At this point, no one is in any doubt that we live in a world dominated by technology. Smartphones play a very important role in our lives and that is why the mobile market, as well as that of mobile application development technologies, is growing. One of the first questions that someone asks when they want to create an app is what tool to use. Should I make a native or hybrid app? It is a very important decision and can be a key factor in achieving the success you are looking for.
Next, we will review the most used technologies that will allow you to understand the differences and help you lean towards one or the other.
Native Development
It is very important to make it clear that the main difference between a native app and a hybrid app is not how they are programmed, but how they run on the device. Therefore, a very common confusion is to think that if we do not use Swift or Kotlin we are not developing a native application. Swift vs Kotlin is a trending topic among developers these days.
IOS With Swift
It is the programming language offered by Apple for the development of applications that work on its platforms: iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and iPadOS. Although its main advantage is performance, it is essential to bear in mind that applications developed with this language will only work on the platforms mentioned. Therefore, if you are thinking that your application should work on iOS and Android, you should know that you will need to duplicate code and programmers.
Android With Kotlin
This language allows you to create high-quality, high-performance native apps on all platforms supported by Android: smartphones, televisions, watches, etc. Its main disadvantage is the same as applications developed with Swift. Duplication of efforts, equipment, and code. Since 2017 Kotlin is considered by Google as a first-level language for Android development.
Hybrid development: technologies for cross-platform mobile application development
Going back to the introduction of the previous section, the term “hybrid” is usually used to talk about any application not developed with Swift or Kotlin. However, in the strict sense of the term, applications developed with some frameworks should not be considered hybrid applications, the correct name would be “cross-platform applications”.
As you can imagine, the great advantage of these solutions is the lowering of development and maintenance costs. Since starting from the same language (Javascript or Dart) we get a specific application for iOS and Android devices.
Ionic
First of all, we have ionic, probably the most popular framework that allows us to develop cross-platform applications. It helps us build apps with HTML, CSS3, and Javascript using the full potential of web development technologies. The big difference from other frameworks like React Native is that Ionic renders the UI in a browser. The result obtained with this framework is really good. Since there are several comparison studies that justify that it is a myth that Ionic offers lower performance compared to other solutions.
Flutter
Next, we find Flutter, a tool developed by Google for the development of cross-platform applications. It is based on Dart and although it was presented in 2015, it was not released until 2018. A great advantage over other solutions is that the developed application can work on up to 4 platforms: iOS, Android, Web, and Desktop. It is without a doubt the technology for developing mobile applications that is growing the most at the moment. Counting on a large community of developers that do not stop growing and contributing their grain of sand.
React Native
It is a framework created by Facebook in 2015 for the development of cross-platform apps. Like Ionic, it also uses Javascript, but it does so under the guise of orchestrating platform-specific user interface (UI) controls. Although great performance is achieved with this development tool, it is not fully integrated with native systems. So on certain occasions, it will be necessary to touch native code.
And many more…
In the end, we can conclude that there are many ways that we can use to build an application, be it in an Android, iOS, or both environment. Choose the method that best suits your real needs.
