Comments on: Native App vs. Mobile Web App: A Quick Comparison

By: Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:37:34 +0000

Can you please tell me what my answers add up to?

Does the mobile app require the use of any special device features (i.e., camera, the camera’s flash, accelerometer, etc.)? – NO

What’s my budget? $10K to $20K

Does the mobile app need to be Internet-enabled? YES

Do I need to target all mobile devices or just certain devices? – ALL

What programming languages do I already know? – None (we are looking for a developer to build it – not us).

How important is speed and performance? – Data driven APP so we want good speed and performance – gaming quality would be over the top.

How will this app be monetized effectively? – We are looking at charging a small subscription fee plus in App purchases.

By: Rey

Rey — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 22:53:23 +0000

Thanks, really good article on comparison.

By: Patrick Ezell

Patrick Ezell — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 18:52:44 +0000

The earlier comments are right on, Facebook isn’t a good comparison app.

The conversation of native vs web isn’t a simple one, the right choice is different for each situation – and there are times where you can roll a 80% native app and 20% might be served through mobile web, the trick is to make the entire experience feel like a native app. If a user doesn’t know then you’ve achieved your goal.

A couple high profile examples of a mobile web app:
Youtube (not what apple built/installs on iOS, visit youtube via your mobile web browser)

LinkedIn – All of LinkedIn’s native apps that you can install on your device are mobile web apps “wrapped” in a thin device specific wrapper so they can get into the devices app store. LinkedIn relies heavily on Node.js for speed and try and recreate a native app like experience. In a lot of ways they were successful, but for some users ( and if you’re looking for it ) you’ll see areas where movement, gesture interaction and loading of content that lower level of experience.

Example: On the iPad compare LinkedIn’s news section to flipboard. For the main app experience on Flipboard its all native – now there are places depending on the source of content where you will see web views pulled in – but overall the experience is of a much higher caliber. Now use LinkedIn on the iPad – this is all web app driven – its impressive what they did with mobile web – but its not the same as native.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 14:03:37 +0000

One thing is certain. It is much easier to make a mobile web app. At least for me.

By: Roy Smith

Roy Smith — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:27:02 +0000

This is an excellent comparison of native vs. mobile apps. My only comment would be to point out that there is significant work being done by browser developers to add javascript device APIs to their browsers, which will allow web apps full access to the device’s hardware.

appMobi released “MobiUs” on iOS about a year ago, and it had full device API capability. Unfortunately Apple pulled it from the app store when it was open sourced in November. More recently, Mozilla and Dolphin have both announced or released betas of browsers with JS APIs that allow web apps full access to the device.

If you take away that distinction between Native and Web apps, the only thing left as a defining difference is UI speed, which can be an issue depending on what the app is trying to do on screen. Plenty of work going on to fix that as well – appMobi has delivered 10x speed improvement for games with directCanvas, and the jqMobi web app framework delivers native-like UI features on webkit browsers on both iOS and Android.

Probably the key advantage of web apps is the avoidance of the “Apple Tax” of 30% on all your monetization, and not having to be approved by the Apple App store before your app can be used. The downside, of course, is that you have to promote and deliver your web app yourself, as there is no central “web app store” yet.

By: Long Nguyen

Long Nguyen — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:43:33 +0000

The Facebook “native” app is even slower than the web app. Guess why? Because the UIWebView within native app doesn’t have Nitro.

By: Mimmis

Mimmis — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:33:58 +0000

Nice overview, JT!
With a cross-platform development environment like the MoSync SDK (www.mosync.com/sdk) and with MoSync Reload (www.mosync.com/reload), you don’ have to settle for all these limitations in mobile web apps vs. native apps. You can create apps for up to nine different platforms at once using the same code base and one SDK. If you prefer to use standard web technologies (HTML5/JavaScript) for your development, you can use MoSync Reload to easily create and output true native apps, taking advantage of all the native features of modern smartphones. Check it out – it might be a good fit for all those developers out there that want to create apps for multiple platforms and who want to enter mobile.

By: Hans Sandholt

Hans Sandholt — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:22:07 +0000

Great article. One major advantage with native app’s is the app can be useful even if the phone is not connected to the internet. This is crusial if information stored on the phone should be available for postprocessing etc.

By: Norik Davtian

Norik Davtian — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:26:42 +0000

The comparison is great except that the example is a hybrid app and not a native app as others mentioned here. I think if there was a hybrid app comparison in there would have made more sense. As @DyanGalih mentioned, phonegap is one of the tools to create these hybrid apps. Basically with hybrid apps you are running a mobile web app in a native code frame.

By: K. Olsen

K. Olsen — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:05:15 +0000

Great article. Very useful information.
Keep up the good work JT ;-)