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Is Native Mobile Development Better Or Hybrid?

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There is no absolute better, it depends on what is best for you and your company and venture. Weighing this with the pros and cons, native development sounds like the right choice. But you’re smarter than that, and you realize that a method that works for one app may not apply to another. Some may remain skeptical about hybrid development summed up by Java’s “Compile Once, Run Anywhere” phrase. The pros and cons of native development and hybrid development are listed below.

Native App Development

Ever since there was even an App store, to begin with, Native application development has been the standard in mobile. Native applications are written specifically for mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android.

Pros

Due to all of the app’s elements being included in a single native package, native applications tend to have fast graphics with fluid animations built in.

Native applications can access exclusive native APIs in the phone’s operating system such as push notifications, cameras, and in-app purchases, which would otherwise be prohibited, or provided in a cumbersome manner on a mobile web application.

If you’re developing a native application for iPhone, they have many resources, development tools, and reading material to help you out.

Apple definitely wants to push its brand whenever possible, so they have provided UI components from its UI libraries to make development a little less painful.

Cons

If you intend to also publish your app to a different app store, your application will need to be rewritten in order to be a native app on another mobile OS. This usually delays features for the next platform in development. For example, Snapchat implemented features such as reverse video a lot later on Android than on the Snapchat app for iOS. This is not to do with any one platform being better than another.

However, Snapchat was released on iOS first, so it usually receives new features first.
It is a time-consuming process to create a native app for both iOS and Android, so it will cost you.

Native platforms define their own rules and frameworks and inherit little from other disciplines, requiring more investment. For many businesses with existing development (ie. web, desktop app, etc) personnel, would be unable to utilize these existing resources towards a native mobile application?

Native applications typically require you to define phones and tablets separately or define individual layouts. While this step is available and repeated on the web with CSS media queries, it’s usually a single layout and multiple style sheets. The effort for native is non-transferable between iOS, Android, and others since each operating system is locked into proprietary tooling.

Hybrid App Development

Hybrid application development can do everything HTML5 does except it also has some features of Native applications. They do this by deploying a native harness or wrapper to act as a bridge between platforms and access native features. This wrapper can either be created manually or generated by a program.

Pros

Hybrid Mobile Apps don’t have that “mobile web” browser look because they can include native hardware features.

The content of a hybrid app is portable and just requires a native harness to run it.

Since software like Ionic or React provides frameworks to make a webpage act like a native application, they can be distributed on the App Store.

Developers have the option to package the app locally or through a server, which provides access both online and offline.

Cons

Since hybrid applications are relatively new in the Mobile Development space, automatic generation may not work on all devices, which can get especially complicated when trying to accommodate different Android phones.

Since hybrid app development is still new there is not as much support for any troubleshooting for unprecedented problems that may occur.

Several vendors have started offering to build platforms for hybrid frameworks, simplifying the building knowledge that was previously required for multi-platform. Just be prepared to pay for it.
If the App Store is able to recognize that your application is not truly native, it may be denied from the App Store.

If your app can’t be published on the App Store, then that would reduce your monetization and distribution potential since purchase price or in-app purchases are native features.

Since most hybrid apps are written in HTML5, they rely on the system’s browser to support the wrapper for running the application, which presents a supplantable resource that external parties could exploit beyond the normal security afforded to a native application. This heavily hitches behavior to a system component that could be replaced on customized/rooted devices, creating very difficult situations to isolate and support for errors or exploits.

When a new iOS version is released, hybrid developers would have to rely on a third party before they are able to design hybrid applications on the new OS.
Lack of the pure UI assets of iOS or Android may result in a slower performance of the app in general. It may not look like a mobile website, but it may feel like it at certain points.

PhoneGap, Cordova, and others generate native by-products, meaning you still have to support and manage the individual packages in the app stores. Keeping versions in sync across platforms while addressing individual bugs can be more difficult than a pure native approach.