Native apps vs Hybrid apps

Those who become experts in web development usually do so by learning from their predecessors. Reading and following the right knowledge can always make it easier to get solid results. When you are considering to develop a mobile app, It’s better to have all the facts, information and skills required through experience or education. Then, the decision of developing an app depends on your business objectives and overall goals, this decision can “MAKE or BREAK” the success of your strategy, so every choice and decision has to be perfect.

We’ve observed that from the last few years, web applications encouraged a great unbundling of software. Whether you are making hybrid apps, or native apps or web apps, it should always be kept in mind that it should be scalable, responsive, rapid, secure and customizable so that it can meet client’s business strategies and needs.

Before we dive into the discussion of hybrid apps vs native apps, we should know how UI/UX is important in mobile app development. UI and UX are often thought of as the same thing. It’s a felony in the world of designing. We should know what is the role of UI/UX in mobile app development.

UI or User Interface is the way how a user interacts with any mobile application. It includes the overall look and feel of the app and emphasizes on the presentation of the app. UX or User Experience is what you experience while using the app. The whole idea behind the concept of UX is to create an app or a system that provides the best experience to its users.

Before the actual app development gets underway, you’ve got to decide how you’ll develop your app, either it would be a hybrid app or a native app, and whatever the decision will be initially, it will impact the final product. So, the decision should be driven by all the knowledge that we have.

Native App:

A native application is one which is created and coded for a specific mobile platform in its native programming languages that includes iOS (Swift or Objective C), Windows OS (C#) and Android (Java or Kotlin). Every platform has different guidelines and these guidelines have to be followed when we are designing an application, as all these platforms are different in terms of graphics styles, effects, topography, visual effects etc.

Advantages Of Native App:

• As Friendly As your “BFF”: If any app failed to start at the first attempt then only 16% people stick to the second attempt, So it’s necessary to make that good impression. Native apps are intuitive for the user to learn and react and user experience should always be of utmost importance.
• “Buttery” Smooth Performance: In native mobile app development, separate programming languages are used for different platforms and hence the native app offers much more lucid and smooth performance when compared to hybrid apps.
• Z+ Security: In a native app, highly efficient hardware resources are used. And in order to protect the user data, full efficiency of the resource hardware is needed, and only native applications can provide the required highest level of security and thus protect your data.
• The biggest advantage of native apps is that if it’s developed properly, then it can run without an error on the specific device and can normally access all the functionalities of the particular device easily. Nevertheless, all the above advantages do come with the following disadvantages too.

Disadvantages of Native app:

• Time-Consuming at the time of Development: Native apps take more time than hybrid app at the time of development, considering you’re developing an app for all platforms, you would have to code in two different languages for 2 different platforms: Android and iOS.
• Higher Cost: Since the applications have to be coded for two different platforms, the cost of development is higher than that of hybrid apps.

Hybrid App:

As the word itself suggests, a hybrid application combines the elements of both native as well as web application. It is designed to run on multiple platforms. Basically, it is a web app put together using HTML5, CSS, and Javascript, and wrapped in a native container.

Advantages of Hybrid App:

• Low maintenance: The content of the hybrid apps can be modified and updated as many times as you like. Basically, they are based on ionic framework, i.e. one code is adequate for multiple platforms without rewriting any code, and thus it is easy to maintain.
• Low Cost: If you are tight on budget, then the hybrid apps come as a rescue. In hybrid app development, the actual coding is done only once for all the platforms i.e. Android, iOS and web. You don’t have to hire multiple teams, and thus it cuts down the development cost.
• Market your product “ASAP”: In this competitive world, one idea can hit more than one people, so if you want to reach out a particular audience as soon as possible, then the hybrid app is the best option.

Disadvantages Of Hybrid App:

• Performance: In the hybrid mobile applications, an extra layer is added between the source code and the target mobile platform, and this leads to loss in the performance.
• Debugging: Debugging in hybrid application can be difficult as well as a very lengthy task. As developers don’t have deep knowledge of the targeted platforms, and there’s one extra layer at the time of coding, it makes finding bugs extremely difficult.

‘Facebook’ shifted its mobile application from HTML5 to Native. Mark Zuckerberg said in one of his statements that “The biggest mistake we’ve made as a company is betting on HTML5 over native.”

Both the applications, either it’s native or hybrid, come with their own benefits and flaws. According to one’s business need, you can opt for whatever you want keeping in mind all the advantages and disadvantages.