Mobile Apps have changed the ecosystem of trade, now all the operations are performed with just a click of a button, with the added benefit that mobile fits in a pocket.
This article is about which platform to choose to publish your mobile app on the app stores.
As some of you might know, there are three main categories in the Mobile App Development arena:
1. Native Applications
2. Cross-Platform Applications
3. Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s)
I will be discussing only the Native Applications and Cross-Platform Applications. PWA’s are a talk for another day.
Native Applications:
Those mobile apps which are platform-specific fall under this category. For example Android Apps, Ios Apps, Windows Apps, etc.
Native Applications are considerably fast and robust as compared to Cross-Platform Apps. They perform better on their platforms.
IOS Mobile Apps can be developed using Swift or Objective C language.
While Android apps can be developed using Kotlin or Java.
Cross-Platform Applications:
Cross-Platform Mobile Applications give the benefit of maintaining a single codebase for multiple platforms. In other words, you write the code for the app in a single programming language and use it for different platforms. Whereas native applications are platform-specific, writing code of ios app in one programming language while for android app in another Programming language.
Popular Frameworks for Cross-Platform Development:
React Native:
It is one of the most famous and widely used frameworks for Cross-Platform App Development. Originally developed by Facebook back in 2013. It has one of the biggest communities. But one drawback is that it relies mostly on 3rd party plugins to add features.
React Native uses JavaScript as its Programming language, which is a very famous and rapidly fast-growing programming language, with bigger community support.
Flutter:
Flutter is the UI Development Toolkit, launched by Google back in 2017. It is the hottest topic in the mobile dev community these days. It is also fast growing. Flutter gives the edge in terms of performance, as it has its own UI Engine so it renders itself, instead of depending. Plus it has got a whole lot of UI components built-in. So it doesn’t rely on third-party plugins.
Flutter supports Dart Programming Language, which is also developed by Google. Dart is an object-oriented programming language.
Flutter also supports web development plus desktop development which is in beta version.
Xamarin:
Xamarin was developed by Microsoft itself back in 2011. It is an open source technology. The sole purpose was to develop cross-platform applications using a single language which is C#.
Xamarin apps have native apps like features and likewise the performance levels as well. One of the disadvantages of using xamarin is that the app sizes are much more and you might need to write some ui part platform specific, so for that you need to have the knowledge of Native Languages.
You can set up an environment for Xamarin in Microsoft Visual Studio or Xcode.
While summing up the discussion, if you want your application to be a platform specific application then go for Native Approach as it would be best in this scenario.
If you want to do Cross-Platform then compare, and select which suits you best, if you are coming from a Web Development background then go for React Native. If you have a background in .net technologies then go for Xamarin. And if you are a beginner like me who is just stepping into the multiverse of technologies and who knows the basics of OOPs and knows C++, then look for Flutter.
One more thing before stepping into the Mobile App Development Area, make sure you know the fundamentals of Programming and Algorithm Designing and Plus the Object Oriented Programming as it is a Must.