Cross-platform mobile apps are now widely developed as one of the most practical and effective solutions. Moreover, cross-platform is a top-notch business idea that enables targeting users of different platforms with one shot. Still, this solution has its challenges, even with advanced technologies and techniques. Understanding and facing those challenges is one step to solving them, being armed with action plans, and having a competitive advantage.
The challenges of cross-platform mobile app development
Behind the benefits of cross-platform development, the process of building an app for two different platforms is full of flaws. Those common pitfalls are tackled with development team expertise, and those new to the niche will have complications. That’s why it’s crucial to have an experienced development agency as a partner when deciding on building a cross-platform application.
Differences in platform architecture
Cross-platform mobile app development involves targeting multiple platforms with a single codebase, which means using the unique architecture of each platform. iOS and Android have different UI components, navigation patterns, and interaction models. When dealing with cross-platform apps, developers should carefully plan the user interface (UI) to ensure it complies with the guidelines and standards of each platform while maintaining a consistent look and feel across all devices.
Performance issues
When focusing on a single platform, it is much easier to maintain exceptional performance, while maintaining performance across multiple platforms is rather a challenge. Cross-platform frameworks introduce an additional layer of abstraction to enable code sharing across platforms. While this facilitates development efficiency, it can potentially impact app performance, resulting in slower execution speeds, increased memory usage, and reduced responsiveness. Optimization techniques, such as minimizing unnecessary computations, leveraging platform-specific rendering, and implementing efficient algorithms, will help mitigate these performance issues.
Limited access to platform-specific features
Each platform has unique features that are not always readily accessible in cross-platform development. Modern frameworks DO provide abstractions to access common functionality, but certain advanced or platform-specific features may still require additional efforts, such as camera access, Bluetooth functionality, or advanced sensors. Those challenges are tackled with plugins, modules, or custom native code integrations to bridge the gap.
Security
When dealing with sensitive information, cross-platform apps are more frequently prone to facing security threats than native apps due to a lack of testing. This challenge may force app stores to reject and ban similar applications.
Platform updates
One of the biggest challenges of cross-platform app development is iOS or Android OS updates. iOS is the worst nightmare for developers who have to adapt to OS updates. And because OS updates do not immediately propagate to cross-platform tools, it is a common challenge.
How to overcome the challenges of cross-platform mobile app development
There is not a single problem or challenge that cannot be tackled strategically with expertise. Here is a cheat sheet of what to consider to overcome or prevent the challenges.
Choosing the right cross-platform framework
Any challenge can be solved if handled by an experienced team that knows the gaps in cross-platform app development and may prevent most of them by simply choosing the right cross-platform development framework. Here are the popular frameworks that are top choices for building modern apps.
React Native
React Native, created by Facebook and based on JavaScript, offers a large developer community and extensive libraries. It enables code reuse, fast development cycles, and hot reloading. However, it may have limited access to certain native APIs and be slower for computationally intensive tasks.
Features
- Single codebase
- Native-like user interface
- Hot reloading
- Third-party library support
- Performance optimization
- Code reusability
- Developer tooling
- Community and support
Flutter
Google's Flutter, utilizing the Dart programming language, provides a rich set of customizable widgets and delivers high-performance UI experiences for building cross-platform apps. It offers hot reloading, platform-specific rendering, and direct access to native features. As the framework is relatively new, and the community is still growing.
Features
- Hot reload
- Widgets
- Fast and native-like performance
- Access to native features
- Extensive community
- Customizable UI
- Reduced maintenance
Xamarin
Xamarin, using C#, enables code sharing across platforms and provides direct access to platform-specific APIs. It offers a mature development environment and a broad range of libraries. However, the talent pool may fall short for developers with relevant expertise.
Features
- Code sharing
- Native UI
- Visual Studio integration
- Access to native APIs
- Component store
- Xamarin.Forms previewer
- Rapid prototyping
- Integration with existing code
Ionic
Ionic, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, allows for rapid development and code reuse, offers a wide range of pre-built UI components, and supports various plugins. However, compared to frameworks utilizing native rendering, performance may be comparatively lower.
Features
- Cordova integration
- Angular framework
- Live reload and testing
- Cost-effectiveness
- Access to native features
- Progressive Web App (PWA) support
Optimizing the performance of the cross-platform application
When dealing with cross-platform application development challenges, the main issue is performance. The optimization may eliminate not only performance issues but also prevent other issues. Here is what you can do to optimize performance.
- Reduce app size: User experience is about speed. Think of minimizing app size by eliminating unnecessary dependencies, compressing assets, and employing code minification techniques.
- Use third-party libraries: Evaluate the third-party libraries you are working with, as each library introduces additional overhead. Opt for lightweight alternatives or custom solutions.
- Platform-specific optimizations: Each platform we have mentioned above requires platform-specific to provide high performance, such as hardware acceleration, native rendering, or code optimization techniques.
Managing platform-specific features
One of the challenges that forces most stakeholders to stick to native app development is platform-specific features that may not be available on cross-platform applications. Here, too, we have strategies to solve the challenges and enable platform-specific features on cross-platform apps.
Plugins or modules
Utilize plugins or modules provided by the framework or the community to access platform-specific APIs. These plugins act as bridges between the cross-platform codebase and native functionalities.
Platform-specific code snippets
In some cases, it may be necessary to write platform-specific code snippets to handle specific features or behaviors. Cross-platform frameworks often provide mechanisms to incorporate platform-specific code within the shared codebase. These code snippets can be used to implement functionality not available through plugins or abstractions.
Feature detection
For smooth execution across platforms, it is necessary to identify the feature on a particular platform, adjust the app’s behavior, or provide alternative solutions when the feature is not supported.
Community Contributions
The developer communities surrounding cross-platform frameworks are a valuable resource for managing platform-specific features. Developers can leverage libraries, packages, or code snippets that provide ready-made solutions for integrating specific platform-specific features.
Testing and Debugging
Once you have faced challenges, chosen a framework, and taken care of performance, it is time to take care of testing and debugging strategies to execute a fully functioning application.
*Testing approach *
- Cross-platform frameworks provide emulators and simulators that allow developers to test their apps on virtual devices that simulate the behavior of real devices.
- Testing on real devices is essential to validate the app's behavior, performance, and compatibility with different hardware configurations.
- Cross-platform frameworks often support automated testing frameworks that enable developers to write test scripts to validate various aspects of the app, such as user interactions, data processing, and UI components.
Framework-and platform-specific debugging tools
Leverage the debugging tools for the framework and platform to diagnose and resolve issues efficiently. These tools often offer hot reloading, code inspection, and runtime debugging.
Staying up-to-date with new updates and features
No matter whether you face challenges or not, staying up-to-date with the latest cross-platform development trends is a must.
Conclusion
The decision of whether to choose a cross-platform application and face challenges or invest in a native application is very individual and project-specific. One thing is clear native app development also has benefits and challenges, so decision-making should never be based on the challenges. Cross-platform applications are the future; fast development and deployment, a short time to market, cost efficiency, and flexibility will definitely win over challenges. Choosing the right framework, optimizing performance, managing platform-specific features, and staying updated will enable developers to overcome these challenges and deliver robust, feature-rich mobile apps across multiple platforms.
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