If you’re looking to build a mobile application in an extremely efficient way, then React Native should be one of the options you need to pay attention to. React Native is a development framework that mobile app developers use to save time and more rapidly build mobile apps.
Facebook developed React Native in 2015, first for iOS, then Android later in the year. This created a framework in which a mobile app could be built on two platforms at once, while still retaining the native look, feel, and productivity of an app built on the specific iOS or Android platform. Initially React Native was using the iOS code repository and syncing to Android, but Facebook later moved to a unified code repository further streamlining React Native.
The React Native framework is very popular with mobile app developers and is also used by some of the top online brands such as Skype, Walmart, Airbnb, Adidas Glitch, Tesla, Facebook, Instagram and more.
This article will look to explore the benefits of React Native for mobile app development and why you should use it in your next project.
- What is React Native
- What Are The Benefits of React Native App Development?
- Why You Should Use React Native for Mobile App Development?
- Is React Native Good For Mobile App Development?
- What Are The Features of React Native?
- Which is Not a Advantage of React Native?
- Why Companies Use React Native?
- Which Companies Uses React Native?
- What Apps Where Built With React Native?
- Is React Native Better Than Flutter?
- What is React Native Mobile App Development?
- What Are Some React Native Alternatives?
What is React Native
First launched in 2015, React Native is a popular open-source mobile application development framework created by Facebook. It uses JavaScript to create cross-platform mobile applications with true native capabilities. This means you can develop natively-rendered mobile apps for both iOS and Android simultaneously using a single codebase.
Read Also: How to Hire a Mobile App Development Company to Build an App?
This capability has made React Native one of the most popular app development frameworks in the industry. According to the Stack Overflow Survey 2021, 58.08% of developers preferred working on React Native in the past year and would continue to do so in the future.
React Native is mostly based on JavaScript, a website development technology. So, developers who work on JavaScript can easily develop mobile apps using React Native. This not only saves time but also eliminates the need for developers to learn complex languages like Objective-C and Java to develop an app.
Furthermore, as JavaScript components are built on iOS and Android components, developers don’t have to create the same app again for another platform. All in all, React Native mobile app development framework is a win-win for businesses when it comes to saving time, effort, and money.
What Are The Benefits of React Native App Development?
1. Saves Time and Money
Because 95% or more of the code is cross-platform, meaning it is compatible with both Android and iOS, developers only need to build one app, and in the end two apps are created. This saves time in the development of the app, which saves a lot of money that would have been put into building separate apps.
With React Native businesses can have both apps at once for little more than half the cost of building one version. Companies no longer have to choose which version to build and launch first due to the cost of building two separate apps. In addition maintenance and updates are done on both apps at the same time which saves on future costs once the apps are built and launched.
2. Great Performance
React Native apps perform almost exactly like a native app that was built on a specific iOS or Android platform. They are also fast because the programming language is optimized for mobile devices. Instead of mainly using the central processing unit (CPU), React Native apps take advantage of the graphics processing unit (GPU). This makes them much faster than cross-platform hybrid technologies.
3. Increased Flexibility
The type of interface used in React Native makes it easy for different developers on a team to jump in where someone else left off and continue building. This increases team flexibility, and makes it easier to update and upgrade the mobile app. It also creates flexibility for testers who are able to create testing scenarios much easier. These advantages also contribute toward saving time and money.
4. Moveable
If it is desired or becomes necessary to move the app to another development framework in the future, app developers don’t need to start over. They can export the app from React Native and move it into Android Studio or Xcode and continue from there. This is a huge benefit of using React Native for mobile app development and adds to its flexibility.
5. Immediately View Changes
React Native offers something called “live reloading” or “hot reloading” which enables developers to immediately view the changes they’ve made to the code in another live preview window simultaneously. This provides a great advantage to developers due to the real-time feedback.
6. Publish Updates for Your Apps Faster
Publishing updates for your app used to take a lot longer, requiring developers to go through a build process again with each app separately. With React Native that process has been streamlined. Not only can both apps be updated at the same time, but the whole process is much simpler and can be done much faster.
As you create improvements and updates for your users, developers implement them through over-the-air (OTA) updates, which are implemented even as users are using the app. Then, the next time the app is opened, the update is ready for the user.
There is no longer a need to update the app through the app stores manually and have them approved by Apple or Android, which saves time and makes the process much more streamlined.
