The debate that whether you should develop a native app or a hybrid one has been going on for years, and there seems no end to it.
By enabling the app developers to leverage the web technologies such as CSS, HTML and JavaScript for targeting multiple mobile platforms with a single code base instead of writing native code separately for each mobile platform, the hybrid apps significantly reduce the development cost and time. Both, native and hybrid mobile apps have their own set of pros and cons. But, when you need to make your mobile app available on all the platforms in a time efficient manner, the hybrid apps are the best option. However, their development differs from the native apps in multiple ways, and thus the developer needs to follow a different approach in this type of mobile app development
Vital Points To Consider For Hybrid App Development
Here we are listing the most vital factors that should be mulled over while developing the hybrid mobile apps.
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Choosing The Right Hybrid Framework While developing hybrid apps, choosing the right framework can be a little overwhelming. There are a plethora of frameworks to choose from and it’s very unlikely that all these frameworks will be maintained in the future by their developers. Some frameworks will lose the market share and might not provide support in future. So, don’t take your decision only on the basis of what features framework offers and how easy it is to develop an app using that framework.
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Building Interactive and Rich Media Apps Have you ever come across some popular gaming, or rich media app made using the hybrid frameworks? Probably not!!! The reasons are that hybrid apps don’t support graphics, interactive features or animation the way their counterparts do. Moreover, the hybrid apps are slower. In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg himself admitted that Facebook’s biggest mistake was that it bet on mobile web and didn’t go native.
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Consider The App’s Current and Future Functionality Considering not just the app’s current needs, but its future requisites are extremely important. Currently there is an app graveyard which has a myriad of abandoned hybrid apps which efficiently worked as MVPs (Minimum Viable Products), but failed as the robust applications. Before designing the app, determine what its future requirements would be and how you would incorporate that functionality into the app.
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A Hybrid App will Deliver An “Okay” User Experience If you want your app to deliver an outstanding user experience, then going native is a better choice than hybrid development. The HTML5 developers need to work quite hard to equip the app with a platform consistent user interface, but, it will always fall short when compared with a native UI. However, if development time and cost are more important than the user experience, hybrid app development is a better option.
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Know The Performance Limitations Of Hybrid Apps The hybrid apps have certain limitations which leave the native apps as the only option in several cases. These limitations subsume:
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Memory Usage: Memory usage by the mobile apps is a significant concern because not all mobile devices have bigger memories. The hybrid app’s use the web view of the device which consumes a substantial amount of memory. If the app that you are going to design will take a considerable amount of battery, hybrid might not be the right approach for its development.
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App Fluidity: The hybrid apps are not as fluid as their native counterparts are. The hybrid apps often appear to be quite sluggish during state and page transitions. Also, when it comes to handling animations, the hybrid apps are not as fluid as the native apps. The hybrid apps are not as good as the native ones, but, they certainly are a good choice when you are short of budget but still want an app for all the leading mobile platforms. The development time is much lesser and thus, the time to market can dramatically be reduced.
BluEnt is a leading mobile app development firm based in Canada and it offers an array of app development services including both native and hybrid apps. With a team of seasoned and steadfast developers, we ensure world-class development with faster turnaround time.
Connect With Us to know more about our hybrid mobile app development services.
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