Native app vs hybrid app: which is best for your company?

The world of technology is advancing by leaps and bounds and what until now seemed like futuristic madness, such as wearing smart watches, controlling devices with our phone or even having household appliances include an integrated tablet, are becoming a reality.

What good is all that power without software that knows how to take advantage of it? To do this, Developers put all their effort into creating applications with which we can perform our most common tasks or take advantage of all the features of our devices.. And once they have the idea of the application in their heads, they are faced with a dilemma: Native app or hybrid app?

In this article we explain what each method consists of and what their advantages and disadvantages are.

Hybrid App and Native App: What does each consist of?

If we leave aside the Web Applications, Hybrid Apps and Native Apps are the two most commonly used groups in terms of mobile app development.

Native applications are, in principle, developed using a language specific to each platform., for example Java and Kotlin on Android, Objective-C and Swift on iOS or C# and Visual Basic on Windows. This allows us to access the available APIs (Application Programming Interface) and should offer us better performance.

On the other hand, we have Hybrid applications, which are developed using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript (not to be confused with Java) and CSS, and which will normally run in the system's native browser, so, although it will depend on the framework used, it will not be possible to access many functionalities of the device's hardware or the system libraries, although this limitation is increasingly obsolete thanks to Cordova and other technologies.

Which is better: hybrid app or native app?

It may seem that native applications have more advantages, but the truth is that depending on the type of application we are going to develop, we can agree to use one method or another, and we can see their advantages and disadvantages if we observe the following aspects:

User Interface: Point for the native app

Design is one of the most important aspects of applications, since, after all, it is the main element with which the user interacts. Each platform has its own design guidelines, for example Material Design in AndroidIf we want to follow the design lines offered by each platform, perhaps the best idea is to create native applications, because we can adapt them to the design thanks to the SDK provided.

Instead, the Hybrid applications follow specific design lines, not those specific to both operating systems, which can be a good idea, as long as the application is well done.

Code reuse. Point for the hybrid app

In this case, hybrid apps are the winners. While with native apps we must use the specific languages of each platform, with hybrid apps we can write the code only once, and run it on all operating systems on which we want to launch our application.

This may seem like a very good option, but you have to take into account the technologies used by each platform, since perhaps the language with which we develop our application is not compatible with some of the browsers included in the operating systems, having to re-develop the application so that it can be used on all platforms.

Performance: Points for both

No matter how good your device's processor is and how much RAM it has, if an app isn't optimized, it won't run at all well. Until recently, we could say that native apps seemed to achieve better performance, this is because they run at a lower level than hybrid apps, which need to be run through web technologies. This is no longer the case, as native apps are not optimized for performance. The technology that enables hybrid apps has evolved enough to match the performance of a native app.

As we said before, developers creating a native app can access hardware resources and APIs. Hybrid apps do too, which means maximum similarity in terms of features and performance.

Development cost: Point for hybrid app

Whether we are a company or just creating applications as a hobby, We have to take into account the cost of the application that we are going to develop, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of time and knowledge required for its creation..

Creating a native application for each platform in which we need to know the different programming languages is not the same as creating a single application using web technologies that can be used on different operating systems at the same time.

In summary: we could say that each method meets the needs depending on the type of application we want to develop, and to know which is most convenient, we could consider the above factors.

So Hybrid App or Native App, which one do I choose?

If you have in mind to grow your application or create a business model around it, you may want to go with a native one. If the app is a companion or communication tool, it may be more convenient to have a hybrid app. Do you need access to special hardware features such as GPS, NFC, sensors, etc.? Do you need your app to get the most out of it, or is it a simple app?

There are many more factors to consider when developing an app. The above are the main ones you should consider when choosing between a hybrid app or a native app.