7. Augmenting an Existing App
Got an existing app but want to augment it in a cost-effective way? We can insert React Native UI components into an existing app without rewriting the app. This can be a boon when you just want to augment an existing app without fully rewriting it.
Why You Should Use React Native for Mobile App Development?
For a long time, React Native was considered to be commercially unviable. It wasn’t developed or supported enough to produce “native-like” apps.
But the times have changed. React Native is gaining popularity, gaining community support, and gaining more market share. It’s getting easier and easier to write brilliant apps using React Native—and the world is taking notice.
Tried and trusted
Facebook built React Native first and foremost to create a fantastic mobile app for their own social portal. More likely than not, you’ve used it on your phone by way of the Facebook mobile app. Does it feel like a native app? Sure it does.
But since React Native has gone open-source, more companies have decided to bet on it and create their mobile apps this way. Here are just a few examples.
Popular React Native apps
- Skype
- Tesla
- Walmart
- Discord
- Bloomberg
Putting your app in such company isn’t the worst idea in the world.
One codebase for two platforms
With React Native, you create one codebase that works on both Android and iOS. And it doesn’t just “work”—it compiles to native Java and Swift code. Specifically, React Native creates a bridge between web UI components and their native Java/Swift counterparts.
Think about the implications for your software project. No need for two development teams for two platforms. No need to synchronize features and layouts. You simply develop faster and can get more out of your budget.
Use the language you already know
You need less specialized knowledge to create React Native apps. Chances are you already have someone on your team that can program in JavaScript, possibly even in ReactJS specifically. JS developers are simply easier to find compared to developers with skills in Java or Swift.
Stack Overflow 2017 Developer Survey
Even if your frontend developer has never used React Native, with some self-education they can get up to speed very quickly, especially if they’ve used React already. All you need is a little time googling to find out which web components correspond with which mobile components—and you’re set.
Growing all the time
React Native is under active development. Both Facebook and the massive community around React Native are constantly working on improvements for the framework. If you can’t solve a problem right now because React Native doesn’t have the solution, in a few months the situation might be different.
For example, Bartosz was recently faced with the task of implementing a “speedometer” component for one of his projects. His initial idea was to create such a component by himself. But first, he decided to check if someone from the community had the same need in the past. Lo and behold, he found an open license speedometer ready to use, saving him time.
Even Microsoft took notice of React Native, prompting them to create their own fork: React Native for Windows. Their solution allows developers to more easily create apps for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, and Xbox One.
Save even more time with a web app
If you have a ReactJS web app, fragments of the frontend code (such as business logic) can be shared between mobile and web, facilitating development even more.
Is React Native Good For Mobile App Development?
React Native combines the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
Use a little—or a lot. You can use React Native today in your existing Android and iOS projects or you can create a whole new app from scratch.
Written in JavaScript—rendered with native code
React primitives render to native platform UI, meaning your app uses the same native platform APIs other apps do.
Many platforms, one React. Create platform-specific versions of components so a single codebase can share code across platforms. With React Native, one team can maintain two platforms and share a common technology—React.
Native Development For Everyone
React Native lets you create truly native apps and doesn’t compromise your users’ experiences. It provides a core set of platform agnostic native components like View, Text, and Image that map directly to the platform’s native UI building blocks.
Seamless Cross-Platform
React components wrap existing native code and interact with native APIs via React’s declarative UI paradigm and JavaScript. This enables native app development for whole new teams of developers, and can let existing native teams work much faster.
Fast Refresh
See your changes as soon as you save. With the power of JavaScript, React Native lets you iterate at lightning speed. No more waiting for native builds to finish. Save, see, repeat.
What Are The Features of React Native?
React native enables its developers to push the updates to the user’s phone instead of going into the app store update cycle. This is the reason why Companies are switching to React Native mobile app development. Let’s look at the features of React Native to know more about it.
Open Source
Like many other (popular) open-source projects, it’s reassuring to understand that thousands, sometimes many developers worldwide are using an equivalent technology, facing equivalent struggles and encountering equivalent bugs. Any questions are often answered by a legion of developers, potential bugs are going to be fixed even before one has noticed them, and forums are flooded with useful tips, workarounds.
Backed by Facebook
Considering the fact that Facebook believes in this project, it is certain that they’re going to invest considerable time and energy in improving the framework and delivering upgrades on a daily basis. This has proved to be the case thus far , and undoubtedly will continue for several more years. Because of Facebook, React is proving to be a future-proof, sustainable choice.
