Earlier when our mobile app developers worked on any cross-platform application, they faced issues in app’s performance and the app owners had to compromise with not delivering the same, smooth experience to their users as they could give in native. But since not everyone can afford native development for Android and iOS, switching to cross-platform app development seemed a better choice as 70% of the code is reused on both iOS and Android platforms, which is a big save on project development time and costs.
React Native- an open-source cross-platform development framework
Recently, major tech companies and enterprises gravitated towards more apps than average, more of which are hybrid apps as they are rendering a frictionless development experience to developers and end-users. Because we have got some excellent and superior frameworks designed to create cross-platform apps that look and feel like native. The app’s ability to function across multiple platforms is the urgent need for all startups, business groups and brands.
Facebook’s React Native is one such boon to the industry. When other cross-platform projects failed, React Native succeeded and it has been accepted by 70% of the app owners to build their business apps, leveraging the potentials benefits of this framework. With React Native, the code reusability is 85%. Who doesn’t want to get an optimized, reasonable solution like this?
Topping the charts, React Native app development has also impressed Microsoft experts as in the recent announcement, they revealed that “Microsoft will port React Native to run on Windows 10, Windows phone and Xbox one.”
Cross-platform application development has made considerable growth in the last five years. There was this time when business owners had to unwillingly agree to cross-platform apps because of the budget restrictions and not-so-expert team of mobile app developers. Despite a lot of criticism and cynicism, experts in the industry didn’t lose hope and finally, have emerged with incredibly productive and efficient frameworks to cater to hybrid app development.
React Native is the invention by Facebook and is currently used by major mobile app brands including Instagram, Airbnb, Baidu, F8, WalmartLabs, , Bloomberg. React Native has inherited the user familiarity from Facebook UI, that gives an added advantage of being accepted as a cross-platform app, reducing the need for a native UI. The way tech team is working towards improving and advancing React Native, the day is not far when it will allow 100% code reusability.
Why React Native?
One thing that’s influential about React Native is that it doesn’t build a mobile web app, neither an HTML5 app nor a hybrid app, not any average product that’s a result of Objective-C or Java programming but a distinguishable, real-world mobile app that stands out for all theknown benefits that React Native offers.
No extra recompiling time
React Native provides the option of hot reloading, whichbuilds your app faster and completely removes the need of app recompilation.
Optimize app with native code
If anytime, the developer or app owner feels like dropping down to native code to optimize few components of the application, React Native smoothly combines with components written in Objective-C, Swift and Java. Like the Facebook app, half of your app can be built on React Native and the rest in pure native code. This gives developers the liberty to choose wisely what part of the app can be built on React Native and what in pure native such that the app works excellently without any glitch.
Together with the obvious benefits of reduced development time and reduced costs that a cross-platform app development framework offers, there are some major, unrevealed developments this open-source framework has brought to the mobile app development as whole. You, as an app owner or a mobile app developer, must cognize to deliver the best user experience in limited budget and minimum time, through an app that works perfectly across all mobile platforms.
Let’s see why and how some of the top Fortune 500 companies have made the most out of React Native app development.
F8 (Facebook business app), which was earlier built on Parse, has now shifted to React Native because of the choice of Data Layer that React Native allows. It doesn’t need to be tightly connected to a data layer. This results in development of UI and app logic in a React Native app with mock data. So, the data source of the completely developed app can be swapped with minimal adjustments, provided the structure of data remains the same.
Instagram has come a long way using the latest React Native app development. The app has explored more using React Native so as to ship features faster via code sharing and iteration speeds. Instagram has wisely used tools like Hot Reloading and Live Reload offered by React Native, thereby eliminating complete-install cycles.
At WalmartLabs, the team most sensible to use React Native before any other cross-platform framework because it’s fairly stable and likely to remain popular for a while. Further, the various benefits Walmart observed with React Native are:
- 95% of code is shared between their Android and iOS apps. Even the team shared the front-end/presentation code between the platforms.
- Developers had an awesome experience as they didn’t need to restart packager to see the simple changes
- As React Native is in JavaScript, it was easy for Walmart to get the right, skilled resources.
Since the code is converted to native views before rendering, React Native offers immensely smooth animations. And this was a great advantage for the Walmart team as their app needed those aesthetics.
Further, one big advantage of React Native app development that made the Walmart team realize they had taken the best decision to include this framework for cross-platform app development is the ability to push bug fixes over-the-air, sidestepping the app stores. Henceforth, the JS bundle is hosted by the server and can be directly received by the client, just like the web application.
All benefits considered, React Native has some implausible features that no other open-source cross-platform app development framework has ever offered. Speaking of which, 90% of code reusability is the biggest selling point for app owners as they need nothing but a pixel perfect app working seamlessly across platforms with just one codebase, built in minimum time and reasonable investment. An icing on the cake, the applications built using React Native these days are performing better than those coded purely native.
We strongly recommend React Native cross-platform development framework for your next project. It has everything that a developer needs to create a fantastic app project on iOS and Android together. For rest of the technical assistance, from project management to deployment, you can leave it on us. Our React Native app developers will craft a top-quality mobile app, converting your simplest idea into a delightful user experience. And when it’s React Native, we bet you won’t regret it.