What Are The Pros and Cons of Using React Nat­ive For Android?

Strug­gling to choose the best tech­no­logy for applic­a­tion and web solu­tions? We know it’s a real deal. 

Everything from the prop­er under­stand­ing, qual­ity research, audi­ence interests, and busi­ness needs require core focus before mak­ing a decision. It could have been a big deal, but not anymore! 

We are here to help.

In our exper­i­ence as a React Nat­ive Devel­op­ment Com­pany, we have worked on many applic­a­tions for Android that work on React Nat­ive. Our nar­rat­ive dir­ectly comes from the exper­i­ences we’ve had with technology. 

While it comes with sig­ni­fic­ant advant­ages, cer­tain things can­not be overlooked.

Hence, we have come up with this write-up to give clar­ity and the most accur­ate inform­a­tion about React Nat­ive, espe­cially for the Android plat­form. So, if you’ve been look­ing for a simple guide, here it is!

Let’s dive in!

But first, let’s listen to what the facts and fig­ures say about it. After all, num­bers matter!

Import­ant React Nat­ive Stats to Consider

React was developed for Facebook’s needs in 2013. It was nev­er before 2015 that it was released into the mar­ket. Since then, it’s been widely used in the front-end devel­op­ment system.

There are approx­im­ately 34 thou­sand mobile applic­a­tions built on React Nat­ive, with a total num­ber of down­loads extend­ing to more than 4.2 billion.

The con­tri­bu­tion of React Nat­ive in vari­ous applic­a­tions and install has been pre­cisely presen­ted in the table below:

React Nat­ive for Android

React Nat­ive is a cross-plat­form mobile applic­a­tion devel­op­ment soft­ware. Yes, it helps devel­op applic­a­tions across mul­tiple plat­forms, but what’s unique about the soft­ware for Android applic­a­tion development?

There are 2 bil­lion Android users world­wide, mak­ing it the most widely used oper­at­ing system.

When an Android Nat­ive applic­a­tion is built (Spe­cif­ic Android Users), it is made on Java and Kot­lin cod­ing lan­guages. How­ever, React Nat­ive devel­ops applic­a­tions for Android using only JavaScript. 

From Face­book, Ins­tagram, Bloomberg, Pin­terest, and Wal­mart, to Sales­force, thou­sands of applic­a­tions run on React Native. 

Now, let’s see how React Nat­ive bene­fi­cial for Android users and what the chal­lenges can be for all the Android apps run­ning on React Native.

Also Read: What are the bene­fits of hir­ing a React Nat­ive App developer

Advant­ages of Using React Nat­ive for Android

Advant­ages of using React Nat­ive are as follows: 

1. Two Plat­forms for One Team

React Nat­ive is an excel­lent com­bin­a­tion of nat­ive applic­a­tion fea­tures that has the best User inter­face JavaS­cript lib­rary that is built-in. 

While you tar­get Android users, you can also reach out to iOS users without put­ting any­thing extra. Besides main­tain­ing mul­tiple plat­forms, everything is con­trolled by one code­base (JavaS­cript). 

One team of applic­a­tion developers can con­struct applic­a­tions from scratch or by using built-in fea­tures in the JavaS­cript library. 

We intend to say here that your Android team of app developers can also work for oth­er plat­form applic­a­tions without actu­ally work­ing on oth­er plat­forms. Did you get that? The Android and iOS applic­a­tion teams are one with React Nat­ive. The main advant­age here is that you needn’t hire a spe­cial team for Android applic­a­tion construction. 

2. 100%Native UI

The React Nat­ive JavaS­cript lib­rary used in build­ing applic­a­tion inter­faces is respons­ive and fast. The approach is com­pon­ent-based, and the abil­ity to render makes it extremely easy for developers to cre­ate simple and com­plex User Inter­face designs.

The mobile User Inter­face has a lot of sig­ni­fic­ance in React Nat­ive. It appears more like a JavaS­cript lib­rary and not a frame­work when com­pared to the met­eor JS and Angu­larJS frameworks.

