Hybrid Apps v/s Native Apps
In today’s world, mobile app development is not just limited to standard languages and SDKs meant for single operating systems. With the advancement of Web Technologies, both are now reaching an inflection point which allows even web developers to build native-like apps.
The ‘Native’ world
Native just means associated with one place. This means that Native mobile apps belong to one operating system with a separate code base. Developers must use a specific language associated with that OS to make use of the API required to build these types of apps. Since the beginning of the mobile apps industry, this was the only way of building proper apps that can run on mobile devices. As the code generally gets converted to pure device level code, they are very smooth and have access to almost all features in a device. Here are a few advantages of native apps.
The good parts
- Smooth performance: Since the code gets directly compiled by the machine level compiler, the app feels and performs very fast and smooth in any sort of network situation. They provide easy development of complex apps that require a lot of performance intensive tasks such as games.
- Excellent device access: Since the native app development SDK are provided by the OS developer, native apps usually enjoy a good access to the device features as and when required. These features include various sensors present on device, push notifications, and other hardware such as camera and microphone.
- Consistent design: Most of the apps use the UI components provided in the SDK to build app layouts which make the user experience really consistent across multiple apps in a single device. This also removes the technical burden from the app developer to develop each component required separately.
- Store access: The native apps also enjoy a position in the app store, where users can download these apps and also download the updates released for the apps by the developers.
While all those features sound really soothing, there are some bad parts too which make native app development so hard and limited.
The bad parts
- No single code base: Since the apps developed is designed to work on a single platform, the same app on multiple platforms can never share a single code base for development of both platforms together. Every feature added in a single platform must be added manually for the other platform too making the app development time much longer and testing time even longer for multiple platforms.
- Language complexity: While native apps work well for a single platform, developing the same app for multiple platforms by a single developer is sometimes not feasible. This also brings with it the pain of learning a new language and SDK to work with a new platform.
It is for the above reasons that development of native apps is time taking and sometimes not feasible for multiple platforms.
While the native apps suffer problems of no single code management, web developers truly enjoy the benefits of
Write once, run anywhere concept.
But the advantages of native apps become a disadvantage for web apps in many ways. Not a smooth performance(compared to native) if the app isn’t developed correctly, not much access to the device, no ‘store’ to publish web apps.
All platforms support web browsers, and these web browsers can itself run many web apps that work the same on any platform.
But, can I enjoy both worlds?
Introducing Hybrid apps 🎉
As the name suggests, Hybrid apps are a blend between the advantages of both native and web apps. With hybrid apps, nearly all the cons of native apps are overcome.
Hybrid apps are built using web technologies which are wrapped in a web view using Cordova, PhoneGap and exported for required platforms separately.
This basically means you write an app in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and it runs like a native app without any of the browser interface. 🎊
These apps have a lot of advantages, some of which are given below
The good parts
- Single code base: Developers can use web languages to build the app which makes faster development and always up to date code on any platform. These apps can also be published on app stores just like any other native app.
- Easy Development: Web development languages are much easier to learn and it is even easier thanks to existing JavaScript frameworks available today. This allows new users to build mobile apps easily and also encourages web developers to reach a greater audience.
Hybrid apps have other advantages like the native apps, but nothing is best, so even this has a few disadvantages.
The bad parts
- Performance issues: Since hybrid apps aren’t natively built with the device level code, they aren’t as smooth as a native app. For simple apps, this isn’t a big issue, but for very complex apps, if not developed correctly, these apps may tend to slow down the performance.
- Inconsistent design: Since there isn’t a set standard for web design, multiple hybrid apps may have different interfaces making the end user a little confused in every app.
Apart from those minor caveats, hybrid apps are a popular choice for app development too, thanks to another layer of abstraction that gets added which makes app development so easy.
Conclusion
It is definitely worth to check out hybrid apps if you are already into native app development. Even if you are just a web developer, hybrid apps can just add app development skills in your portfolio and also make you reach a wider audience.
Hope you had a good read, do share your thoughts with me.
