Using webviews on native platforms can look very appealing from a management perspective: a single codebase, simpler coordination, reduced UX overhead, and faster iteration cycles.
However, from the user's side, this approach often results in a buggy, inconsistent experience that lacks the responsiveness and smoothness of a true native app that elusive "snappy" feeling (i know, I hate that word too)
Companies usually choose this route because it's cheaper, but that same "cheap mentality" often seeps into the overall product quality. Corners get cut, bugs get ignored, and long-term maintenance becomes a mess.
From a developer's perspective, it's a nightmare
You're essentially expected to deliver on three platforms doing the work of three people for the same $
In theory, any web developer could handle it. In practice, you need to understand all the native platforms just to maintain some basic, stable integrations even with frameworks like React Native.
The result?
Maybe 20% of your time goes into actual feature development, 30% into testing, and the remaining 70% into fixing obscure, platform-specific bugs while working overtime under pressure from cost-driven management.
In my experience, developers will do almost anything to avoid dealing with the native parts of this kind of setup those tasks usually get dumped on whoever is most "familiar" with native, because it's such a pain to handle.
And let's not forget QA testing across these hybrid layers is an absolute nightmare as well.
In the end, my view is simple:
If a company can't afford dedicated native teams, they probably shouldn't build a native app.
(Of course, smaller apps with limited complexity should be fine)
This comments spot on. Coming from a guy that used to do mobile professionally as a one man show where the company had multiple apps and multiple stacks. I had the least pain from the ionic stack which I guess is a happy middle ground, but even then there's always some new app store requirement changes to adhere that's almost a full-time job in itself.
However, from the user's side, this approach often results in a buggy, inconsistent experience that lacks the responsiveness and smoothness of a true native app that elusive "snappy" feeling (i know, I hate that word too)
Companies usually choose this route because it's cheaper, but that same "cheap mentality" often seeps into the overall product quality. Corners get cut, bugs get ignored, and long-term maintenance becomes a mess.
From a developer's perspective, it's a nightmare You're essentially expected to deliver on three platforms doing the work of three people for the same $ In theory, any web developer could handle it. In practice, you need to understand all the native platforms just to maintain some basic, stable integrations even with frameworks like React Native.
The result? Maybe 20% of your time goes into actual feature development, 30% into testing, and the remaining 70% into fixing obscure, platform-specific bugs while working overtime under pressure from cost-driven management.
In my experience, developers will do almost anything to avoid dealing with the native parts of this kind of setup those tasks usually get dumped on whoever is most "familiar" with native, because it's such a pain to handle.
And let's not forget QA testing across these hybrid layers is an absolute nightmare as well.
In the end, my view is simple: If a company can't afford dedicated native teams, they probably shouldn't build a native app. (Of course, smaller apps with limited complexity should be fine)