Modular and Intuitive
It’s very easy for other developers to delve into someone else’s project and repose on it. This increases the flexibility within a development team and makes it easier to make updates and upgrades to web applications. Additionally, testers will need less time to know the programming logic and build appropriate testing scenarios. this may cause valuable time-savings, which may be a message that any customer and/or CFO likes to hear.
Speed Up Development
One of the most reasons for Facebook to make React must are this advantage: compared to a standard Javascript page, it takes far less time to load an internet page using React.
This is one of the significant React Native features as it suggests that users will see React-generated pages more quickly than others, and can be less inclined to abandon it. On top it also means Google will scan these pages more quickly, and attribute a better score to them. a really valuable advantage for web applications.
These are the basic features of React Native. Apart from these basic features, there is a lot more technicality to it, which has changed and improved with each version. Let’s have a look at those.
Community Driven
The development of react-native can be dated back to 2013. This was mainly driven by the need of the developer community. It was the search for a mobile alternative that would combine the advantages of mobile app development along with the power and agility of the native React environment, which resulted in the development of React Native.
Hereafter it was continuously pushed forward by the development community. availability of a massive group of enthusiastic JS and native developers willing to share their technical know-how is an added advantage to using such a community-driven environment.
React Native’s community happens to be one of the strongest communities in the cross-platform mobile application development world that plays a major role in react native features. Its popularity started increasing because developers started contributing from all over the world leading to a strong community presence.
Maximum Code Reuse & Cost Saving
With React Native, one can use the same code for deployment both for iOS and Android. This method is significant in saving in improvement time and cost to half. In practice, the cost-saving may be a bit lower however still more enough to make the investment worth the while.
According to recent calculations, approximately 90% of the code may be reused between Android and iOS, but it might be wise to calculate some more time for practical adjustments as well.
Live Reload
Respond Native may be considered as the mobile next step after React: It expands on the React thoughts and permits you to make powerful mobile applications. In fact, React Native features a fascinating additional feature that is not found in the native frameworks: the ‘live reload’ feature, which empowers you to quickly observe the aftereffect of the most recent change that you have made to the code.
If you’ve got two home windows opened – one containing the code and the opposite showing a cell screen because of the code – observe the impact of what you have changed in one screen, on the other screen.
Strong Performance for Mobile Environments
The React Native architecture is very well tuned to mobile devices. It makes use of the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), while native platforms are more ‘CPU (Central Processing Unit) intensive’. Compared to hybrid technologies – which was the only option for cross-platform in the past – React Native is superfast.
Modular and Intuitive Architecture Similar to React
The modular and intuitive interface makes it simple for different developers to dig into another person’s undertaking and expand upon it. This increases the flexibility and adaptability within a development team, and makes it less complicated to create updates and upgrades to web applications.
Additionally, testers will want much less time to apprehend the programming rationale and build appropriate testing scenarios which leads to valuable time-savings and something that any customer and/or CFO loves to hear.
NPM Libraries Support
The setup technique is always a headache, in particular for newbies. React Native uses Node Package Manager or NPM for installation and it is fairly easy to apply it. People with non-javascript are skilled with NPM and additionally, it’s not that difficult for learners to research NPM commands.
Accessibility
React Native build comes with more accessibility. The announcement For Accessibility API has been progressed from the previous one. There are also changes in roles, action support, flags, and many more. There are various other enhancements as well like support for “reduction motion”, better android keyboard accessibility options, CALayer for drawing text etc.
Migration
The android ecosystem for the React Native 0.60 has eventually been migrated to AndroidX. This means that from onwards with this construct the React Native apps will operate on AndroidX.
Start Screen
The new React Native comes with a new screen for launching the tool. This one has been made extra consumer-friendly and it comes with version 0.60 . It receives the person Document links, editing app.Js, how to align the website, and debug menu.
Project Extractions
Well, the netinfo and the webview had been made into separate repositories. This has been completed to make the Lean Core projects more clean to develop.The new edition has been completely migrated. Also, primarily based at the feedback via the community, Geolocation has also been eliminated from there.
Autolinked Native Modules
The ‘Autolink’ function at the React Native CLI has been upgraded for ease. Now one can still without difficulty avoid using React Native Link making development less complicated than before. A linking procedure has been updated by means of the group for the ease of developers.
