| | March 201619So important is the user experience for mobile app users that 92 percent of all customers will have some sort of a negative reaction to the app: from never using it again to switching to a competitor's mobile app, giving the app a poor rating in the app store, and so much more. All this background is needed to understand the user experience trade-off when choosing between native and hybrid options. As we saw above, a native application is designed for a specific operating system. As a company embarks on the task to build a new app, the user experience specific for that OS become of critical importance to the mobile presence on the market. That's one of the main appeals of a hybrid app: you build it once and then you release it across multiple platforms. One UI nice and simple. Additionally, you do not have to maintain two different code bases. All of us know that an iPhone app is written in Objective-C or Swift while Android apps are written in Java, and they are not transferable (i.e. they need to be rewritten). That means hybrid apps are, one, easier to build; two, take less time to market, and three, maintain one code base.The trade off is the user experience. The problem with a hybrid app is that even the most brilliant user experience architect cannot truly build an app that caters to the two dominant user types: iPhone users and Android users. Their style guidelines are simply too different, often times to the point that from a design perspective any decision becomes a compromise which, on a case-by-case basis, must be weighed against all other strategic and tactical factors.On the Surface, Cross Platform Hybrid Development sounds Great Single code base across multiple platforms. Don't have to update each app in the app store to wait for approvals. You can use your existing web talent and don't need to bring on additional resources. Don't need to do any API development since it's all handled via the web.The only time you should consider using a hybrid web app If you have less than four months to develop an app, and you want to test a limited private market on the viability of your app, then use Hybrid. If the test works, then move to native as soon as you can and show it to the world. If it doesn't work, you've saved yourself time and money. If an executive pushes to do a web app for strong reasons, make sure they're aware of the trade-offs. The bottom line: compromise timeSpeed to market, one source code, cross-compatible web technologies, easy updates, availability of resources, and lower (initial!) budget costs make hybrid applications very appealing. However, even with 4G network coverage most phones today are not at the point where a seamless hybrid app experience is actually possible. In the long run, the biggest detraction of hybrid apps is that a company will likely spend more time fixing and tweaking the app because of user complaints about UI elements or performance driven issues.
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