Native or Hybrid mobile app? Hi, I am building a team on mobile technology. I have an option to groom the team on native technologies or go with hybrid. The argument for both is equally convincing. Could you please based on your experience recommend one to us. Thanks |
Questions that you should ask yourself (And my answers in paranthesis)
1. Do I need to develop for Android, iOS and other platforms at the same time or near future? (YES)
2. Do I have expertise on any? (YES for Android, goddamn NO for iOS)
3. Do I have time to gain experience for the domain? (NO, expected to build an MVP for Android and iOS in 1 month, while continuing a full-time job)
4. Am I going to develop a dumb client or some heavy tasks are going to be processed by the app? (A dumb client which will make some API requests)
5. Do I have excellent web development skills? (Yeah)
All questions are important, but the answer of the 4th may push you to go native if you are doing some things that would make use of CPU/Memory as efficient as possible.
Also the Cordova or Ionic or any other similar frameworks are just a painkiller which does not solve a problem but hide the problem, which is lacking native app development skills/time. Except for a few examples, there is no app that is used by millions which are not native.
I'd seriously look at two relatively new frameworks: AppGyver, which looks fantastic - so much so that I may switch tools/frameworks on a start-up product. Or, Telerik's NativeScript looks really promising, but it won't be ready for production use until 05/15.
Take a hard look at frameworks before committing to one - esp. Ionic. It looked really good, which is why I, as lead dev in a consumer-oriented startup, chose it for our hybrid app. But, after several months of working with it, its warts become evident.
My $0.02.
If you need a lot of native features, you could create the native app afterwards.
Ask your team what they think, do they have experience with Android / iOS?
Although - I wouldn't recommend it for every app. Our apps are enterprise focused business apps, mainly forms and data. We have built a social - B2C app before but the results were not as good as we'd hoped. It does still feel like a hybrid app opposed to native.
My advice - If its an app focused on data and forms then yes go hybrid, if you want to do something different go native.
Xamarin Forms is taking it all a bit further than the other Xamarin offers because Forms even allows you to build 1 UI using generic concepts that will be rendered in the style of the platform that's running the code. I have to warn you though: Forms is still pretty new and buggy. The concept is really really good and it does work pretty well, but it's just not mature enough for big applications.