Until a few years ago, businesses used to develop dedicated mobile applications for each platform. For instance, if they want to target both Android and iOS mobile platforms, they need to hire two different development teams- one for each mobile OS incurring more development costs. Besides this, the regular rollout of new features and continuous upgrades used to exhaust the marketing budget of many startups and SMEs.
To overcome this challenge, Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly known as Facebook) introduced React Native, an open-source UI framework built on the principle of “learn once, write anywhere”. Launched back in 2015, this cross-platform framework took the mobile app development industry by storm. With React Native mobile app development, you can not only accelerate the development process but also target all the leading mobile platforms without draining your budget. Simply put, React Native enables businesses to build native-like mobile applications that run seamlessly across all the mobile platforms without any hiccups.
What makes React Native a coveted choice for mobile app development is that it has an easy learning curve, comes with reusable components, reduces development complexity, and a single codebase that is shareable across all mobile platforms. Today, React Native has become the go-to framework for application development. In fact, businesses from startups to industry titans such as Airbnb, Skype, Uber Eats, Instagram, Tesla, Walmart, Pinterest, Salesforce, Coinbase, Bloomberg, and of course, Facebook are leveraging the potential of this revolutionary framework. Before you hire React Native app developers, let’s take a look at some pros and cons of using this framework in 2022.
Pros of React Native
1. Accelerate App Development
One of the key reasons behind the popularity of React Native is that it allows you to build a mobile application for your business in a quick turnaround time. Since it comes with a codebase that is shareable between Android and iOS mobile platforms, developers can reuse code up to 95% resulting in faster time-to-market. Walmart also reused 95% of the codebase when developing a mobile application. Simply put, with React Native single codebase businesses can deploy applications to both the mobile platforms and save time and money by up to 30%.
2. Deploy New App Updates on The Fly
In the native mobile application, launching new app updates requires approval from the app store, which is a time-intensive process. Though the Apple App Store has taken cognizance of this concern and reduced the lengthy app review time, yet you still have to wait for a few days. On the other hand, React Native allows developers to bypass the App Store entirely and roll out new updates instantly. With JavaScript-based apps like React Native, deploying updates becomes a breeze.
3. Provides a Rich Ecosystem
Since React Native is a Javascript-based app development framework, it allows developers to access a wide array of tools, libraries, and pre-made solutions for free. This not only facilitates faster mobile application development but also helps developers in creating bug-free applications. If you compare React Native with other cross-platform app development frameworks, you will find that the former offers better ready-made solutions and libraries as compared to its counterparts.
4. Backed by a Strong Community Support
Apart from being backed by Meta Platforms Inc. (a.k.a Facebook), React Native proudly boasts a strong and active community of developers. Being open-source in nature, React Native allows every passionate developer out there to contribute their expertise in improving this app development framework. What's more interesting about React Native is that it is one of the most starred repositories on GitHub. As of April 2022, the React Native repository has over 100k stars and 22k fork.
Cons of React Native
1. Hard to Debug
Mobile applications developed using the React Native framework are difficult to debug. The reason being these mobile applications are developed using JavaScript, C/C++, Java, etc. Also, it requires developers to have sound knowledge of the native programming languages of the platform.
2. App Testing is Still Time-Intensive
Though React Native accelerates mobile application development, when it comes to testing, it is still time-consuming. In fact, the time spent by the Quality Assurance team on React Native applications is almost similar to native applications, and in some cases, it is even higher. You must keep this thing in mind when choosing the React Native framework for application development.
Summing Up
Like every other framework, React Native has also some pros and cons. When choosing a framework, you must weigh the pros and cons of React Native with other app development frameworks. This will help you in choosing the right framework. Overall, React Native is a great application development framework that comes with more pros than cons. Hire React Native app developers from a trusted partner and get a feature-rich app that looks like a native mobile application but runs smoothly across all platforms.
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