Hybrid and native applications: advantages and disadvantages

The wide popularity of gadgets quite leads to the fact that new manufacturers come to the market. And along with them come to their own developments, which find themselves in applications. These are so-called native applications, that are available only on one particular platform or operating system. A simple example: the Android platform uses Google as its startup browser, while iOS uses a browser called Safari. This approach applies not only to the browser but also to many other applications, which ability is limited to install to their “parent” system. In turn, by the way, the same operating system Windows Phone is also largely based on its own services.  

In turn, hybrid applications are inherently more versatile and more suitable for different systems (in the context of this material we will build on iOS and Android, two flagships of today’s gadget world). In many ways, a hybrid application is a kind of synthesis of mobile and web-oriented applications, namely forms available only for one system, but already browser-based or computer-based.

Both native and hybrid applications have their pros and cons. But how a developer or average user can define creation and use of which application is more favorable both from the practical and from the material point of view? Having looked at the given opposition from different perspectives, we will try to understand it.

Native Applications Pluses

• Firstly, it is a wide range of developers, as well as timely and quality technical support of customers, because large companies can afford to invest serious financial resources in their own product. And then, the user will never, as sometimes happens with hybrid applications, be left alone with his problem. If only because iOS or Android, as practice shows, provide good feedback to their customers: they will help, configure and fix the irreparable.
   
• Secondly, it is widespread and has a high percentage of relevance to the device. It is unlikely that native applications will have such an honor as not being placed on the central Play Market or App Store user sites. In addition, by downloading a specific native application, the user can be almost 100% sure that it is suitable for his device, because it knowingly meets all the parameters of a particular platform, and therefore - is best optimized for it. This means that no blunders or buggy should be expected.
   
• Thirdly, a native application is not only a service that suits your device in all its parameters, but also a specific quality that manifests itself in pure coding, broad functionality, as well as minimal braking or malfunctions. It makes no sense for large companies to make applications and software for their devices quickly or anyhow. After all, you will not hang wallpaper in some way in the apartment, which you consider as a permanent address?
   
• Fourth, by choosing the native application, the user has a huge chance to get not a standard, gloomy and gray interface, but the brightest and the most original design combined with convenient and intuitive operation. Every year the average user is becoming more and more selective in their preferences because, in parallel with the growth of the bar requirements, it is more and more saturated with all kinds of content. How to surprise the person who has already seen, well, probably, EVERYTHING? Right, to make every effort, to devote all available resources at full capacity and every time create not an ordinary faded trinket, but a small technological masterpiece.

Minuses of native applications

Perhaps the only minus of any excellent, but official content is its price. Yes, you will have to develop a separate application for each platform.

Manufacturers often make native applications fee-paying. And if you plan to follow this plan, remember that people basically do not like to pay money for any software, even if it is of high-quality. While the development of a quality application for a particular platform really does cost money. So you will have to think through the process of monetization well, or better to test it before the official launch.

Pluses of Hybrid Application

• Firstly, it is a wider market coverage. After all, since hybrid applications come out on several platforms at once, there will be many times more users. For example, there are many people who use several systems simultaneously. And it will be much more favorable to them to use one habitual for themselves software, rather than to divide spheres of their own use.
   
• Secondly, that’s the price again. The advantage of many hybrid applications is that they allow you to save money and not to spend on developing two separate versions of the same product.

Minuses of hybrid applications

In contrast to native variations, hybrid applications have far more drawbacks.

• Well, for starters, when developing a hybrid application, keep in mind that some native functions may not work to their full potential or may not be able to be implemented at all.
   
• You need to be prepared for the fact that the adaptability of the application does not always work perfectly, there may be bugs on different systems. Hybrid applications are poorly optimized or suffer from network vulnerabilities. Who needs applications if it is constantly buggy? It is also more likely to be hacked by fraudsters than the native version.
   
• There is a heavy load lies down on the Support System. You’ll have to face problems of a variety of users and devices, but you may not be able to fix everything quickly because of the variety of problems and the need for constant updates. Hence, the potential negative.
   
• Unfortunately, due to lower budgets and development controls, hybrid applications are often very limited in their interface and also have an unattractive design, which in the current age of growing interactivity is unacceptable to many users. Even the step tracker should be convenient, clear and pleasant to look at, not to mention the design of banking systems and various editors.
   

So what’s to choose?

It is unlikely that anyone will give you a concrete and definitive answer to this question. In the end, what is bad for one is good and pleasant for another. What is more important is to know all the subtleties and pitfalls of both options, in order to find the most convenient and user-friendly software. And it does not matter whether it is native or hybrid.