Tips For Creating Hybrid Mobile Apps

Smartphone apps generally can be divided into native, hybrid & web applications. A hybrid mobile application is something that has characteristics of both native as well as web applications. Choosing the native app allows you to use all possible capabilities of a device and the OS. However, developing a web application allows you to use the code on different platforms. This can be useful in reducing the mobile app development time and cost.

Earlier many of the businesses move on to native & web apps. This kind of mobile apps was considered as an important channel for businesses to connect with their audiences. Now PhoneGap, Appcelerator & other frameworks introduced the concept of hybrid apps.

Hybrid mobile apps is a kind of mobile apps that are rich in capabilities of web & native apps. Hybrid mobile apps are built on CSS3, HTML5, JavaScript and integrated with other technology. It is compatible with varied mobile platforms like iOS, Android. PhoneGap and other frameworks come with APIs that allows users of the app to access the different features such as Camera, GPS, memory & others.

Many of the smartphone app development agencies grab the opportunity to save the time & cost. This post is sharing valuable points to consider before moving on to hybrid mobile app development.

1. Be clear with features that require native code

It is very important to know the requirements of features if it needs the hybrid code or native code. If you are looking for exact same features that website do, then you need hybrid code completely. Every feature has their different functionalities to know what code that feature requires is very essential for smart phone app developer.

2. Beware of limitations of hybrid mobile approach

Hybrid mobile apps have some limitations that make native single option in certain cases. These limitations are given below:

? Animations: No doubt, hybrid mobile apps uses animations with less fluidity as compared to native ones. This is something that allows developers to use native apps.

? Animation Slow-moving: This is similar to the above problem but it's more general. Hybrid apps appear slow at the time of page & state transitions. For eg: Many good animations looks & appear worse in hybrid mobile apps.

? Memory usage: Smartphone apps run on a physical device so memory usage is the very genuine problem. As compared to native apps, hybrid apps utilize more memory because they uses device's web view.

3. Choose The Correct Hybrid framework

Native applications have a well established and properly managed technology stack. Android apps are developed using Java whereas, iOS apps can be written in Swift or objective-c. Alternatively, hybrid mobile apps are built using various frameworks. It should be significant to take a hybrid mobile app built with single framework & modernize it with another.

The decision should be clear while choosing the framework for a hybrid mobile app. Decision becomes more difficult because there are so many frameworks available. Might be possible that your chosen framework likely to lose market share, thus its maintenance become more costly. So choose the correct framework to avoid future problems.

4. User experience varies from native Apps

iOS and Android apps have different design languages & provide their own user experience in terms of UX/UI. Hybrid apps are not able to provide you the UX/UI as similar to native apps because hybrid apps target multiple platforms.

For Eg: Smartphone varies iOS uses “Segmented controls” and Android uses View Pagers.

At last, let's discuss some benefits and drawbacks of hybrid mobile apps as compared to native & mobile apps:

Benefits

1. Code written at once can be use with multiple platforms

2. Decrease overall development cost & time

3. Developers can build the app with existing web skills.
4. It provides various offline capabilities

Drawbacks

1. Not compatible with all device & OS features

2. Risk arises of rejection on Apple store, if app feels in not similar to native

3. Performance issues in few apps (heavy transitions)

4. Animation not appears similar to native apps

Conclusion:

Going with a hybrid app can be a great decision for smartphone app development, but possibly end up costing you more money than you saved in the past. Before choosing the platform, you need to understand all drawbacks and limitations of the hybrid.

Many frameworks are improving & in the upcoming years. It is believed that those days are not so far when the capability of hybrid apps will be increased in terms of hardware compatibility as well as UX/UI. I hope these tips will help you to build better hybrid mobile apps.

Tips and Tricks for Developing Hybrid Mobile Apps -

1.Use or create a yeoman generator

2.Consider Implementation Following an Angular Style Guide

3.Quickly test your mobile application with the PhoneGap Developer App

4.Use Babel to enable ES6 support

5.vMake use of available plugins, frameworks, and libraries

6.Consider writing end-to-end automation testing.

For Hybrid Mobile Apps you PhoneGap framework: FanReact, Localeur and other.PhoneGap allows the creation of hybrid mobile applications just from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes. Here you can find some tips for creating a hybrid app