Quick Summary:  You have probably heard about React.js by now. It’s a Javascript library for building user interfaces. What you might not have heard of yet is React Native, which is an extension of another technology called React.js that allows you to build native apps for Android and iOS. You can build web technologies and then deploy them as a native app that doesn’t look or feel like a website. By building both, your team will be able to reuse the same code in your web and mobile apps, increasing velocity and reducing costs significantly!

What is React Native?  

React Native aims to make developers’ lives easier when it comes to cross-platform mobile app development. Just like React, it allows the rendering of dynamic content using components and defining the behavior in JavaScript. It takes some benefits from both the worlds: of web and mobile applications. While it’s still too early to tell how successful it will be, many companies that have adopted React Native over the last year are happy with it. Apps like Instagram, Airbnb, and Walmart are built using React Native.

React Native was born at a hackathon when engineers challenged themselves to build something using their own product. Since then, it’s been powering hundreds of apps with over 50% of companies that use React Native seeing a positive return on investment (ROI). It’s pushed boundaries, redefined best practices, saved time, and boosted the productivity of countless developers – and that’s just the beginning.

React Native makes use of the power of JavaScript. It is written using JavaScript and allows developers to break from the limitations of their current native platform. Instead, they can develop a single app that will run on both Android and iOS. It acts as an extension to build native apps for both platforms.

What is cross-platform development?

Cross-platform development allows developers to create software that is compatible with multiple platforms or devices using a single codebase. One codebase is used to run on multiple platforms, like developing mobile apps for Android and iOS at once, instead of building separate ones. This process reduces time and resources, inevitably increasing efficiency.

Whilst in the past developers had to maintain a parallel codebase for multiple platforms, it is now becoming more common to develop an application once and run it across multiple devices. This means using cross-platform development tools that allow us to build our apps using web technologies and not creating native applications. Ultimately, cross-platform development allows developers to build platforms they may not be familiar with, using their preferred frameworks, such as JavaScript. From a business perspective, cross-platform development leads to faster time-to-market and lower development and maintenance costs.

Advantages of Choosing React Native for Mobile App Development

Code reusability

The effective development of multiple platforms at once is the biggest and strongest advantage of React Native. Utilizing the same code base for different platforms carries other benefits: faster development and time-to-market of your app, easier and cheaper maintenance (you take care of one not multiple code bases), and a smoother onboarding process for new developers joining the project.

Hot Reloading  

Hot reloading is a development feature in modern web and mobile frameworks that allows the code to be changed without interrupting the running process. This saves the time necessary to restart your application and see how your changes affected the end result. Hot reloading has become increasingly popular among developers over the past couple of years as it improves productivity and developer satisfaction by drastically improving the feedback loop.

Performance

Unlike those other cross-platform solutions, React Native apps get truly native performance. It is made possible with a bridge concept outlined in the official documentation. The bridge is a collection of native modules that are linked to JavaScript running on the main thread. As a result, things like hardware-accelerated rendering only make it possible via this bridge, which is what gives the app its performance boost.

Cost efficiency

Cost efficiency is assured while developing cross-platform mobile applications. Cost-optimization during the development process is almost inevitable as technology keeps evolving and offers us more efficient tools.

Growing developer community

React Native is a great tool for mobile developers. It has one of the best developer communities out there which means that you will find someone else to ask for help whenever you feel stuck and not sure about how to do something or even if you feel like the code needs to be changed.

Constantly Evolving

React Native is a widely-used application framework developed specifically for building mobile apps. It was developed by Facebook, so it comes with plenty of features designed to handle the demands of creating mobile apps and modernizing existing ones throughout their lifetime.

Conclusion  

React Native was developed by Facebook to build apps for mobile devices contemporarily. It is a JavaScript-based open-source platform that is being used by developers who want to create high-quality native mobile applications with all the advantages and benefits of a UX/UI, both of which are tailored as per the requirements.

Are you looking for a React Native developer? Do you need a custom React native app development for your business? Brain Inventory is the place for you to order development work. Our in-house React Native developers use the most modern technologies and development processes to ensure maximum efficiency and a great quality of code. We’re perfect for start-ups who are unsure where to begin, companies that need extra resources, projects that are too big to handle by an internal team, and even established companies that want additional services.