The differences between hybrid and native mobile apps
With more than 141 billion app downloads across iOS and Android in 2020 alone (a number that is expected to grow to 184 billion by 2024) more businesses than ever are looking to expand their digital portfolio with a mobile solution.
As a result of this opportunity, however, the marketplace has become competitive, and only the most well-researched applications tend to succeed. Now, crucial to success is the decision of what type of app to build: A native product fine-tuned to the requirements of a single marketplace, or a hybrid application capable of delivering a consistent experience across the entire mobile ecosystem.
As performance, user experience, market coverage and ease of maintenance become increasingly pivotal to product success, we run down the differences between hybrid and native applications, dissecting the pitfalls and opportunities of each.
What are native mobile apps?
A Native App is a type of software or program that has been developed to function within a particular platform or environment. They are built for specific software frameworks, hardware platforms, or operating systems.
There are two main mobile frameworks that combined account for 99% of devices worldwide: Google’s Android, which controls around 72% of the market, and Apple-owned iOS, which accounts for 27%.
What are the advantages of native apps?
Native applications have the edge in three key areas: Speed, User Interface (UI) and Robustness.
When building native applications developers are able to take full advantage of the functionalities specific to that framework. The result of this is peak performance, consistent UX and UI across devices and a codebase that is, generally speaking, a little more stable.
This is particularly true on iOS, where Apple has not only built the operating system, but they produce the devices themselves. This allows for an unmatched level of predictability and consistency across the Apple ecosystem.
That being said, if multiple native applications are being used to gain whole-of-market coverage, making live fixes becomes significantly more difficult.
Native applications provide peak performance for businesses that require unparalleled performance and unbeatable user experience. Although hybrid applications come closer to native-level every day, there is still a gap to consider.
What are the disadvantages of native apps?
A key disadvantage of building a native app is that you automatically lose partial market coverage. In such a competitive mobile landscape, completely disregarding either iOS or Android can be detrimental to your product launch.
Building two native apps to cover both Android and iOS is also costly and time-consuming. Instead of working on one code base, two development teams have to work on two different code bases. Code cannot simply be copied from one platform to another. It needs to be rewritten.
This raises the cost of development significantly and increases the time it takes to launch your app.
It should also be noted that the post-launch support process is significantly more labour intensive should you produce two applications. Fixes must be made across both codebases, and the opportunity for operating system bugs to occur is effectively doubled.
Whilst native mobile app development allows you to produce the most powerful bespoke products, the production and further support is a massive undertaking and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Technologies used for native app development
Swift
Swift is a robust and intuitive programming language created by Apple for building apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch. Swift is open-source, with an extensive support network of developers and documentation.
Kotlin
Kotlin is a reputable programming language with vast open-source tools and libraries to help developers build native Android applications. Kotlin is a more stable and congruous development of Java, which has been used to develop android applications since its inception in 2008.
What are hybrid mobile apps?
Hybrid, or cross-platform mobile applications, are developed to function across multiple mobile platforms or frameworks. These apps are compatible with both iOS and Android, allowing for 99% market coverage.
By choosing hybrid app development, companies receive the significant benefits of faster turnaround time, lower costs, a quick deployment, and ease of ongoing management. These factors help businesses realise an ROI higher than what could often be obtained through native app development.
Cross-platform applications use a library of native-styled modules that can be used to create a near-perfect user experience across devices. It should be noted, however, that creating two native applications would still give you the edge in this respect.
What are the advantages of hybrid apps?
Quicker Turnaround:
The sooner your mobile app is developed and deployed, the sooner you’ll be reaping the benefits from it.
Because only one cross-platform app needs to be developed in order to achieve functionality on all platforms, rather than the multiple apps that would be required when building native apps, hybrid app development takes much less time than native app development.
And that’s not the only reason for the quick turnaround. Code used to create hybrid apps can be reused, so app developers can tap into their library of already-coded modules to assemble these applications more efficiently each time. Any code specific to a company’s first mobile app can also be reused in later, related company mobile apps.
Reduced Costs
This one’s a simple matter of doing the maths. Less time and effort spent in development equals lower cost.
With only a single mobile app to develop and maintain, not only does hybrid app development move more quickly, but QA processing, deployment and support are made easier. The time and monetary costs of developing your product are reduced dramatically by opting for cross-platform mobile app development, allowing your business to see ROI more quickly.
What are the limitations of hybrid apps?
If one of your priorities is providing a user experience that is consistent with the operating system and with the majority of the other apps available on that platform, then a hybrid app may not be the right solution for your business.
That doesn’t mean that you cannot provide a good mobile user experience with a web app or a hybrid app – it just means that the system graphics may not be exactly the same as those with which users may be already accustomed. This can negatively impact your user experience.
In addition, if your product relies on getting the absolute maximum amount of performance from the operating system, your idea may be better suited to a native application. Whilst cross-platform applications are still powerful and suitable for the vast majority of use cases, they still fail to achieve the same performance as a native application.
Technologies used for hybrid application development
Flutter
Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Google Fuchsia, and the web from a single codebase.
React Native
React Native is an open-source mobile application framework created by Facebook, Inc. It is used to develop applications for Android, Android TV, iOS, macOS, tvOS, Web, Windows and UWP by enabling developers to use React’s framework along with native platform capabilities.