Upgrade Helper
The tool has been developed to transform an older written script of React Native into a newer one. With the Upgrade Helper, one can without problems see the difference between the vintage and the newscript. Although, in order to improve the script, one possibly can also choose the choice of ‘Show me the way to upgrade’.
Fast Refresh
In React Native 0.61, the existing “live reloading” (reload on save) is getting unified with “hot reloading” features into a single new feature called “Fast Refresh”. Fast Refresh is been implemented from scratch with the following disciplines
- Supporting modern React, with function components and Hooks.
- Recovering after typos and other mistakes.
- Avoiding invasive code transformations so it’s reliable enough to be on by default.
CocoaPods Support
This react native feature is integrated by default with version 0.61 which was not achieved in the earlier versions. It makes it easier to integrate React Native into the iOS projects that require building with dynamic frameworks.
Add useWindowDimensions Hook
This new Hook automatically affords and subscribes to size updates, and may be used instead of the Dimensions API in most cases.
What’s new in React native version 0.62?
Flipper by default
One of the features of REact native in version 0.62 is Flipper. Flipper is a developer tool used for debugging mobile applications. It’s popular inside the Android and iOS communities, and in this release, it has enabled support by using default for new and existing React Native apps.
It Views all of the network requests made by device applications, along with editing the device databases and preferences. It also acts as a Native Layout Inspector by Viewing and editing the native layout output by the React Native renderer.
New dark mode features
The newest version allows access to the user’s appearance preferences, along with their preferred color scheme (mild or darkish).
Moving Apple TV to react-native-tvos
Apple TV support for React Native is supposed to be maintained in the react native community in conjunction with the corresponding react-native-tvos NPM package, which is based on the public launch of React Native. This is a full fork of the main repository, with only the adjustments to aid Apple TV.
Which is Not a Advantage of React Native?
Along with all the advantages, React Native app development has its own set of challenges as well. As a business you need to take account of everything there is. For your benefit we have listed some of the highlighted disadvantages of React Native. Let us have a look:
Difficult to debug
Mobile app development done using React Native is very hard to debug.The process of debugging becomes very tedious as these apps are built using Java, C/C++, JavaScript, etc. This is why developers must have sound knowledge of the Native language of the platform.
Another problem with React Native is that it constantly goes to and fro between the thread of JavaScript and Native environment. To overcome this issue React Native app developers must enable an integration with Flipper, a tool that can help manage the debugging process.
Hard to determine user interface
If your mobile app requires features such as multiple screen transitions, animations and interactions then choosing React Native for your app development might not be the right choice for you. Mobile apps with complex gestures are not built using React Native.
Although there is a solution to this problem. React Native has a gesture responder system. It will run the entire lifecycle of all the gestures in the mobile applications. But when it comes to complex ones, the developers will still face some difficulties. This is because iOS and Android apps have a unified API which are quite different from each other.
The framework is immature
The are many new advanced and updates that the framework experiences on a rapid pace. Every new release or update has so many significant changes that they may end up taking a toll on the developers. Since the updates happen at a faster pace, developers do not get adequate time to adjust to the changes and even before they do, they have to deal with another one.
There are instances where the developers cannot write codes only for React Nativebecause they are required to write additional codes for components that are incompatible.
React Native is in every sense faster and newer. But in quest to be quick, the framework tends to lose its credibility and becomes too immature for Android and iOS apps. Moreover, the flexibility of the React mobile applications are below par as compared to Native apps.
The curious case of JavaScript
There is no doubt about the fact that JavaScript is a powerful and flexible programming language. However, it is a loosely typed one. There might be cases where engineers feel that there is no type safety thereby making it difficult to scale the React Native apps.
This makes it inevitable for the engineers to opt for other third-party integrations and tools like Flow and TypeScript which can be used for an already existing infrastructure.
Tougher to build a cross-platform team
At its core, React Native is nothing but a cross-platform app development technology. For which developers must have concrete knowledge of both web and native technologies. They must know how to work on JavaScript, project configuration, CI, UX guidelines, etc.
In today’s time it is rather difficult to find developers who have an in-depth knowledge of both making it although important for you to choose an experienced app development firm.
Why Companies Use React Native?
Mobile app development has become in-demand, as smartphones are now a popular means to connect, shop, and socialize. Since Android and iOS utilize mobile apps, companies now look for mobile developers that can support both systems and create cross-platform apps.
