With more and more people using smartphones each every year, there is a higher need for great mobile apps than ever before. However, developing an app can be a difficult and time-consuming process that involves programming the app in different languages, configuring your phone to use it, and finding distribution channels to get your app seen by all those who might have made need it. Read on as we look at how two of the most popular options for developers make this much simpler – enabling developer creation of apps for both Android and iOS with development being done in just one language instead of two!
What is a cross-platform app and what is a native app?
A cross-platform app uses the same code as it is developed across different platforms used. A Native app has a platform-specific code and is more specific to its devices.
What are the disadvantages of using only cross-platform apps?
Apps made for cross-platform do not take full advantage of the Productivity Apps. This can lead to some apps being less user-friendly because they are more difficult to navigate, which could be because some platforms have more features. Some apps that claim to work across all platforms might actually only work for two out of three, like in the example of Facebook, and when this happens there is a major inconvenience to your customers.
What are the advantages of cross-platform apps over native ones?
Cross-platform apps often offer more features and usually improve their performance over time. They may also be easier to distribute in stores since they are not bound to one specific platform.
Native apps, by contrast, are designed uniquely for one platform. This allows app developers to fully utilize each platform’s strengths and design integrating textures that work best for the device. Native apps can also easily make use of system-specific features, but this does not come without disadvantages: because native apps are OS-specific, they are significantly harder to reach a worldwide audience with. In addition, if an update is required it also has to be released for each OS individually rather than across the board on all platforms simultaneously.
Conclusion
One of the most popular apps today is Facebook. The app was first available on Apple devices in 2010, but Facebook has been developing for Android platforms since 2007. There are a few vulnerabilities to cross-platform applications. Mainly, the web datacenter is unable to adequately serve application content such as videos or high-resolution photos. The size of the mobile market is rapidly growing, and it’s predicted that 2 billion smart phones will be sold worldwide by 2020.
Android vs iOS
One topic that comes up time and time again is what smartphone you should purchase; Android or iOS based? At first glance, people would automatically say one or the other because they seem so different, not many people have a clear argument to support choosing one over the other when all of their differences are taken into account. But while they are different platforms they have many things in common and it’s not difficult to achieve your desired productivity with either platform and really comes down to personal preference and needs.
For example, after considering everything said about both groups there isn’t too much difference between them when it plainly boils down to the end user experience unless you’re solely looking at the user interface for simplicity sake; Apple seems simplistic where as Linux seems complex. There’s actually a little more to it though, as the strings to a web application aren’t really different whether running Linux or Apple, meaning you can simply take code written for one and run it on the other without issue. Imagine that, if that didn’t seem like too big of a challenge when writing applications.