Do hybrid mobile apps tend to be seen by technology industry developers as lower native apps?

Question

For the college project, my group planned to create a cloud messaging app for Android. We initially started development by exploring and using the Ionic Framework and Phonegap to create a hybrid application.

Based on what we read and learned so far, we realized that the development of hybrid applications allows us to code web technologies (HTML, CSS Javascript), which we were much less familiar with than creating our own application. It also had the advantages of working on several platforms with very little customization.

But as we moved forward, we received some strange reviews from many of our colleagues and people in this field, who all pointed to one thing: general mistrust and doubt regarding hybrid applications.

In the end, we decided to go to our native application because of this feedback, among other reasons, but it always bothered us why people felt this way.

Answer 1

Yes, the general consensus is that hybrid apps are inferior to Native apps. While this may be frustrating for developers more familiar with web technologies, this is for a good reason:

• Inability to interact with proprietary components . Although plugins exist, such as the cordova-plugin-statusbar , there are limitations that interact with and work with native components using web technologies. One of the great (and disappointing) issues that I have personally encountered is the inability to have an input at the top of the keyboard as the keyboard comes to life. It sounds disjoint until you look at the application where it is an important feature, such as in a chat application like Slack.
• 300 ms delay Although modern browsers are starting the phase of this , a fraction of the second delay is present on hybrid applications, the application becomes slow and not native. This problem is becoming less significant as more and more users use workarounds such as FastClick.js and some frameworks such as Ionic to eliminate it by default.
• Haters are right (sort of) . Although hybrid application development has come a long way, there are still minor glitches and lagging features that are simply missing from the Native app. Screen transitions, application switching, and battery life are still common areas for errors to appear and are likely to last for a while, even if they begin to become less noticeable.
• There are some great Native solutions . With newer languages ​​such as Apple Swift , it is becoming easier to code in the native language. At the same time, tools such as React Native fall into the gray space between Native and Hybrid, allowing developers to code friendly technologies such as JavaScript, but compile them into their own code.

The moral of the story is that it really depends on what is important for your particular use case. Hybrid apps have become a viable option and are no longer an embarrassing side show. Conversely, there are still minor aspects of interacting with Native UX, which are not yet possible, except with the help of the Native application.

In general, I recommend mapping your project and determining if your application needs any of the benefits of a native application. Using tools like Ionic View , it's easy to put together the main layout of your application and test on a real device, regardless of whether the Hybrid application will work for you.