So, if you’re a current or aspiring mobile app developer, mastering a framework like React Native might just be what you need to grow your career. Some companies that use React Native include Walmart, Microsoft, and Tesla.
Developers use React Native to program both Android and iOS-based apps. Instead of using separate frameworks in mobile app development, they can just use React Native.
Learning to design a mobile application using this framework will help mobile developers become more relevant. Many companies now adopt React Native in their apps, so learning this could pay off with a lucrative career at one of the well-known companies detailed in this article.
Which Companies Uses React Native?
| Company | Revenue | Number of employees |
|---|---|---|
| Walmart | $559 billion (2021) | 2.2 million (2021) |
| Microsoft | $168.08 billion (2021) | 181,000 (2021) |
| Meta | $84.17 billion (2020) | 68,177 (2021) |
| Tesla | $31.54 billion (2020) | 70,757 (2020) |
| Salesforce | $21.25 billion (2021) | 29,000 (2021) |
| Uber | $11.1 billion (2020) | 24,700 (2021) |
| Bloomberg | $10 billion (2020) | 2,300 (2021) |
| Airbnb | $3.38 billion (2020) | 5,597 (2020) |
| Shopify | $2.93 billion (2020) | 7,000+ (2021) |
| $1.69 billion (2020) | 2,200 (2021) |
Walmart
Walmart is a multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of US hypermarkets, department stores, and grocery stores. To achieve its goal of becoming the world’s largest online retailer, Walmart rewrote its application with React Native. As a result, Walmart improved the speed of its mobile app on both iOS and Android, making its customer experience better for all of its active users.
Microsoft
Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation and is the world’s largest software company. Presently, it has more than 181,000 employees in 102 countries. The company uses React Native in its 38 Android and iOS apps, such as Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive, and Edge.
Meta
Previously known as Facebook, Meta is a technology conglomerate based in California. The company used React Native to create mobile apps that run on both Android and iOS devices. Among the popular Meta apps that use React Native are Facebook, Facebook Ads Manager, Facebook Analytics, and Instagram. The millions of users for each of these apps obviously proves that React Native produces an effective design.
Tesla
Tesla is an automotive company that manufactures and sells electric vehicles and their components. The company produced its Tesla app using React Native. Tesla designed this app to help Powerwall battery and electric car owners monitor these technologies’ performance and partially control them using their smartphones.
Salesforce
This company developed a customer relationship management (CRM) system of the same name, Salesforce. The company has a software development kit (SDK) that works well with React Native. It has included a command-line script in its mobile SDK to build and execute a React Native application that easily connects to Salesforce.
Uber
Uber is a ride service provider that has developed a mobile app that allows users to search, call, and pay for taxis or private drivers. Uber’s daughter company, Uber Eats, is built with React Native to improve user experience. This resulted in a more cohesive mobile and web-based UberEats app in terms of user interface and total experience.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg is one of the world’s leading financial information providers. The company’s consumer mobile app for iOS and Android is built on React Native. The app provides customers with a streamlined, engaging experience with easy-to-access tailored information, videos, and live feeds about financial markets.
Airbnb
Airbnb is an American company that manages the online marketplace for vacation house rentals. The company has also used React Native for its mobile app. However, though React Native enabled reusable code, Airbnb had to switch back to native technologies to meet specific needs in their app development process.
Shopify
Shopify is an online software development company for online and retail stores. In early 2020, the company publicly announced its implementation of React Native. Shopify also revealed that all of its new mobile apps will be built using React Native.
This company manages the visual discovery platform named after itself, Pinterest. Its mission is to unite the world’s people through things that interest them. Pinterest improved development efficiency when it started using React Native. Shared codes between mobile platforms reduced the mobile engineers required for new features and lowered the company’s development costs.
What Apps Where Built With React Native?
With a lot of big brands using React Native, its reliability becomes unquestionable. It’s a framework that built and strengthened the social and service apps we know today. Let’s look at some companies that use React Native and why they chose it to build their mobile apps.
Facebook is a popular social networking app. Both iOS and Android Facebook apps are built on React Native. The company also used React Native to build its own Ads Manager app, which is available on both iOS and Android.
Also a social networking app, Instagram is more popularly used for its photo and video sharing feature. In 2016, Instagram started exploring React Native to help its product development team in releasing apps faster.
They were able to improve their iteration speeds through code sharing. With Instagram converting its entire program to React Native, its updates and development process now benefits from increased productivity.
