Mobile App Development is the process of creating custom software for mobile and tablet devices. We use so many mobile apps on a daily basis such as News Apps, E-Learning Apps, Social Media Apps, Work-related Apps, etc. Most of the apps fetch data from an API which is also called the backend services.
Mobile Web Apps and Native Mobile Apps are two different concepts. A mobile web app is nothing but a website that you access from your mobile browser. For example, if you access Facebook on your mobile browser by visiting https://m.facebook.com, you’re not using their mobile app. Instead, you are simply viewing their mobile website. Often, mobile apps have a better user experience than mobile web app.
When we want to build a mobile app, it is important to identify the devices to target. Simply because, mobile apps, unlike their web counterparts are not platform-agnostic. An app built for an Android device will not work on an iPhone. Because both devices use completely different Software Development Kits (SDKs) to develop the apps. However, Cross-Platform and Hybrid technologies available these days help us build for both. Read more about the factors to consider while deciding which device platform to build.
These words are widely used in mobile app development. In this section, we will learn more about each of them and understand how it differs from each other.
Don’t confuse Native with React Native. React Native is a Cross-Platform app development technology.
Cross-platform app development is a modern technology that allows developers to write the source code in a platform-agnostic programming language such as Javascript, DART, etc, and compile it to the native language of the mobile device OS. So, by writing and maintaining a single codebase, the apps can be developed for multiple device platforms. Time and Cost-cutting is one of the best advantages of cross-platform development, but at the same time, it gives similar performance as in a native app. The downside is some features may not bridge properly with the native code, thus having to build separate apps for different devices. React Native, Flutter etc are few examples of Cross-Platform technologies.
A hybrid mobile app, unlike native or cross-platform apps, is built primarily as a web app using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It is simply a website embedded inside a container and bundled as an app. The advantage is that if you already have a mobile website, it can simply be packed as a hybrid mobile app without additional development. But there are several downsides like poor performance, limited support for device-specific features, etc. Apache Cordova, Ionic, etc are few examples
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