Native vs Cross Platform Mobile App Development. Pros and cons of choosing the right platform for your best app project

A vast number of apps are incredibly popular nowadays by virtue of the increasingly growing smartphones and tablets market. Nowadays, business organizations focus on using the apps. They will help to increase brand awareness, make more contacts with consumers. Statista new reports highlight that apps will have been downloaded 353 billion times by 2021 and will produce 188.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2020.

These data demonstrate that the app market is rapidly growing. A wide range of devices, software distribution platforms catered to a range of screen sizes, hardware specs, and configurations should be kept in mind when building and implementing a software solution. Nowadays a principal question arises when choosing native or cross platform for your app. Below we have offered a review of the native vs cross platform approaches to simplify the selection process.

What is cross platform mobile development

Allows creating an app by using a single language/toolset, and deploying on a wide range of platforms in seconds. That platform is used when creating an app without strict specs requirements.

The cross platform app development features

Let’s take a look at some features below:

• Single code for building mobile apps for iPhone/Android-based platforms.
• Created with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
• Integrated with existing JSP,.NET infrastructure.
• Embedded features such as GPS, camera, etc.
• Single-page architecture generates self-contained web apps that execute locally on the device.
• Apps adapt to different resolutions, sizes, aspect ratios, etc.
• Build for desktop, tablet, and other devices.

Pros and cons of cross platform mobile development

Here below we have considered the advantages and drawbacks of the cross platform app approach.

Let’s dive into its advantages:

1. With increasing mobile penetration, an app running on both platforms or converting an app has a huge market potential.

2. Multiple media used with encapsulated messages to target potential users/consumers in a more simple way.

3. Maintaining and deploying changes when developing one single application running across all approaches is faster, as updates can sync very fast.

4. The overall app design can be maintained across a diverse range of platforms if there is a single code that runs on the software.

5. Proper tools usage allows writing a code in HTML5, converting to different mobile platforms or approaches.

Now dive into its disadvantages:

1. Any changes to the app (fixed issue or added capability/feature) require a full app retesting.

2. Strongly influenced cost, with some tendency to increase related to requirements gathering, analysis, and high-level design.

3. ‘Runtime’ component and the potential overhead introduced into the compiled code if the tool does not adjust the generated code optimally that will double the app size affecting on downtime, data cost, and client’s experience.

4. The native plug-ins provide an access to the functionality on a particular platform which cannot be implemented into the system.

5. Lags, inability to integrate smoothly with the hardware/software devices functions lead to the delays in performance.

Also, you can read: 12 key features for your great mobile application

What is native application development

Used to create a software by applying the main language/tool/framework for the targeted platform with integrated development environments. Objective-C/Swift, XCode, Eclipse, Java/Kotlin, Android Studio, Visual Studio, C# are languages and tools applied when building Windows-based, Android-based, iOS-based apps natively.

The native app development features

• Extremely speedy graphics.
• Double taps, pinch-spread, compound user interface (UI) gestures.
• Built-in, address book, geolocation, camera, etc. native device features; encrypted storage.
• Highly interactive reporting, or intensely computational algorithms for converting photos/ sounds.
• Huge documentation base (nearly 3,000 books on iOS/Android development, online articles, blog posts, technical threads, tutorials, etc.).
• Flexibility in terms of responding to hard keys (Android’s search button, volume control).
• Interacts with other apps and offers widgets on the initial page.

Pros and cons of the native app development

Mentioned advantages and disadvantages below will help you to identify what typically better suits your business.

Let’s delve into its advantages:

1. Distributing through stores (Google/Apple) that is crucial to organizations that are interested in mass consumer distribution.

2. Offering high-quality animations/graphics if a business needs a highly graphical application.

3. Most developers have a fair idea of how iOS/Android development tools function to streamline the development process.

4. Avoiding or eliminating authentication issues, and setting up an optimized and personalized experience for end users.

5. Running directly on the platform, without third-parties or abstraction layers that offer the highest performance.

6. Best runtime optimizations.

Now have a look at its disadvantages:

1. Offered benefits in graphics, app store distribution and device integration require large investments.

2. No portability as building one-based platform app excludes all others, yet building for all approaches requires significant time and resources.

3. Need more future maintenance and updates to every next platform releases.

4. Cost-dependenсу based on complexity while more promising and winning strategy in the future.

Also, you can read: How to build a hotel booking app

Bottom line

Currently, companies are focusing on delivering rich mobile app experiences to their end users. So it is crucial to take into account the key criteria when selecting native vs cross platform. They are a great performance, huge functionality, excellent user experience, reasonably-priced development cost.

You should look through to identify how beneficial cross platform and native development, analyze their options before taking the final decision of what approach is a good fit. DDI Development company has a vast technical background in building the apps. Let us know about your idea and we will offer you a digital solution for your business based on your priorities and expectations.