Before making any robust investment decision on mobile applications, businesses across the globe have to decide between native, hybrid and web applications. This article will define and describe all the major differences between varied categories. Among the above-mentioned 3 variants, which one is best and what are the main points of differences?
Native Apps
These applications are installed onto the concerned devices from an application store like App Store, Google Play and get displayed on the device in the form of icons. They get intact with the devices and make use of the devices’ features including camera, contact list, GPS and accelerometer. They are designed and coded by a competent native app development company. For example, iPhone applications are coded in Objective-C and the android ones are coded in Java.
Hybrid Apps
These apps are an incredible combination of both native and web apps and can be easily downloaded from the App store. They are quite faster and cheaper to be developed by a hybrid app development company than the native ones. They are considered to be better than browser-based web app. These are developed making use of web technologies that are compatible across varied platforms and are strategically coded in HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS. However, for smooth and improved user experience, sometimes some specific native codes are also used. The tools like Secha Touch and PhoneGap enable cross-platform coding and designing by using HTML. Organizations choose hybrid apps to make their presence strongly felt in the app store without making robust investment or effort in developing a separate app.
The decision to go for a category of application fully depends upon the client’s need. If the primary requirement of the company is to offer content to its readers, and in this regard, a well built responsive web app would be more than good. On the contrary, native app would be beneficial for task completion. A common user can choose a category depending on the app’s compatibility with the features of the device, need for offline/online job completion, speed related factors, dependability on platforms, ease of maintenance, content limitations, the fees involved and the ease of installation.
Maintaining a web application properly is much easier for both users and the developers as it takes maintenance of web pages while native are highly complex and complicated as developers need to do coding the same information for varied versions across platforms. Application stores show a large number of limitations on design and content of the application with incredible variability in the subscription cost. Web apps, on the other hand are quite free of content censure and less amount of taxing in regard to both cost and time. Hybrid and web applications are relatively cheaper to design and develop than the native ones.