Airbnb
This online marketplace connects owners who rent out their place and travelers looking for accommodations. When Airbnb adopted React Native in its mobile app, it benefited from code reuse across platforms. React Native also made rewriting and iterating of codes simple. However, Airbnb presently uses native development to meet their customization needs.
Skype
Skype is one of the earliest apps for video chats. In 2017, Skype announced that it was working on a React Native app. After that, Skype’s functions and features were built from the ground up using React Native.
Uber Eats
Uber Eats is a food delivery app. Originally, UberEats was web-based with some UX issues. As the development team had a lot of React.js experience but little iOS or Android experience, they chose to rebuild the dashboard with React Native.
Is React Native Better Than Flutter?
Flutter and React Native are natural competitors as two of the most used multi-platform mobile app frameworks. A lot has been said about React Native in this article, let’s talk a little about Flutter.
Flutter is a cross-platform framework developed by Google. First released in May 2017, it continues its rapid growth and becomes more popular in the developers’ circles. If we compare React Native vs Flutter 2021 stats, we will notice that Flutter becomes more popular among the developers. Such regions as Kenya, China, Bangladesh, Japan, Jordan choose this framework. Compared to 2020, when 30% chose Flutter, in 2021, this number grew to 39%.
What’s so special about Flutter? First of all, it is the ability to create cross-platform applications using a single codebase. It means that there is no need to develop separate apps for the web, mobile, and desktop. With Flutter, there appears one single tool that helps to develop apps easily.
Todd Fabacher, Chief Executive Officer with over 25 years history of working in the computer software industry, says about Flutter: “This has been attempted many times before with moderate success, but Google has finally solved the mobile development puzzle with Flutter. It is open-source and free, which is perfect for students and others on a limited budget. My advice is just to download it and get started. It is that simple. It will be the best investment in yourself or your company that you will ever make.”
No more compromises on speed, quality, or performance – Flutter helps to build beautiful apps within a single codebase. Flutter consists of a framework built with Dart. The rendering engine is designed predominantly in C++. It’s interesting to know that apps built using Flutter are more intuitive and easier to navigate.
The matter is that with this framework, app developers can modify UX. This process requires changing the variable in the state. In React Native vs Flutter comparison, this point is extremely important.
On March 2, 2021, Flutter 2 was announced by Google. The news is fascinating, as this update fundamentally shifts the way developers build apps. It uses a codebase for 5 OS: iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, and additionally, it targets such browsers as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. What does it mean for the developers? Flutter finally can help in building apps for the web!
According to Google, “Flutter’s web support builds on these innovations, offering an app-centric framework that takes full advantage of all that the modern web has to offer.”
Flutter and React Native have many things in common. First and foremost, they are both open-source frameworks that anyone can use. They both are developed by leading companies: Google created Flutter vs React Native was created by Facebook.
Flutter is easier to use as it is more resistant to system updates. It means that when iOS or Android update the OS, the app will remain the same. On the contrary, React Native depends on native elements, so when the update is released, some problems may appear in the launch app. Currently, Flutter supports Android 4.1+ or iOS 8+, while React Native supports Android 4.1+ and iOS 10+.
The biggest difference between React Native and Flutter is that Flutter has plugins developed by the Google team, like geolocation and mapping. Unfortunately, React Native app works better with apps with a one-time location and does not require tracking.
All in all, Flutter and React Native are great choices to save time and money on mobile app development. What framework to choose will depend on the preferences of the developer and the company.
What is React Native Mobile App Development?
React Native (also known as RN) is a popular JavaScript-based mobile app framework that allows you to build natively-rendered mobile apps for iOS and Android. The framework lets you create an application for various platforms by using the same codebase.
React Native was first released by Facebook as an open-source project in 2015. In just a couple of years, it became one of the top solutions used for mobile development. React Native development is used to power some of the world’s leading mobile apps, including Instagram, Facebook, and Skype. We discuss these and other examples of React Native-powered apps further in this post.
There are several reasons behind React Native’s global success.
Firstly, by using React Native, companies can create code just once and use it to power both their iOS and Android apps. This translates to huge time and resource savings.
Secondly, React Native was built based on React – a JavaScript library, which was already hugely popular when the mobile framework was released. We discuss the differences between React and React Native in detail further in this section.
Thirdly, the framework empowered frontend developers, who could previously only work with web-based technologies, to create robust, production-ready apps for mobile platforms.
