Is Iconic Framework better over Native Apps?

The age old question that has bogged developers, Is Iconic framework better over Native Apps. Nowadays, there are plenty of ways of having a mobile application as a final product. The most popular solution is building it as native, by using the native language of each platform. The alternative is to choose a cross-platform tool. Using native code leads to superior performance, but has the downside of having two teams to handling the product: one for the Android ecosystem and another for iOS. Cross-platform libraries rely on standard web tools like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, providing native experiences by accessing the native features. The hybrid path has the advantage of increasing the speed of mobile development, by having just one project for both platforms and offering UX consistency across channels.

Ionic Framework is an open-source UI toolkit for building mobile and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) apps using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It provides mobile-optimized web technology-based components as well as native APIs using Capacitor and Ionic Native. It was created in 2013, by the Drifty Co. The original version was released in 2013, built on top of Angularjs and Apache Cordova.In 2019 they launched a version with support for multiple front-ends, including React.js.Today you can build an Hybrid mobile application in Ionic with Angular, React.js, Vuejs, or even with just plain JavaScript.

Now let’s take a look at its advantages:

Pros:

Has a good documentation, since it’s a company specialized in building tools that help companies and developers to make mobile applications.

These tools are well understood by web developers since it uses webview to render the application (letting the developers use day-to-day technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript).

Makes it easy to port the code into a Progressive Web App (PWA), since all the code is built to run in a web browser. Ionic just requires a few extra steps to be able to have one PWA.

Although it has benefits, we can also encounter some challenges in the way, like the ones listed below:

Cons:

Since the organization behind the framework makes a living from it, besides the free-mium features, there are also premium ones that you can only use if you pay an extra cost.

Ionic is built on top of the “web browser”. The application code can’t easily access the native functionalities

With React Native, developers can build mobile applications for Android and iOS platforms using JavaScript, but they can also implement features with native code. It enables cross-platform builds by providing platform-agnostic native components that map into the platforms’ native UI building blocks. It was created in 2015 by Facebook and it is used in many of its products, as for example, the marketplace section of Facebook’s application.

Developers can also build TV applications with React Native. This means that with a few extra steps, it is possible to deliver applications for the Apple TV and Android TV.

Now, lets dive into some benefits of React Native:

Pros

Massive community around the ecosystem. Right now, there are impressive numbers on GitHub repo Facebook/react-native. This means that it’s very likely for developers to find answers to issues or problems they’re facing.

Ability to be integrated into existing native apps, like showed in this presentation. Besides that, it’s also possible to build native modules, making your mobile application’s look and feel as smooth as a native application.

React Native is translated to native code, with the benefit of achieving 60 frames per second. This gives the user the impression of a native app – not slow at all!

It allows developers to deliver applications for Apple TV and Android TV, with only a few extra steps.

Cons:

Since there’s a big private company behind it, new tools are released according to their own needs. However, the community is free to extend the desired features, to achieve what is necessary for both Android and iOS native technologies.

React Native is still beta. Yes, you read it right. Although it was created five years ago, the Facebook team still didn’t have the confidence to bump a “production” release of it. It may sound like: “be aware of the possible risks”.

This often leads to breaking changes in tools and dependencies between versions. But hey, Gmail was almost 5 years in beta and it worked pretty well.

It eventually boils down to the developers’ choice and needs. Since Ionic works with web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) it fits well in a team that has no background in the native world.

With Ionic, you will have the capability to make great mobile applications, accessing native features like GPS, maps, or audio. These features are ready to be deployed into both Play Store and App Store, with the same effort and expertise that will require to build a web site.

React Native is easily addressed by developers with prior iOS or Android development knowledge. The learning curve for a React developer to understand and debug a React Native application is higher than with Ionic. However, React Native stands with the golden triumph of accessing the native functionalities of the mobile devices, allowing your mobile application to deliver a more native look and feel.