Cross-platform requires Native knowledge

New technologies appear with promises to solve problems and pains but come with challenges of their own that in return are promised to be solved by the next big thing. App development is no different although the battle appears to be a more constant one of native development vs cross-platform development.

Native app development refers to the process of creating mobile applications that are specifically built for a particular mobile operating system, such as iOS or Android. It involves using the native programming languages and development frameworks provided by the respective platforms to build applications that can take full advantage of the device's capabilities. However, there is one notable limitation: each app is restricted to functioning solely within the operating system it was specifically developed for.

If you're interested in learning more about Native app development check out our walkthrough below. We also built the Andel Energi app with Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android.

Cross-platform app development refers to the process of creating mobile applications that can run on multiple operating systems and devices. Unlike traditional native app development, where separate code bases are needed for each platform, cross-platform development allows developers to write code once and deploy it across various platforms, such as iOS, and Android. Feature development however happens natively and thus cross-platform development will always be behind native development in terms of access to the latest progress on the platforms.

There's plenty more on Cross-platform app development that you can explore here.

Also, see how we built the GSV app with Flutter.

We have tried to highlight the most important pros and cons above, but we would also like to shift the focus away from that tiring battle and talk a bit about our favourite subject - the user.

Whereas the development process might be cross-platform to a varying degree the user experience is always native. This means that one of the key competences in our development team is knowledge of the platform. 

Only with specific knowledge of the quirks and specificities of the Android and iOS platforms are we able to utilize the advantages of cross-platform app development and not least assess if they even apply to the project at hand.

In Adapt we have a dedicated team for Android as well as iOS. This is because we care deeply about the user experience and we believe that it is our knowledge of native development that enables us to advise if any given app benefits the most from being developed cross-platform or natively - and we are happy to do it either way.