What are the main Types of Mobile Apps?

In this age of smartphones and mobile applications, thousands of mobile apps are launched in different app stores every day. To beat the increasing competition, development companies are focusing more on the decisions regarding what type of apps they should build to enhance the user experience.

Generally, the mobile application can be classified into four main categories like native, Hybrid, Web and Progressive Web apps. Let’s discuss more all of them one by one.

Native Apps:

Apps that are exclusively built for a specific type of An operating system called Native Apps. They are called Native apps due to its dependency on a specific device or a platform. These apps cannot be used on another operating system. For example, an android app can not be used on iPhone. It is based on dependent development tools and language that the respective platform supports (e.g., Xcode and Objective-C with iOS, Eclipse, and Java with Android)

Advantages of native apps:

1. These apps are very fast
2. Easy to deploy in Google and Apple’s stores
3. More interactive and intuitive.
4. Easy to interact with any feature of the phone.

Disadvantages of native apps:

1. Build for specific Platform
2. Hard to learn languages are used like java and swift
3. Costly to develop
4. No easy maintenance

Mobile Web Apps:

These Mobile web applications are developed to deliver web pages on web browsers running on mobile devices. These web-based mobile apps do not get installed on your handheld mobile device and run on web-hosted servers. Mobile web applications are developed by using HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery web technologies. They cannot access all features of native device functionality (camera, calendar, geolocation, etc.).

Advantages of web apps:

1. It helps to Reduced Business costs.
2. No installation required.
3. Accessed from anywhere.
4. Always up-to-date.

Disadvantages of Web Apps:

1. It has a dependency on internet speed.
2. Interface not that sophisticated.
3. Time taking to develop.
4. Security Risk.

Hybrid Apps

Hybrid apps are a combination of Native and Mobile apps. Like a Native application, It needs to deploy in an app store and can use the benefits of the many device features available. Like web apps, they rely on HTML being rendered in a browser, with the caveat that the browser is embedded within the app.

Hybrid apps are developed using technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, Mobile Javascript frameworks, Cordova/PhoneGap, etc. Like Native apps, Hybrid apps are also installed in the device and distributed through the app store. Hybrid apps are good for building apps that do not require a high-performance but need full device access.

Advantages of Progressive web apps:

1. Easy to develop
2. Cost-Effective as compare to Native App
3. Single app for all platforms.
4. No browser required
5. Can usually access device utilities using an API
6. Less time develop than native apps.

Progressive Web Apps

Let me tell you at that the term ‘progressive web apps were coined by designer Frances Berriman and Google Chrome engineer Alex Russell in 2015. Progressive Web Apps(PWA) are like regular web pages but offer additional user functionalities like runs offline, push notifications and device hardware access which was earlier only available to native mobile apps. The most important feature of PWAs is that it can be accessed via an app icon on the device home screen and as soon as clicked, leads to the app website. PWAs are the latest technology aimed at providing a seamless mobile experience. They are ‘native app like’, automatic update, are served through HTTPS with refers to safety feature, and faster than Native apps due to independency of operating systems and devices.

Advantages of Progressive web apps:

1. Requires less Data. An app takes close to 10 MBs as a native app can be reduced to about 500KB when made a PWA.
2. PWAs get updated like webpages. You get the latest version when you use it. No need to update them every now and then.
3. You don’t need to install them to start using. They are simple web-pages. Users choose to ‘install’ when they like it.
4. Easy sharing.

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I am a Technical Writer. I write articles that spread the awareness of technologies in my readers.