Interestingly, as with many revolutionary inventions, React Native was developed as a response to…a big technological mistake.
React Native is written with a mixture of JavaScript and JXL, a special markup code resemblant of XML. The framework has the ability to communicate with both realms – JavaScript-based threads and existent, native app threads.
How does this communication work? React Native uses a so-called “bridge”. While JavaScript and Native threads are written in completely different languages, it’s the bridge feature that makes bidirectional communication possible.
Here’s a great visualization of the bridge concept:
This means that – if you already have a native iOS or Android app – you can still use its components or shift to React Native development.
What makes React Native unique?
The difference between React Native and other cross-platform development solutions (for example, Cordova and PhoneGap) is that React Native doesn’t render WebViews in its code. It runs on actual, native views and components. This is one of the reasons for React Native’s spectacular success.
What Are Some React Native Alternatives?
Now that you have a good understanding of what React Native is, it’s worth taking a look at some of its alternatives.
Flutter
We already mentioned it Flutter earlier in this article, where we compared it to React Native.
Iconic
Iconic is a complete open-source SDK designed for hybrid mobile development, introduced in 2013 by Drifty. It uses technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as platforms like PhoneGap and Cordova, to create a native-like experience.
Iconic is built on top of Angular, and therefore if you’re familiar with it, it’ll be easy for you to pick up Iconic. It’s packed with numerous built-in-components, which speed up development, making it smoother and easier. Additionally, it’s a good option for fast prototyping as it offers a hybrid approach to product development.
In terms of performance, it’s slower than React Native as it uses WebView, but the good news is, you can test the code on any browser.
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova is a mobile application development framework originally introduced by Nitobi. It allows developers to build mobile apps using CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript and not rely on the platform-specific APIs included in Android, iOS, or Windows Phone. Just like Iconic, Apache Cordova also uses WebView, which creates some limitations.
For example, iOS apps that run inside the default WebView engine run more slowly than the same app in the Safari mobile browser. What’s more, as JavaScript is single-threaded, having too many things going on in the application code might lead to problems, like slow animations and reduced app responsiveness.
PhoneGap
PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova, meaning that it’s powered by Cordova but has some extra tools you can use, which are provided by Adobe.
PhoneGap is easy to work with, which makes it developer-friendly. They have a lot of frameworks and libraries at their disposal. It’s based on the “write once, run on every platform” motto, so you can take advantage of cross-platform development.
Just select your favorite web technology and your app will run on all available platforms, without the need to build separate versions for each one.
Unfortunately, apps built with PhoneGap might suffer from poorer user experience, as web technology was created for, well, the web, not mobile apps. This makes handling animations problematic. Also, you’re risking experiencing the same issues that web apps experience, which include browser-specific bugs.
If you’re interested in learning more about React Native alternatives, here’s an interesting comparative video by Academind:
PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova, meaning that it’s powered by Cordova but has some extra tools you can use, which are provided by Adobe. “It promises you an “easy life” as a mobile app developer, enabling you to use any JavaScript library and framework that you’re comfortable working with.” – Engineers at Optasy.
PhoneGap is easy to work with, which makes it developer-friendly. They have a lot of frameworks and libraries at their disposal. It’s based on the “write once, run on every platform” motto, so you can take advantage of cross-platform development. Just select your favorite web technology and your app will run on all available platforms, without the need to build separate versions for each one.
Read Also: How Does One Find Great UX Designers For Mobile/Web Apps?
Unfortunately, apps built with PhoneGap might suffer from poorer user experience, as web technology was created for, well, the web, not mobile apps. This makes handling animations problematic. Also, you’re risking experiencing the same issues that web apps experience, which include browser-specific bugs.
Finally
React Native is a great solution for creating apps that will work smoothly irrespective of the platform or system they run on. It’s a framework loved by businesses and developers alike. It allows you to save a lot of work hours, resulting in a faster development process, and it is also cost-efficient.
It gives you access to a larger audience at once – as one app can be used by both Android and iOS users, the launch can be synchronized, and companies with a smaller budget for development don’t have to choose a single platform only.
Many fantastic products were built using React Native, including Skype, Facebook, Pinterest, and UberEats, which further proves it’s a framework worth considering for app development.
While a native iOS and Android solution is still the best option for projects requiring a seamless UI experience and top-notch performance, React Native is a great option if your budget is limited and where satisfactory user experience is sufficient.