A Note on User Experience
In today’s market where there are millions of mobile applications, web platforms and digital products available, good UI/UX is no longer a feature- it is expected. Applications with no consideration to aesthetic usability create the impression of a subpar product, regardless of their ability to function or solve a specific problem.
Both native applications and cross-platform/hybrid apps have the capacity to create intuitive experiences. Whilst hybrid applications allow you to create continuity over different platforms, the OS-specific UI elements used in native applications create the best possible UX, user interface elements directly from the operating system.
To find out more on the importance of UI & UX, read our recent insight ‘The Difference Between UX and UI Design’
How to choose the right app type?
When we take a closer look at native and hybrid apps, the benefits of both approaches become more evident. All you have to do is to compare the core features of these approaches with the needs and expectations of your company.
For example, native mobile apps provide excellent UX and speed with an unparalleled user experience. Therefore, they are a great choice for companies that work with sensitive data, want to create a technically intense product, or only need to serve a single user base (either Android or iOS).
On the other hand, there’s cross-platform functionality provided by hybrid apps. This feature is invaluable for businesses that want to achieve whole of market coverage whilst keeping development speeds high and maintaining relatively low support and maintenance costs.
It’s important to understand that it’s not the nature of hybrid and native apps that determines if your idea will be successful or not. The crucial thing is the ability of developers to build upon your ideas and ensure that core business objectives are met in the solution they produce.
The Difference Between UX and UI Design
As the quality of web and mobile applications on the market continues to improve, UI and UX are no longer considered luxuries. In fact, thousands of applications fail to meet their user or revenue targets every year as a lack of focus on usability makes them seem subpar- regardless of their ability to perform.
What are UX and UI design? Why are they important and why can’t we afford to ignore them? Read on for our insight into why usability is so important in 2022.
What are User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)?
User Interface or UI refers to all visual elements that can be seen when interacting with a digital product. Everything from the text we read to the buttons we press, UI is the part of the application that ensures you understand and navigate through the app as intended.
User experience or UX is the overall perception/feel/attitude a user has when interacting with a product. UX doesn’t start and end with the opening and closing of an application. User experience can both be online and offline and can be considered a collective of every interaction between a user interacts and product.
UI/UX designers work to bridge the gap between user and device in a way that helps users understand their task within the app and allows them to seamlessly navigate the interface.
In order to gain a sense of what attributes to successful UI/UX, we spoke to the Netsells design team: Lead Designer Scott Broughton and UI/UX Designers Connor McLeod and Bartek Marzec. Here are our key takeaways:
What Makes for a Good UI?
- A good UI acts as an extension of the brand, continuing core messaging.
- Designed with accessibility consideration according to documentation such as Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google’s Material Design foundations.
- A responsive interface that follows the user journey, providing feedback as the user navigates the app.
- Easy to use and understand.
What Makes for a Good UX?
- Good UX is always intuitive.
- Designed according to the scenarios and environment users will interact with the final product. For example, a fitness application intended to track active training sessions will need to be designed so that users can spend their time performing the activity without monitoring the application.
- Good UX moulds to meet the changing habits/demands of the user. There is never an endpoint. Great products learn from how users interact with the product and constantly iterate.
What Makes for Bad UI/UX?
- Designed in isolation from user needs and business goals. Design that is solely based on assumptions without user research cannot properly cater to their needs.
- Not having a clear purpose. As UI/UX are processes for delivering high quality and performing product it is vital for the success of any app to answer the why question early and use it as a guiding star to build upon.
- ‘Reinventing the wheel’ with unnecessary or over-complicated design. Pushing the boundaries is great if done correctly, but most often complicated design attributes to the downfall of a product. In our experience, this is most often through the poor structure of visual elements and overly focusing on trendy aesthetics rather than usability.
How do UX and UI work together?
Both UI and UX supplement each other. UX can be considered the framework of human interaction with a product, whilst the UI is the visual aspect that the user actually interacts with, be it the buttons on a mobile application or the drop-down menu on a PWA.
Whilst it is important that all product team roles collaborate closely from the beginning of a development lifecycle, UI teams tend to form the primary building blocks for most projects. Throughout this process, the features and functionalities that are required from both a user and stakeholder perspective are gathered, mapped and planned.
The UI team then takes the framework developed by the UX team, creating and developing the wireframes that will ultimately inform the user interface for the final application. This happens regardless of platform (mobile, web, etc.)
Throughout the entire process, stakeholder and user input is vital to ensuring the success of the UI and UX processes.
Is UX or UI more important for Digital Product Development?
User Experience is more important in the early stages of product design, with designers working to balance stakeholder and user requirements for the creation of a viable Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
It’s vital to strike that balance when creating a UX framework so that UI Designers can work from this pool of knowledge and form an enhanced understanding of how certain sections need to function in terms of interface.
Simply put: UI and UX are Inseparable in their nature, and they should be considered equally important to success. A functioning application needs to have an informed visual design just as much as it needs to perform against it’s target goals.
In today’s market where there are millions of mobile applications, web platforms and digital products available, good UI/UX is no longer a feature- it is expected. Applications with no consideration to aesthetic usability create the impression of a subpar product, regardless of their ability to function or solve a specific problem.