The development of mobile applications has become a boom over the years, it is no secret that the greatest user traffic comes from mobile devices, given their ease and speed, and many actors come into play here. play a very interesting role.
Since the beginning of the web, when we had everything in one place, and until some time later, when we achieved a separation of roles (as it is now frontend and backend), we have reached a point where on the frontend side we have to think in a niche that is gaining more strength every day, the users who are going to use our application from their cell phone (around 58.99% of users will use our app from mobile devices)
What is being done to serve these users?
When this problem became evident, there were not many options for the development of applications that could be used from mobile devices, for the most part the only option was the development of native applications, which I can tell you, it has superior performance, but it is difficult and expensive to find talent that can join these projects. This is why alternatives emerged that seek to achieve partial solutions to the needs of the project, given that no solution is better or worse, everything is adaptable to the stages of the project and its specific needs.
PWA’s:
Software development services is one of the largest areas in the world of programming, this has allowed many strategies to be developed to attack this problem. By 2015, people began to talk about a term that was gaining more and more strength, PWAs, for their acronym in English, progressive web apps. PWAs are applications that run through the browser and are designed to be used mainly from mobile devices without consuming many resources. Let’s look at some of the main advantages that PWAs present:
- Does not require installation since it runs in the browser
- They can be used on any operating system that has a modern browser (Safari, Google, Edge…)
- They have the advantage that with a single code they can target multiple systems, which reduces development cost and time
- Web positioning, can be optimized more easily for different search engines
- Depending on how the PWA is designed, in some cases assumptions can be made for when there is a disconnection from the network, what we know as Network independence
- Responsive design, the development of PWAs is achieved through technologies such as media queries and viewports, which allows more accurate management of the different screens that the user may have (Desktop, tablet, mobile or any other)
- Modern PWAs have options that allow, from your own browser, to generate shortcuts from your mobile device, giving the appearance of having an app installed, which considerably improves the user experience and access to the same application.
PWAs are without a doubt a very good alternative for projects that require this type of cross-platform, where the reach of users covers both the web and mobile devices, without the need to access very specific resources.
Here are some examples of companies that currently have a PWA!
- starbucks
- bmw
- Spotify
Native apps:
Currently we have a very wide range of mobile devices, and these in turn have internal operating systems; some dominate over others in the market due to their particular characteristics. Each operating system has its own functionalities that adapt to different devices (hardware) and provide users with different visual and functional experiences.
Although there are different operating systems for mobile devices, here we will talk about those that dominate the market. We are referring to Android and iOS, which are the leaders today, so much of native mobile development focuses on these two operating systems.
One of the main qualities that native development has is great performance over any other type of development, this is because its compilation is done in the source code of the operating system, which provides a higher level of performance. Additionally, all native APIs are present, so all system resources can be accessed.
The development of native applications by custom software development company has been evolving. On iOS it was coded in Objective-C, but today Swift is used, a slightly more intuitive programming language with a less steep learning curve. Something similar happens in Android, where initially Java was used, but today Kotlin is mainly used. Although it is advisable to work with modern languages, knowledge of the old ones is required, since in many cases they are necessary for the creation of very specific modules that allow high levels of performance to be achieved.
Why do we need native development?
- Advanced customization
- Greater security
- Scalability
- Better performance
- Ease of release in store
- Bug Reduction / Error Handling
- Improvement in UX
Most companies that have an app reach a point where they need to make this type of migration to native development, which is why possibly any of the top companies in the world that you have in mind already have a native app, some examples of companies with native apps are:
- Pokemon GO
- waze
- tesla
- Spotify
Hybrid mobile app development:
One of the main drawbacks of native development is the difficulty of finding talent specialized in these languages, which makes finding a development group with these skills a difficult task, which carries a great cost given the low supply of developers. In addition to this, if it is already difficult to get a team to develop an app on a specific operating system, it will be more difficult and expensive to do it for two.
PWAs are quite useful, but as we have already seen, there comes a point where they fall short in terms of access to the device’s own resources, which limits the application. At this point we already understand that native development is the winner in terms of performance, but it is also the most expensive and time-consuming development.
For these reasons, new initiatives have been emerging to provide the community with tools and technologies that allow multi platform development (regardless of the operating system). In the world of multiplatform development, alternatives such as React Native, created by Facebook, are exciting, which has been one of the most widely adopted technologies, given that anyone who uses React js on the web can migrate to a project in React Native without any problems. difficulties. We also have the case of Flutter, created by Google, which has a very friendly syntax and good performance.
Applications that are built with cross-platform technologies are incredible, since they allow us access to the device’s own resources and offer acceptable performance. Every day, more and more projects are created from the beginning with technologies of this type. Many times, projects in their initial phase are created with these tools, but when they reach a sufficiently mature level, and the demand for the application requires higher levels of performance, migrations to native technologies are usually made; Even so, in most cases hybrid development has greater advantages for development teams.
Currently many companies are betting on this type of development, some of these are:
- Microsoft Teams
- Discord
- Evernote
- Uber
- JustWatch
Hybrid development is undoubtedly growing and many projects are adding to these technologies. For the development of cross platform mobile applications, the most used technologies are Flutter and React Native.Even so, we are beginning to see that many other proposals are added to the ecosystem.
Conclusions
We cannot suggest one of the three options as the only and best one over the others, because each of these has different applications depending on what each project demands. The community is increasingly tending towards the development of hybrid applications, always thinking that the applications can scale more easily than PWAs and the development is less expensive than creating separately for two different operating systems. PWAs are a very good option when you know well what is required in advance and it is observed that the PWA can meet all the requirements of the project. Finally, if the project demands a lot of performance, access to very specific device resources, or simply requires programming for a specific operating system, then the native option is the best option.
