Are you planning to build a mobile app? If yes, which platform or framework will you opt for development? Native or React Native?
Some of you may feel a little bit of confusion about this topic. I can explain it. Mobile app developers usually use native tools like Android studio for developing an android app and Xcode for developing iOS apps. These are the native tools provided by Android and iOS for making apps for their OS.
But other than these tools, there are some frameworks like React Native, Flutter, Xamarin to build mobile apps. These frameworks or tools are builds by third-party provides like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.
So here in this article, we discuss the pros and cons of developing an app in native environment and using React Native framework.
Native mobile app development
The popular mobile app operating systems are Android and iOS. An OS will not complete without apps. So Android and iOS provided native tools for developing mobile apps for their OS platform. These tools usually called Integrated Development Environment(IDE).
Android Studio is the IDE for developing apps for Android and Xcode is the IDE for developing apps for iOS. Let’s look into these tools deep.
Android Studio
Android studio is the official IDE for developing apps for Android OS. We can only code an app using a programming language. Java/ Kotlin programming language is used to build mobile apps for android using Android studio.
Xcode
To build apps for iOS, we need to use Xcode. It’s the official IDE for iOS app development. The main languages used with Xcode are Swift, Objective-C, C, and C++. But Xcode supports many other languages like C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python, Ruby, Rez, and Swift source code with a variety of programming models, including but not limited to Cocoa, Carbon, and Java.
Pros of app development using Native tools
- With the help of native development, we would be able to integrate and take advantage of all kinds of inbuilt APIs.
- If we talk about the community of native development, then we would be able to notice that their community is vast from several other frameworks communities.
- With the help of Native development, you are going to use and take advantage of some highly efficient languages such as Swift Objective-C, Java, Kotlin, etc.
- We get the latest official updates.
Cons of app development using Native tools
- The first and most significant disadvantage is that we would have to write code for both Android and iOS applications separately.
- We would have to invest more time in creating mobile apps with Native development.
- To code iOS and Android apps, we have to learn two separate programming languages.
- Maintaining code for both platform is difficult
Mobile app development using React Native
First of all, I would like to inform you that, there are a lot of cross-platform development frameworks like React Native. But here in this article, I am taking only React Native.
React Native is a cross-platform mobile app development framework created by Facebook. This means the code written in React Native can be used for both Android and iOS apps.
We only need to learn JavaScript to code an iOS or Android app using React Native.
Pros of app development using React Native
- With the help of this framework, we would not have to write code for different platforms. Because we would be able to use one single codebase for both the platforms efficiently.
- We would be able to save a lot of our development time with the help of React native. This is because we would not have to write your code for both the platforms.
- Here at this platform, we would be able to find ease in developing mobile application because of similar usable options related to web development.
- As this framework is open source, which means that we would be able to take advantage of a vast community that is going to help us anywhere anytime.
- It offers significant changes in the checking feature that is known as hot reloading. With the help of this feature, we would be able to have a look at the changes made in an application in real-time.
Cons of app development using React Native
- we miss the opportunity to use native official APIs.
- We have to wait for new features that are officially announced for native tools.
- New OS updates may affect apps build using React Native.
Summary
Here we have come to the end of this article in which we discussed and tried to find out which one is the best for mobile app development from React Native and Native. By having a look at all the pros and cons of these frameworks, we find out that React Native is a good option if you want to get your work done within less time and with low investment. Otherwise, if we are looking to build apps with 100 percent perfection and performance, and using native official APIs, it’s better to choose native app development tools.
