In today's announcement from Expo, they released the latest release of their software development kit, SDK 48. This blog will delve into the various changes and improvements that accompany this update.
Key Features:
1. Hermes is now the default JavaScript engine :
Until SDK 47, JavaScriptCore (JSC) was the default JavaScript engine, but from SDK 48 Hermes will replace it. This will have a great impact on Performance, Binary Size and Memory Consumption, we will look into this later in this post.
The key difference between Hermes and other JavaScript engines is its ability to compile JavaScript source code to bytecode ahead of time.
Let's take a look at the improvements that comes with Hermes
- Benchmarking:
When it comes to a app developer, the 3 most important metrics are TTL, binary size and memory consumption. Addition of Hermes as the default JavaScript engine has a great effect on these three metrics:
TTL Or Time to interactive, is the duration of time from the app launched to user being to interact with it.
The binary size is measured as APK size on android and IPA size on iOS.
Memory Consumption is collected by running the app for couple of minutes.
Using Hermes as the default JavaScript engine, on Android,
Source: Hermes as the Default
On IOS,
Source: Hermes as the Default
2. SDK 48 includes React Native 0.71.3 and React 18.2.0:
React Native's layout engine now supports FlexBox properties gap, rowGap and columnGap.
3. Android compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion will be set to API level 33.
4. Support for **right-to-left languages in Expo Go.**
5. expo-random has been merged with expo-crypto and now the functions like, getRandomValues, randomUUID and digest functions are supported by expo-crypto.
In conclusion, the Expo team has yet again delivered a significant update to their platform with the release of SDK 48.This update is a substantial step forward in the evolution of the platform. With its new features, developers can create better and more feature-rich apps which can provide better user experience.
Reference : Blog Post for SDK 48 , Hermes Post
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