React Native is a JavaScript framework, designed for building native apps for platforms like iOS and Android. It’s based on a JavaScript library created by Facebook called React, and thus brings its power to native mobile app development. It corresponds with today’s mobile app developmentmarket needs, as with two operating systems dominating the landscape, enterprises creating mobile apps often face a decision: build apps that give a better user experience or apps that are faster to develop and run across platforms and devices.
The difficulty to develop the back-end that will work for different operating systems brought forward the idea of hybrid apps. The alternative was to develop a separate code for different operating systems. But this alternative was a time consuming and expensive approach. Therefore, a large chunk of entrepreneurs started using hybrid apps. Although React Native was originally introduced for iOS, Facebook created its support for Android. Due to the more advancement in the framework, now it is easy to embed native code to impart platform-specific authenticity.
This further reduces the development cost and time to a considerable amount. According to the aforementioned, there are instances where you have to be platform-specific like design implications are different on iOS and Android. React Native offers a solution to this problem as well. It provides platform modules and specific file extensions. The module can detect the operating system supporting the app that defines platform-specific implementations. With platform-specific file extension, React picks the right file based on the OS on which the app is running.
React Native allows to accelerate the process of building apps across different platforms, thanks to the likelihood of reusing most of the code between them. The power and reliability of a cross-platform solution attract more and more attention of global tech giants that build authentic products. Here are the 10 top React Native apps.
Facebook
Both the world-renowned social network and related apps like Ads Manager and Facebook Analytics serve as vivid React Native examples. The numerous web development benefits (fast iteration, creation of a single command for all products, etc.) allow to decrease the loading time 2x. The performance speed is among the key properties of a successful solution.
Instagram
This is a technical guru that started integrating a cross-platform tool with a native app from the simplest representation – push notifications, previously implemented as WebView. The interface simplicity took away the need to build the navigational infrastructure. Thanks to the multipurpose character of code, the team of developers managed to solve many processing issues and complete the project much faster as opposed to its native counterpart.
Vogue
The making of the Vogue magazine app takes its base from React Native and helps users wander into the world of fashion. Discover the latest street style, celebrity looks, fashion influencers, and shopping obsessives from around the world.
Skype
Microsoft updated its Android app, switching it to a platform based on React Native, which shows favour for the functionality and usability the framework offers. This technological monster refused using its own product – Xamarin – ultimately choosing React Native instead.
Tesla
This is more complex, as opposed to the previous React Native app examples - a project of a world-renowned car manufacturing giant. The tech solution here allows users to directly interact with their Tesla vehicle. In the ‘live’ mode, you can turn charging on and off, warm up or cool down the car, block or unblock it from a distance, and track its movement and location.
Soundcloud Pulse
SoundCloud is the largest audio streaming platform in the world, containing over 150 million tracks and continuously replenishing music. React Native paved the way for the app’s iOS iteration. The difference in the quality of versions for different OS's used to be huge. The framework allowed SoundCloud developers to efficiently update their solution without involving any narrow-profiled experts.
Bloomberg
This is a renowned business portal that provides relevant market, financial, cryptocurrency, and other information. An updated resource received the interactive interface with personalised content and live streams. The speed of the portal connection was boosted dramatically.
Discord
Discord has been a popular and free voice and chat application, especially for game enthusiasts and social media lovers. React Native has helped heir iOS and Android versions to share the same code almost entirely, facilitating faster development and easy maintenance. It was originally used for Discord’s iOS version but looking at its features like code reusability and faster development cycle, it went onto Android too.
Discovery VR
A top-of-the-line virtual reality solution, created with the help of the framework in the discussion. VR allows users to explore new places, characters, and concepts most conveniently. With the exclusive content from Discovery, this is all the more an attention-grabbing solution.
KFC
KFC is a day-to-day name when it comes to an eating hangout or order at home place. KFC draws its basic development from React Native and through its app, millions of users are enjoying delicious meals at home.
Why Choose React Native?
Cost of Development When you are planning to build an app for a startup, money is an important factor. If you want to create a mobile app for both iOS and Android but have a tight budget, then a cross-platform mobile app is the right approach. Cross-platform apps are budget-friendly, as you only need to hire developers for a single technology.
Time to Market The app’s success depends on time-to-market. This actually represents the total amount of time it takes for a product to move from conception to the market launch. If you are planning to enter the mobile app market early, the cross-platform framework is the right approach. While building two platforms simultaneously, you can capture a large user base from both the markets.
Post Launch Upgrades If you have a different plan for upgrades after launching the first version of the mobile app, native development is the best fit for your business. It will certainly cost more as going native makes it easier to manage the frequent updates. When you don’t anticipate post-launch upgrades, the native app development is a less valuable investment.
Instant Live Updates With the extensive use of JavaScript, developers can push the updates directly to the user’s phone and not via the app update cycle. Users enjoy this up to date version. Moreover, the complete procedure is streamlined and simple. Mostly, Microsoft’s live update service CodePush SDK, this integrated with the React Native app to push notifications to the app.
Apps Built-in React Native are Faster React Native allows the app development using JavaScript-based declaration programming models resulting in a cleaner, simpler and easy to understand code. The framework builds highly responsive and fluid mobile UI owning asynchronous JavaScript interactions with the native environment. This results in lower app load time when compared to a typical hybrid app.
Write Once and Use Everywhere Code The code written in React Native works on almost every mobile platform. Including iOS, Android, Windows, etc. There is no need to write code on Swift for iOS and Java for Android or C# for Windows. The applications are native working on multiple platforms.
App Load Time Reduction Today, performance is the only differentiating factor between popular and unpopular mobile apps. Reduction in the app load time is the biggest challenge faced by mobile app developers. This issue is easy to resolve with React Native. This platform focuses on improving memory efficiency, list-view scrolling performance, app startup time, and UI responsiveness thereby decreasing app load time.
The popularity of the discussed framework demonstrates how a great number of developers consider it to be the best foundation for their projects. Native tools are still widely used, but the benefits of ‘Facebook’s offspring’ become less possible to ignore every year. We at Tabs and Spaces leverage from the great powers of React Native to build your apps. We help you, our customers, save budget and reduce time-to-market while delivering a fully-functioning application. Get in touch with us using the contact form below.
