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React Native is one of the most popular cross-platform mobile app development frameworks used by developers across the globe. According to a survey, one-third of mobile developers use cross-platform technologies or frameworks; the rest of mobile developers use native tools.
Furthermore, the survey stated, 42 percent of software developers used React Native. There are several reasons behind the popularity of React Native. Partner with React Native Development company to get all benefits.
To begin with, for those who are not very clear about React Native, let’s start with the very basic question.
What is React Native?
React Native is an open-source mobile app platform created in JavaScript. Backed by Facebook, React Native app development is growing at an astronomical pace taking the mobile app development world by storm.
React and React Native: Understanding the differences
There is a world of difference between React and React Native App Development. React is an open-source, front-end, JavaScript library for building user interfaces or UI components. React Native is a framework to create robust mobile applications with more efficient code sharing across iOS, Android, and the Web, without compromising the user’s experience or the overall quality/performance of an application.
Why Select React Native for Mobile App Development?
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Reaching out to users on different operating systems
Are you targeting users on Android or iOS? Or do you want to reach out to users across both operating systems? If you want to reach out to a wider user base across both platforms, cross-platform app development will be the way ahead. However, if you are looking to target either Android or iOS users, native application development which provides a seamless user experience is the way ahead.
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Price and Time
It goes without saying that building native applications for both iOS and Android is a complex process, requiring expert developers. This might be a challenging task for new startups or organizations with a limited budget. On the other hand, React Native mobile app for ios and Android provides a time-efficient and cost-effective solution.
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One Codebase: Learn Once and Write Anywhere
React Native provides both Android and iOS users with a truly native look and feel of an application. React Native is a developer’s delight for several reasons. True to its tagline React Native framework allows you to write code only and use those codes on different platforms, be it Android or iOS.
One codebase will directly impact different stages of the application development by allowing you to save resources you’d otherwise spend on fixing and upgrading different separate sets of code. If you need to develop an app for both iOS and Android, React Native is the best tool out there. It can reduce the codebase by about 95%. Isn’t that phenomenal?
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React Native Community
The core of React Native is worked on full-time by Facebook’s React Native team. But the community of React Native is strong and growing at a rapid pace. The community makes key contributions to fix glitches, bugs and fix things.
React Native is unquestionably one of the most effective and popular alternatives to native development with 2,269 GitHub contributors and over 94.7k GitHub stars. The burgeoning community makes it relatively easy to find a reliable and knowledgeable developer team to kick off your React Native project.
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UI Elements
When it comes to GUI, React native application can provide native user experience courtesy controllers native to both Android and iOS. It also utilizes the ReactJS library with UI elements, which accounts for speeding up the UI design process.
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Reusability of Components
When it comes to handling complex operations and their seamless performance, React Native allows you to use Java, Objective-C, or Swift for native modules. Components of different platforms can’t be shared. However, 90% of React Native Codebase can be reused and several open-source libraries of pre-built components can help you further speed up the development process.
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Hot Reloading Feature
Hot Reloading allows implementing changes to the UI without losing the state of the app. According to React “The idea behind hot reloading is to keep the app running and to inject new versions of the files that you edited at runtime. This way, you don’t lose any of your state which is especially useful if you are tweaking the UI.”
With the Hot Module Replacement (HMR) feature, developers can quickly make changes in the source code while viewing instant results. Changes in the code are reloaded automatically. This helps React Native developers to skip recompilation, improving development speed.
React Native Application: On the Flip Side
- Performance is still not comparable to native – React Native can’t leverage all device or platform-specific features of a given platform. Native apps will always have an upper hand when it comes to optimum utilization of functionalities and delivering an engaging user experience.
- Design-wise limitations – When it comes to complex designs or advanced interactions, native application development has an edge. However, this is rapidly changing as more apps based on React Native with complex UI are coming up.
- Custom modules – While you can access custom modules, yet, there is a need to build certain specific components from scratch.
Finally
With a strong developer community and new capabilities/features, React Native is one of the best options to build high-end applications. All in all, 2021 & beyond look promising for React Native. Backed by Facebook, its popularity will continue to grow. It is not just about support from Facebook, the rapidly increasing community base of developers and regular launch of new releases to address glitches makes it a formidable choice for cross-platform app development.