What is a Native App?

What is a Native App?

The world of smartphones has developed enormously in recent years, but if something is growing even more is the development of mobile applications. Surely you know and use countless entertainment, information, communication and transportation mobile apps, among others, but perhaps you often hear a term that is not very common, native applications. What they are and why they are called Native Apps? In today’s post we explain what is really a native application.

Currently, the main operating systems – iOS, Android and Windows Phone- and their market places – App Store, Google Play and Windows Marketplace – totaling about 3 million of available applications.  This “boom” has attracted the interest of many people to develop new applications that grab the consumers’ attention and achieve a niche in the digital market. At first sigh or for a good graphic design these apps may look alike, but they can be categorized according to how they were developed, which marks its benefits both in terms of response, speed and usability. Therefore, we can distinguish between native applications, those that have been developed taking into account the particularities of each platform to offer the best benefits and hybrid apps, those that leverage a common development which can then be personalized for each type of device: iPhone, Android, among others.

Native applications are so called because they are developed in the native language of the terminal. Depending on the platform for which we want our application, we will develop in a specific language for it. For example, to develop for Android we use Java, for iOS Objective C, and now the new Swift, and for Windows Phone C # and Visual Basic NET.

native languages

These applications will make use of the smartphone resources, having access to different features like camera, GPS, among others. In addition to this, they have many advantages due to be designed directly for the terminal software. This is why they will have an optimized performance and an interface more suited to the operating system the user is accustomed to use. This is the main reason why the native apps are the favorite because they offer more powerful results in design, usability and efficiency. Its distribution is done through the official market places for each operating system, which ensures full visibility and safety.

Another advantage is that these apps can be used without internet connection, although this does not mean that in any of its parts is required. Push notifications are another advantage as well as creating a shortcut on your home screen after installation.

On the other hand, its cost is usually higher because they have a more complex and different programming languages development. This requires more development time and a great preparation by the team or apps development company. This, perhaps, is one of its main disavantages, price, due to its development can not use recycled language from one operating system to another, you have to start from scratch and implement it independently for each platform. Its price also reflected the time required (more than other apps), maintenance costs and validation processes that, in some cases, can be very complicated.

One such case is the App Store, where their validation process is not automatic. It is executed by qualified Apple staff, which can lead to the approval of the app takes at least a week. In the case of Android, it is much faster because they can take approximately 2-4 hours to be available. However, this process is still tedious because it has to be carried out every time an update is made.

In despite of, to develope a native application has more advantages than disadvantages. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are many native applications in the markets places that allow us to make more use of our mobile since they are precisely the apps that have succeeded in the markets of applications.

If you have an app idea, you can contact our specialized application development team. We will advise and help you in whatever you need.

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