React Nat­ive builds an order sequence for Android mobile applic­a­tions that is per­fect. The feel of the applic­a­tion on Android phones is smooth, with much less load time.

Thus, it has the most nat­ive User Inter­face in Android mobile applic­a­tions. also read about react nat­ive vs angu­lar mobile

3. Doesn’t Require App Store Approv­al for updates

Pre­vi­ously, developers were required to nudge the entire build­ing pro­cess for every app sep­ar­ately to pub­lish app updates. With React Nat­ive, the pro­cess has been stream­lined, and now the apps on both plat­forms are updated sim­ul­tan­eously, mak­ing the pro­cess much faster and simpler.

Anoth­er crit­ic­al update fea­ture is that developers now imple­ment app updates and improve­ments while users are act­ive on the apps. This is done via the OTA (Over-The-Air) updates. The recent update ini­ti­ated by developers will be avail­able to users the next time they open the app.

The point to note here is the advant­age we are talk­ing about: users needn’t update the applic­a­tion manu­ally or get it approved by Android (also iOS). This helps in sav­ing a lot of time.

4. Hot Reloading

Hot Reload­ing

To provide the best developer exper­i­ence, React Nat­ive has taken the feed­back loop of sav­ing a file and see­ing the changes in approx­im­ately a second. It is con­sec­ut­ive even if the app grows.

Hot Reload­ing in React Nat­ive is the idea to keep the app’s sun­ning state con­stant while inject­ing new­er file ver­sions edited at runtime. This has helped keep the state closely packed, espe­cially when you’re plan­ning to tweak the UI.

Hot Reload­ing is a fea­ture in React Nat­ive that enables you to work and see the changes in real-time. Developers can fix the applic­a­tion, and the user using the app can see the changes through auto­mat­ic reload. Hence, it makes up for the most sig­ni­fic­ant advant­age in the mobile applic­a­tion segment. 

Also Read: React Nat­ive Upgrade Help­er : App Upgrades with Ease

5. Nat­ive-like Performance

If you have been overthink­ing or stress­ing that a code­base that works for mul­tiple plat­forms might lack the nat­ive look and feel of the applic­a­tion, you’re misguided!

The map­ping com­pon­ents of React Nat­ive are in the ratio 1:1. This means that it com­bines the Nat­ive User Inter­face with its build­ing JavaS­cript com­pon­ents that con­trib­ute to giv­ing the applic­a­tion the most nat­ive-like feel.

Anoth­er factor here is that the build­ing blocks of iOS and Android are almost alike, so the applic­a­tion is bound to have a spe­cif­ic, pre­cise, and nat­ive appearance. 

Thus, an Android applic­a­tion built on React Nat­ive will have a 100% nat­ive User Interface. 

6. Devel­op­ment Pro­cess is Faster

React Nat­ive builds frame­works rather than build­ing high-qual­ity soft­ware! But, why? The idea behind work­ing on Frame­works is to make the devel­op­ment pro­cess easi­er and faster while increas­ing productivity.

Anoth­er factor that accel­er­ates the devel­op­ment pro­cess is the flex­ib­il­ity in choos­ing code edit­ors. With no restric­tions in choos­ing code edit­ors, developers can start work­ing with code edit­ors without issues. 

Fur­ther, IDEs and text edit­ors make the work a lot easi­er. The fea­tures of the applic­a­tion and tools help with faster code writ­ing. Some examples of the code are Sub­lime Text, Atom, and Visu­al Studio.

Developers can reuse code in React Nat­ive, thus, developers needn’t write any code from scratch. For instance, pro­gram­mers can devel­op nav­ig­a­tion eas­ily with Nav­ig­a­tion exper­i­ments and React Navigation.

Hence, everything has made the pro­cess faster, sim­pler, and more convenient.

