Android and IOS have been gaining popularity in recent times and many companies are looking for ways to create apps which can be used for different devices and purposes. The business of making native mobile apps is growing steadily. Almost everyone has a cell phone, so the number of potential customers is practically unlimited. Almost everything now has an application because of this. Planning and creating applications can be done in many different ways. It is possible to use native techniques, such as the way Java makes Android applications, and Swift and Objective-C are used to create iPhone applications. They help people and frequently get new development features. Instead, they use React Native Flutter frameworks that work on more than one platform.

What is cross-platform application development?

“Cross-platform app development” divides it into two groups: hybrid development and native application development.

Cross-platform development applications can be made with a single code base and work almost the same on iPhone and Android operating systems. Hybrid Development

Hybrid development applications use web technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. This means that hybrid development applications work on a revision of the target platform and share some code across platforms. Web View applications are hybrid applications that use embedded web views to display the user interface (UI) and can be modified with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

Web View apps may need more work to achieve the same features as native mobile development apps because they can’t access the device’s API as quickly out of the box. Because hybrid development applications can use APIs specific to each platform, they may look the same on both platforms, but function differently. 

Native application development

The development of native mobile applications, such as those for Android or iOS, is done with the SDKs for the platforms they will run on. The user interface is made with specific widgets and libraries for each platform. They do not share any code between platforms; the code they share is explicitly written for the platform being used.

Native application development costs more to do and takes more time to add new features because programmers need more time to learn the APIs of the target platforms. However, they provide a better user experience than hybrid apps and feel more like they belong on each device. Generally, it is best to build your application with the native development tool for the platforms you will be using, such as Android Studio or Xcode.

React Native: Best cross-platform framework

React Native is the best cross-platform framework right now. They use the same code on all platforms and provide a highly customizable and responsive UI, using native applications and widgets.

Like Google did the Flutter framework and Facebook did React, they have large teams working on the SDKs, documentation, support and other parts of their platforms.

React Native apps have an advantage over traditional native app development because they can share much of their software across platforms.

Instagram says that more than 90% of its React Native feature code is identical for iOS and Android.

React Native

JavaScript is used to run the popular open-source React Native framework. It mainly focuses on native rendering of applications mainly compatible with smartphones and iOS. React Native is made with JavaScript, often JSX, and an XML-like syntax. Social media giant Facebook supports it, and more than 50 dedicated engineers are working on the framework.

Here are some interesting facts about how React Native is doing well in the market:

• Reports say that 38% of creators use RN to develop applications that work across multiple platforms. (Data from Statista)
• 14.51 percent of creators prefer React Native because it has native tools and libraries.
• 58.8% of creators use React Native, which shows its popularity.

Few ways to use React Native

• Cross-platform applications are easy to make.
• Quick models can be made 
• Applications with a more direct user interface
• Applications with parts that can be used again

How many popular applications are made with React Native?

• Facebook has made a better and more useful mobile user interface that is easy to navigate.
• Walmart: Improved the user experience by making smooth animations in the app that are the same as the native functions.
• Bloomberg: Users can get personalized content that is easy to organize and whose code is automatically updated.
• Web View was used to add push notifications to Instagram without creating a navigation structure.

Pros and cons of react native:

Testing:

React Native says that UI-level testing and integration testing are not supported. There also aren’t many frameworks for testing RN applications at the unit level. Since there is no official support, creators must use third-party tools like Appium and Detox to find bugs. It also uses external source libraries to automate the software development services and release process. Simply put, the entire framework doesn’t have any automatic ways of uploading iOS apps to the App Store. Instead, RN tells programmers to use Xcode to describe how to manually deploy an application.

Native is that its execution environment is more complicated than managing separate processes for each architecture. This means that with React, you can get close to the performance of a native application, but you can’t quite get there.

Pros and Cons of Native Performance

Thanks to the JIT compiler, the updated JavaScript virtual machine in React Native is faster than V8. It’s also a pre-compiled framework, allowing you to ship any codebase you want because it will be turned into a native React executable. React Native can achieve the same development performance as an iOS application without changing iOS build pa

Pros and cons of native application size

React Native applications can be made smaller by changing settings like Bypass padding and using development mode to true. Bypass padding tells React Native to skip the process of padding your virtual DOM with the result of spreading it against the react-native UI. Most applications come with a JavaScript runtime of around 300kb. This makes images smaller in memory and reduces their quality. 

Pros and Cons of the Minimum SDK Version That Should Be Used

To get the best performance, you should obviously use the latest versions of the SDK that are available at the time of release. React Native can typically be made to function flawlessly with any iOS 9 or Android 5 SDK. Although earlier SDKs can still be used to build React Native applications, their runtime functionality is limited. It would be beneficial if you continued to try with the most recent versions of the iOS and Android SDKs.

Pros and Cons of UI Design

Use of  third-party frameworks makes it easier to use react-native features. React Native has APIs that allow you to manually build the bridge between your React Native UI components and the JavaScript code that will render them. It also has a bridge that allows you to use existing iOS and Android code as JavaScript modules.

Pros and cons of debugging

React Native has a built-in debugger that you can attach to an application already running on iOS or Android. This gives a custom software development company a preview of the current state of the JavaScript virtual machine and several tools to see how memory is being used and make changes in real time. 

Pros and cons of applying the same code across several mobile platforms

React Native can be used to build applications for both iOS and Android as it has its own set of UPIs. However, most companies using React Native design their applications first for one platform before moving them to the other. 

Based on learning concept: 

Depending on the programmer’s experience, React Native has APIs that are easy to understand. Both have a large and active community of developers who are constantly making new tools and parts and can help new developers. Applications can be built for both iOS and Android with a set of predefined components of React Native. This way, you can learn one thing simultaneously without worrying about all the APIs used to render views.

If you’re a new developer with little or no coding experience, React Native is probably the best place to start

The Best Responsive Native Backend

React native applications works well with Backendless, a BaaS platform but it does not have an “on brand” backend without Flutter. Backendless and React Native creators have the same features. BaaS solutions can save you a lot of work on the backend if you’re a React Native developer trying to speed up your development. This will help you craft the best UI and UX and saves time.

Conclusion

Choose React Native if:

• To make your applications larger, you want to use modules that work on more than one platform.
• You should make native programs that don’t take up much space.
• You want to make shared APIs as early as possible.
• You want to make an application that can be assembled in several steps and has a very responsive user interface.

Read:

PWAs vs. Native Apps: Making the Right Development Choice