Overview of TOP 7 React Native Mobile Apps
The pace of life is constantly increasing and we need that all the operations could be done within few minutes and with the help of a device that we always have next to us. That is why more and more startupers think of launching mobile apps.
Meantime, they are always in search of cheap and time saving ways to build the apps. With two operating systems dominating in the mobile world — iOS and Android it was only the matter of time to create a platform that would allow developers to build apps that can be used for both systems. That was the time when React Native was created. What started like one of Facebook’s projects in 2013 later turned into one of the most popular and fast developing platforms.
If you still hesitate whether to choose React Native for your next app, just take a look at the examples of the best apps written on it. You’ll understand you are using React Native very day and that you actually love it!
Facebook and Facebook Ads
As it has been mentioned above, Facebook was the first to create app therefore it’s not surprising that they are using React Native for their own apps.
The first place where React Native was applied was the Facebook Ads Manager for iOS. It was launched in 2015 only 6 months after they started working on it. As is has proved to be stable and reliable, Facebook decided to start developing Facebook Ads Manager for Android and open their first React Native Android team in London.
Since that time the adoption of React Native by the programming community has been faster than its creators actually expected and it is still continuing to grow.
As for Facebook app itself, the integration of React Native in it started from conversion of the Events Dashboard for iOS. Their initial goal was to check how fast the app would perform. It proved to be the perfect choice and enabled to make the work of Events Dashboard twice faster as it used to be.
In 2016 Instagram engineers started to think of implementing React Native to their app. To implement a new technology to already existing app was quite a big challenge that is why the Instagram team decided to start the implementation in the easiest way — the Push notifications. It didn’t require to build much navigation infrastructure as the UI was quite simple.
Using React Native the team managed to deliver the app much faster for both iOS and Android apps. The Instagram team also say that they are going to continue working with the platform.
AirBnB
Another worldwide popular app that uses React Native is AirBnB. Much of AirBnB has been rewritten in React Native so far. Leland Richardson a Software engineer at AirBnB stated that they have about 60 engineers that work with React Native on regular basis.
As for the main advantages he says that React is extremely reusable. He also points out the React makes the code very easy to refactor and iterate on.
At the same time, Leland Richardson confesses that the main obstacle they faced that React Native is quite difficult to learn at first.
UberEATS
The greatest problem that UberEATS engineers faced was that unlike Uber app, UberEATS needed an additional dashboard for the restaurants. The existing board didn’t provide with the necessary functions (like sound notifications). Since the team already had a great experience of working with React but had lack of experience in iOS and Android development, they decided to move to React Native. The demo version of the app was able to deliver the desirable result.
Though, React Native still covers only a small part of the app, UberEATS engineers state that their experience of using React Native for app was very positive.
Health Tracking by Gyroscope
Gyroscope is an app that allows you to track different aspects of your life and presents the collected data. It even proposes you the food to eat taking into account how much you exercised. And if you are wearing Apple watch or FitBit, it integrates your heartbeat through the day in its reports. Moreover, it can even track your sleep and tell you if you’ve had enough sleep or not.
Gyroscope’s team has previously had an experience of designing iPhone apps, however they didn’t have any experience of writing the code for it. Therefore, React Native was a perfect choice. Like Anand Sharma, the app founder said: “If React Native didn’t exist, I would have needed to wait for someone else to do the development. A side project like this would have probably never started”. And he adds: “At least for our very simple application, it got the job done and helped us move much faster than we could have otherwise”.
Available: iOS
Discord
Another example of how React Native can perform at its full capacity is Discord — the free voice and chat app for gamers, sharing 98% of code for both iOS and web apps.
In the article “Using React Native: One Year Later” Fanghao (Robin) Chen repeats the words of Discord’s tech lead that he said at the very beginning of their work: “React Native is the future. We will use it to build out iOS app from scratch as soon as it becomes public”.
One of the obvious advantages of the platform was that it allowed to build v.1.0 of the app within two weeks upon the existing front-end infrastructure.
The future of React Native at Discord looks rather promising. As Chen says: “React Native brings the mobile app development to a new level within our team”.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg is an app that provides the users with global business and finance news, and market data from world’s most trusted sources.
Before using React Native, Bloomberg’s team had to spend a significant amount of time for developing iOS and Android versions of apps. But after testing a prototype made in React Native, Bloomberg decided to use it for consumer app. Due to React Native, the Bloomberg engineers were able to create iOS and Android app simultaneously sharing most of the code they wrote. It helped to speed the development and took only five months to build the app.
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