Understanding Mobile Apps Development Options (Native, HTML5 or Hybrid)

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26 Aug 2022

Beginner

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Today's mobile apps are playing a vital role, and have changed the way of browsing the web. Now the question is, how to develop your mobile apps? Mainly there are three options to develop your mobile apps: Native Apps, Html5 Apps and Hybrid Apps. Let's have a look in these three development models.

Native Apps Development

Native Mobile Apps development is specific to a given mobile platform (iOS or Android or Windows). They use the development tools and languages that the mobile platform (iOS or Android or Windows) supports like as Xcode and Objective-C for iOS apps, Eclipse and Java for Android app, Visual Studio and XAML, C# for Windows apps. Native Mobile Apps development gives you high performance and best quality for your mobile Apps. They cannot be cross-platform and cannot be launched on other app stores.

HTML5 Apps Development

HTML5 Mobile Apps development use standard web technologies typically HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. These apps are cross-platform i.e. work on multiple mobile devices based on android, ios, blackberry, windows, symbian platform etc. These also has some vital limitations like as access to native device features (like camera, calendar, geolocation, etc.)

Hybrid Apps Development

Hybrid development combines the best of both the native and HTML5 apps. We define hybrid as a web apps, primarily developed by using HTML5 and JavaScript, then it is wrapped inside a native container that provides access to native platform features. PhoneGap is an example of the most popular container for creating hybrid mobile apps.

Comparing Native, HTML5 and Hybrid Mobile Apps Development

Here is the comparison for these three mobile apps development with pros and cons, so you can get better idea.

Features

Native Apps

HTML5 Apps

Hybrid Apps

Navigation

Fast

Slow

Look and Feel

Native

Emulated

Graphics

Native APIs

HTML5, Canvas, SVG

Camera

Yes

Notifications

Yes

Contacts, Calendar

Yes

Geo-location

Yes

Swipe

Yes

Pinch, Spread

Yes

Connectivity

Online and offline

online

Online and offline

Performance

Fast

Slow

Development Skills

Objective-C, Java, C#

HTML5, CSS, JavaScript

Distribution

App store

Web

App store

What do you think?

I hope you will have better understanding between these three mobile apps development. I would like to have feedback from my blog readers. Your valuable feedback, question, or comments about this article are always welcome.