Different Types of Mobile Applications – Native, Hybrid and Web Apps
In the current decade the majority of the people owes a smartphone, it has become like an essential commodity in our daily use. We use the mobile application for any kind of our work it may be booking a cab for your way to work, buying grocery, playing games, instantly replying to work emails or just hanging to the social wall. Every mobile app has a uniqueness of its own like what platform its developed on, which technologies are used, its advantages and many more of them.
Mobile applications are categorized into major three types depending upon the development platform like Native, Hybrid and Web. Each of them has its special features and development process.
Types of Mobile Application
- Native Apps – As the name suggests it specifically related to only one platform. This type of app is developed for one and only operating system. For example, if the app is built on the Android Operating system it will only work for that, whereas, if developed in iOS it would be only applicable for iPhones. There is also the third type of operating system which is Windows on which the app is developed.
Native App has its own distinct features like the best of the user experience can be gained through these types, has no limit in using multiple API’s while developing the app for different interfaces. The speed of the app is fast and responsive rate is high in performance. Software used to develop native apps generally are Java and ADT for Android operating system, Objective-C or Swift for iOS, and .NET (C#) for the Windows operating system.
Example:
- Pokémon GO
- Pinterest is a cross-platform native app, built with Xamarin.
- PayPal
- Mobile Web Apps – These are also apps but can be run on any device you are viewing on and are mainly used on the browsers. Unlike the native app, they do not require any kind of download or installation process.
These apps are usually written in HTML5, JavaScript or CSS. There is also the limitation to the usage of API’s in Mobile Web Apps. The user experience is almost the same as the Native Apps and does not require regularly downloads updates. The only thing is that for running the Web App good internet connection is a mandatory thing to have.
Examples:
- Flipkart
- Twitter Lite
- BookMyShow
- Forbes
- OLX
- Hybrid Apps – It is basically a combination of Native and Mobile Web App together. It has the compatibility of cross-platform and also can run on the mobile device. Mainly HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Mobile JavaScript frameworks, Cordova/PhoneGap etc. software is used to develop these kinds of apps.
Even though Hybrid Apps lack in speed and the performance, but comparatively they are fast and simple to develop which eventually means low cost in development. Also, they have a low maintenance cost and can opt for a large number of API’s.
Example:
- Uber
- Evernote
There are different types of Mobile App platform depending upon the requirement and the nature of the App. CodePlateau is one of the renowned names as the best Mobile App Development company in Pune.