Down­sides of Using React Nat­ive for Android

• Per­form­ance Hit

While liv­ing up to a lot of oth­er expect­a­tions, React Nat­ive poten­tial per­form­ance in com­par­is­on to a nat­ive app is still lag­ging. A nat­ive application’s cap­ab­il­it­ies and max­im­iz­a­tion of func­tion­al­it­ies and deliv­er­ing an ulti­mate exper­i­ence is still a chal­lenge in React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment ser­vices. 

To users, per­form­ance is the biggest con­cern. As per data and stat­ist­ics, half the users expect the load­ing of applic­a­tions to take place in less than 2 seconds. More than half the users blame the applic­a­tion for being slow and not their gad­get. It doesn’t end here, four out of five users would not try load­ing the app more than 3 times. It’s mostly less than three.

But, the re-archi­tec­ture has been focus­ing a lot on increased RN per­form­ance. For that, a new JS engine is avail­able called Her­mes that helps applic­a­tions run faster in older Android gadgets.

• Nat­ive Developer Need

For all nat­ive OS fea­tures, React Nat­ive codes have the nat­ive codes with­in them (third-party ser­vices, push noti­fic­a­tions, and cam­er­as). We already know React Nat­ive applic­a­tions are avail­able on the App Store and Google Play Store. How­ever, the prob­lem here is in link­ing the lib­rar­ies of the nat­ive mod­ules with that of the React Nat­ive mod­ules. Here is when the help of an Android developer for the React Nat­ive applic­a­tion run­ning on the Android device becomes significant.

Even with the pro­cess of app pub­lish­ing, it is straight­for­ward for a Nat­ive developer to do the job who’s already met the doc­u­ment­a­tion and pro­ced­ure of the task when com­pared to a React Nat­ive Developer.

Hence, it would be tricky to say if a React developer would suf­fice for everything required, from devel­op­ing and pub­lish­ing to main­tain­ing React Nat­ive apps.

• Debug­ging and TroubleShooting

When com­pared to lan­guages of Nat­ive applic­a­tions (Java and Kot­lin for Android), React Native’s code­base is JavaS­cript. In gen­er­al, JS is a leni­ent cod­ing lan­guage, and with this comes unex­pec­ted prob­lems of func­tion­al­it­ies and integ­ra­tions either for an entire applic­a­tion or for par­tic­u­lar plat­forms in general.

React Nat­ive is liv­ing at a young age, mak­ing it more prone to prob­lems that weren’t exper­i­enced before. Debug­ging such new prob­lems might be a time-con­sum­ing activity. 

Though it’s not a clear dis­ad­vant­age, a close pre­dic­tion of one of the chal­lenges that might come with React Nat­ive applic­a­tion development.

• Depend­ency on Face­book and Third-Party Components

It is always a risk factor to have a depend­ency on a their-party tech­no­logy that is open-source. While nat­ive code lan­guages pri­or­it­ise back­ward com­pat­ib­il­ity and max­im­um usab­il­ity to users, React might lag there. 

An open-source product’s strength depends on its community’s strength, where you don’t get to see any such reg­u­lar updates, which is why you can see a con­sid­er­able gap in the launch of a new nat­ive fea­ture and its inclu­sion in React Native.

How­ever, React Native’s com­munity is soar­ing high. Net­flix, Wal­mart, Shopi­fy, UberEats, and oth­er big names ship in React Native.

• Few Third-Party Com­pon­ents and Lim­ited APIs

In the con­text of func­tion­al­ity integ­ra­tion, nat­ive applic­a­tions give much free­dom to those third-party lib­rar­ies and nat­ive APIs. React Nat­ive offers insert­ing nat­ive mod­ules in its code, but doing that might not be the most fant­ast­ic thing to do as it can make it heav­ier, affect­ing the end-users performance. 

Also, applic­a­tions that rely on nat­ive code inser­tion (bridging nat­ive codes in React Nat­ive) in React Nat­ive defeat the idea of using React Native. 

Also Read: Boost Your App Devel­op­ment With React Nat­ive UI Library

Should You Choose React Native?

So, the ulti­mate ques­tion is, should you use React Nat­ive for applications?

