop your mobile app, one for android and the other for IOS, so that will cost you more money.
Native mobile apps take more time to be developed because you will have to write two versions of code (Android and IOS).
Mobile app development is a very big field that involves many technologies, and these technologies are separated by the platform they are used to develop apps for.
For android app development there are many technologies that are used everyday to develop great mobile applications.
These are the best and the most used technologies in android development.
IOS app development also has many technologies that are used to build great applications.
These are some of the best technologies in IOS development.
Cross platform app development refers to developing one single application that will be deployed in all platforms (Android, IOS). These kinds of apps are developed using technologies like Ionic, React Native and Flutter. At the end the application can be deployed on both android and ios.
Cross platform apps take much less time and cost than native mobile apps because they are much easier to develop and with one base code you can generate the same application for multiple platforms. The problem with cross platform apps is that if you don’t master it then you may affect the performance of the application in the process of development.
Our mobile app development team have over three years of experience in cross platform mobile app development especially with Ionic. Check it out
Unlike native apps, cross-platform apps have one code base that can generate one mobile app for both platforms (Android and IOS) which means cross-platform apps are not time-consuming.
Since you need one code to be written then you need to hire one team or developer to build your mobile application with the both versions available Android and IOS, which means you won’t pay a lot to have your app.
Cross platform apps do not access to native UX features and functionalities, which means the quality of user experience in cross platform mobile apps will be a little bit lower.
While developing a cross-platform mobile app you might find some difficulties accessing the elements of the device such as camera, microphone, sensors…
In the end if you did it right you will absolutely have access to all hardware elements of your device but that won't be as easy as in the native side.
Cross-platform apps are developed using some non-native programming languages. Therefore, after finishing the development phase and you want to deploy your application, there will be a phase that you will go through which is transformation of your code from cross technologies to native ones.
In order to answer this question we need to list factors that you need to take on consideration when choosing between Native or cross-platform app development.
The first thing that you should take into consideration when choosing between native and cross-platform app development is whether our app will be complex or not. If you need a simple mobile app that needs only some functionalities then going with the cross-platform side is the right choice. But, if you need a heavy mobile app that needs a lot of big features and functionalities then the right choice is to go with the native side.
Developing a cross-platform mobile application will always cost much less than native mobile application because cross-platform apps generate multiple apps for multiple platforms based on code. However, native mobile app development generates one application for one platform.
Time is so important, so if you need a mobile app as soon as possible then going with cross-platform app dev might be the right choice because that won’t take as much as the native will do.
Performance and UX are among the most important factors of the success of a mobile application because they always make the user come back to the app. If you need a performant mobile application then I will suggest you go with the native mobile app development.
At the end native and cross platforms are two different components that you can use in order to build your mobile application and they have different advantages and disadvantages. The right way to choose between them is to list all your project’s requirements and follow the rules that we described in this article.
If you are interested in the factors that will make your mobile app successful then check out our blog post about that here.
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