React Native has been making waves in the mobile app development industry for years. Numerous companies are starting to adopt React Native because of its various features over established hybrid development tools such as Ionic, Cordova, and PhoneGap. However, can React Native be used for building multiple applications? Throughout this article, we will be discussing when you shouldn’t be using React Native for your mobile app development project.
Before we dive in, if you’re interested in learning more about how you can build a better app or how you can manage mobile app development, Ecodelogic would love to be your go-to resource mobile app development solution.
What is React Native?
React Native is an open-source development framework for developers to build native applications by using JavaScript. The key to React Native is native. Before Facebook open-sourced React Native, various hybrid app development frameworks existed, such as Ionic, Cordova, and PhoneGap. However, most of these frameworks allow you to develop hybrid apps and not native apps. The difference is that React Native utilizes native UI elements, while web apps are using webview.
If you’re not familiar with webview, this means that you’re converting a mobile website into a mobile app that is not native.
When Not to Use React Native
Resource Intensive Apps
While JavaScript allows you to build smooth and fast apps with React Native, the framework is still in its infancy stage when it comes to complex and features AV projects. Applications such as mobile games or navigation apps will need sophisticated visuals, massive amounts of user interactions, and require a high level of customization. Furthermore, resource-intensive apps may need a considerable amount of calculations and processes running in the background as well. However, Facebook and the community behind React Native are well aware of these issues and are continually improving React Native to find a solution. Therefore, React Native might be able to catch up to their counterparts soon.
Platform Specific Apps
I wouldn’t say that React Native is entirely suitable for platform-specific apps. If your app is designed for only one specific platform, there isn’t a strong enough reason to choose React Native. Unless you have plans to support the other platforms in the future. React Native is built with the cross-platform development capability in mind. Therefore, if you’re only planning to support only one platform, you should go with the native development framework.
Utility or Media Player Apps
There are a lot of apps like battery monitors, antivirus software, and media players on the market today. These apps are much easier to build using native languages because these apps will always require native features and APIs. Writing native wrappers for apps’ APIs and components might take longer than if you were to use native components. So, if you’re building an app that is similar to any of the examples that have been mentioned, you don’t want to go with React Native.
Now that we have gone through the examples let’s take a look at some of the things that React Native doesn’t do well compared to its counterparts.
Performance
When I talk about performance, I’m not saying all React Native apps will have poor performance. What I’m saying is there is a slight difference in the performance when comparing it with native applications built with native languages. With that said, React Native is still better than the other hybrid tools on the market. However, the reduction in performance isn’t noticeable enough to have a significant impact on your app. Your users might not be aware that you’re using React Native to build apps other than the examples mentioned above in this blog.
Dependency on Third-party Modules
This might be an issue that you will want to consider if you don’t have developers on staff maintaining the project. Third-party modules are often used in React Native to speed up development. These packages have already created the bridge to certain native features that developers will need to utilize. Sometimes, specific libraries are not well maintained since volunteers usually open-source these libraries in the community. There are also cases where many open issues of these libraries are not resolved. Therefore, you will have to maintain a copy of these libraries, which might not be the best idea.
React Native is Still a Young Framework
Not that it’s bad to be a young framework. However, the issue is that React Native is open-source software. So, it depends on the community and Facebook to actively tweak and improve the framework according to user feedback. So, whenever Apple or Google releases a new update to their platforms or introduces a new feature, it typically takes time for the same feature to land in one of the updates in React Native.
In Summary
React Native is the perfect tool to build mobile apps that rely on the speed of delivery and beautiful interfaces. You can achieve a lot with React Native by itself. However, it’s not for any apps that will require a lot of resources or direct access to native features. So, is React Native the right solution for your mobile app development? Despite it not being the right for every type of application, React Native is still a promising framework.
That is why Ecodelogic is all in on React Native. React Native still undergoes active development, and the developers at Ecodelogic cannot wait to see this mobile framework achieve its full potential in years to come. Hopefully, this blog has shed some light on whether or not you should use React Native for your next mobile app development project. Our skilled React Native developers are here for you and will make sure that they do everything they can to make sure your mobile app development process runs as smoothly as possible.