Well, React Nat­ive is a rel­at­ively new concept that is still in its evolving phase. It was intro­duced in pub­lic only in 2015. 

While it has developed cross-plat­form applic­a­tions with code-reusab­il­ity, func­tion­al lib­rary, and oth­er such advant­ages, there might be troubleshoot­ing that would require a com­pletely dif­fer­ent solu­tion approach. 

Below are a few point­ers to con­sider while think­ing of get­ting your applic­a­tions developed with React Nat­ive from per business’s perspective:

• You want to reach a wider audi­ence with lim­ited resources and time.
• Your applic­a­tion needs no large OS-spe­cif­ic integ­ra­tions or AR/VR functionalities.
• You want a sim­il­ar look and feel of the applic­a­tion on all platforms.

So, what’s the level of clar­ity you have after read­ing the blog? We tried hav­ing a very fair and con­struct­ive tone while dis­cuss­ing the bene­fits and chal­lenges of using React Nat­ive for applic­a­tions. The most import­ant thing here is to be able to have an under­stand­ing of your needs and make a decision.

At WEDOWEBAPPS LTD, we always strive to lever­age the power of React Nat­ive to devel­op robust apps that can with­stand the test of time. If you are look­ing for React Nat­ive App Devel­op­ment Ser­vices, letʼs chat and build some­thing phe­nom­en­al togeth­er. also, get know­ledge about a mobile app devel­op­ment framework

React Nat­ive Statistics

The pop­ular­ity of React Nat­ive has been con­sist­ently increas­ing over the years, and recent stat­ist­ics show that it is one of the top choices for mobile app devel­op­ment. Accord­ing to Stack Over­flow, React Nat­ive is one of the most loved frame­works, with 62.5% of developers using it for mobile app devel­op­ment. Fur­ther­more, it has been pre­dicted that the mar­ket for React Nat­ive will grow by around 22% annu­ally from 2021 to 2026.

React Nat­ive App Development

React Nat­ive offers a pleth­ora of advant­ages when it comes to app devel­op­ment. With its abil­ity to use the same code­base for both iOS and Android, developers can save time and resources, which ulti­mately leads to faster devel­op­ment cycles and quick­er deploy­ment. Addi­tion­ally, React Nat­ive offers a range of pre-built com­pon­ents that can be used to devel­op com­plex user inter­faces with ease, enabling developers to focus on build­ing unique fea­tures for their app.

Nat­ive Developers and React Nat­ive Community

React Nat­ive has a grow­ing and act­ive com­munity of developers who are con­tinu­ously work­ing on improv­ing the frame­work. The com­munity offers valu­able resources such as for­ums, tutori­als, and open-source lib­rar­ies that help developers build high-qual­ity applic­a­tions quickly and effi­ciently. The com­munity also encour­ages col­lab­or­a­tion among developers, mak­ing it easi­er for them to share ideas and best practices.

React Nat­ive Developers

Busi­nesses look­ing to devel­op apps using React Nat­ive will find that there is no short­age of skilled developers avail­able. The demand for React Nat­ive developers is high, and there are many tal­en­ted pro­fes­sion­als with exper­i­ence in this area. Hir­ing a React Nat­ive developer can ensure that a busi­nessʼs app is developed using best prac­tices and provides an optim­al user experience.

In sum­mary, React Nat­ive is a power­ful frame­work for mobile app devel­op­ment, and its pop­ular­ity is only set to grow. With its abil­ity to use the same code­base for both iOS and Android, its range of pre-built com­pon­ents, and its act­ive com­munity of developers, React Nat­ive offers numer­ous bene­fits to busi­nesses look­ing to devel­op mobile applic­a­tions. Fur­ther­more, the avail­ab­il­ity of skilled React Nat­ive developers ensures that busi­nesses can build high-qual­ity apps that meet the needs of their users. Read more about Top React Tools & Libraries

and know about A Beginner’s Guide to Mobile App Devel­op­ment Tutori­als.