Mobile Applications: Web, Native & Hybrid

Amidst the lockdown caused due to a pandemic of covid-19, the virtual world is always open. There are more mobile users than website or laptop users. This is because the tasks can be done over mobiles as well. A variety of smartphone ranges has entered the market from a low configuration that can perform all daily tasks of calling, messaging, browsing and using certain apps seamlessly to very high-end smartphones on which all sorts of games and a variety of apps can run together as well without any trouble.

Smart Phones come in a number of platforms consisting of Android OS, Mac OS, and Windows OS. However when talking about apps on these then there are three types of apps that exist in the market, namely web apps, native apps and hybrid apps. Users use the apps as per the compatibility of their phones and requirement. Making a decision of building one becomes overwhelming when presented with too many approximately equally good choices.

Here is something that can help you get an idea of the variety of apps.

• Web apps: Also known as Progressive Web Apps (Applications), are applications that are delivered through the web and run on a server. Such apps are intended to work on standards-compliant browsers over any platform.
• Native apps: These apps are made for a specific mobile device platform and they can be installed and used on those platforms. They are coded on various platform machine-friendly languages like Java/Kotlin for Android, Swift/C++ for Mac.
• Hybrid apps: Just like any application these can be installed on mobile devices, however in Hybrid apps, the apps are written in a single language and are then converted into the respective platform applications. Hybrid apps can be written using React native, Flutter etc.
• The choice of building a particular app depends on the purpose of the app. While web apps are highly compatible as they only require a functional web browser to assist its download, it cannot handle OS calls or OS calls that might be required to perform tasks such as interacting with the user’s device in order to save or retrieve files. These apps can be slow and may not be validated by app stores. On the other hand, Native apps are heavier than Web apps but lighter than Hybrid apps as it is platform compatible. Unlike Web apps, it can access the user’s OS features such as a microphone, file storage and retrieval, etc. Last but not the least, talking about hybrid apps are built for both web and native app features. They consist of elements of both web apps and native apps. Like a native app, they are fast and can perform complex features along with accessing the microphone, camera, etc. of the device and like web apps, they are cross-platform compatible. These are built only once and deployed on the respective platforms.

As more and more businesses are turning towards the virtual world today, more apps are coming into the market. Mobile apps make it easier for users to understand the purpose as they are personalized accordingly.