React Native App development- How it differs from Native development?

Krunal Shah

Oct 08, 2018

4 min readLast Updated Sep 14, 2020

At first glance, it may be difficult to find differences between React Native app development and Native development, but both are actually different from one another.

Native v/s React Native

In 2015, React Native was released to eliminate the need to build separate native apps for different mobile OS. React Native is no longer deemed a new technology, instead, it is a mature solution for building cross-platform applications.

A large number of companies, including many tech-giants such as Facebook, Instagram and Skype, have adopted React Native to build their applications. Many startups and SMEs today prefer React Native to build their new apps and also to migrate their existing apps to React Native.

How React Native app development is different from Native app development?

At first glance, it may be a bit difficult to identify differences between React Native app development and Native app development. However, both are absolutely different. Let’s start with understanding the pros and cons of both React Native and Native.

Pros of React Native

  • Multi-platform support
  • UI performance is almost as quick as Native
  • Allows code re-usability
  • Strong performance for mobile environments
  • Modular and intuitive architecture
  • Third-party plugin compatibility, less memory usage and smoother experience
  • Extremely smooth animations
  • Cost-efficient development
  • Fast time-to-market

Pros of Native

  • Powerful performance
  • Native UI
  • High-quality functionality and user experience
React Native App development

Cons of React Native

  • Limited access to operating system features
  • Limited third-party library

Cons of Native

  • No multi-platform support
  • High development cost if different operating system support is required
  • No code re-usability

Other notable differences between React Native app development and Native app development include the following:

Knowledge

When it comes to building a Native app, the developers can confine themselves to their expertise in a particular language and integrated development environment as per the operating system for the application. On the contrary, developers building a React Native app need to have knowledge of JavaScript, API and supporting tools for testing, text editing and debugging. React Native is closely associated with web development technologies that have to be exploited for building an application.

Development time and cost

If you want to make your business app for iOS or Android platform, Native approach is better despite all of the benefits of React Native. However, when it comes to building cross-platform applications, React Native is better as it allows code re-usability. According to web sources, code reuse rates in some popular applications is like this — approximately 93% in Facebook, 85% in Skype and almost 86% in TaskRabbit. Code re-usability means lower cost and less development time.

Efficiency

React Native app development uses React.js to enhance the performance of mobile apps. Eventually, all of the best features of React Native, such as DOM abstraction, simplified programming methods, increased app performance, and more, are easily accessible to developers. The Native approach lags behind React Native in terms of productivity, flexibility of app development and time to deployment.

Performance

React Native offers excellent performance. Because of Native components for developing user interface, the performance of the framework is competitive with native apps. However, the gap between the business logic, running in a single threaded JS environment, and the user interface can result in loss of performance. This issue can be fixed if the Native processing of tasks is required.

Sophistication

React Native lags behind Native SDKs in terms of technology. It is better to go with a cross-platform solution when an existing product has to be enhanced or upgraded. Complex stuff such as augmented or virtual reality and big data mining algorithms require the power and technical abilities best offered by Native technology.

If you are looking to build your business application, but are on the fence about choosing between React Native app development and Native app development, these differences would have helped you to make your decision. However, regardless of the technology you choose, it is important to partner with a reliable and experienced app development company to get result-oriented solutions that help you accomplish your goals.

Mr. Tapan Patel is a co-founder of 5-year-old Third Rock Techkno. He is a young diligent person. His love for entrepreneurship and coding leads him to create a business around Web & Software development. He is quite versatile and loves to handle multiple roles at once. As per the situation, he switches the role to a technical advisor, manager, or a strategic planner. He is marvel cinematic freak and loves travelling. His dream is to make Third Rock Techkno a recognized brand name.

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