What is the difference between a native and a hybrid mobile application?

Almost for a decade now, mobile apps are moving forward in terms of innovation. With the growing market of smartphones, every organization is looking forward to adding mobile applications in its business flow to cover a wide market. 

For the development of a mobile application, an organization has to do detailed planning for various types of processes. And the organization has to decide upon the way in which you would like to create and deploy the application.

Most of the organizations face a common challenge, such as, what is the best way to build an application, whether it is native or hybrid? Which will be the best for the organization? The answers to the queries depend on factors such as the following :

• The speedy development of the application.
• Whether the organization opts for in-house development.
• The objective of building the application.
• Budget to develop the application.
• Features required in the application.

What is a native application?

A native app is a program that has been coded in a specific programming language, for devices having specific OS. For instance, Objective C is used for iOS or Java for Android Phones. These apps can take advantage of OS features and other software tools that are installed on that platform. They also have access to various phone functions such as camera, gallery, contact list, etc.

Native application quick benefits : 

• Native UI allows users to quickly learn the application. 
• Easy to discover in app stores (Apple’s App Store, Google’s Play Store).
• Access to device hardware/software (GPS. Location, Vibration, Camera, etc.).
• Better user experience

What is a hybrid application?

Hybrid applications are software or programs that include features of both web browsers and native apps. These applications are created with HTML 5, CSS, and JavaScript, further, they get wrapped in a native container. Later native containers load a huge amount of information on the page.

Hybrid application quick benefits : 

• Portability (One code base, multiple platforms).
• Access to various hardware/software capabilities through plugins.
• Cheaper organization cost. 
• Faster (initial speed to market).

A quick difference between these two is as follows : 

Check respective knowledgebase for below queries :

How does the theme work in a native and a hybrid mobile application?

What is the difference between the integration process of a module in a native and a hybrid mobile application? 

Please do contact us for any further queries or requirements. You can also check our Magento 2 Extensions for additional features.