CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidiosdictionarywebviewnative
Ryan
Ryan

Reputation: 5546

is there performance loss from displaying a google map in a webview, instead of using the usual mapView

I use Titanium, which has a map view built upon the native specific maps for iOS and Android.

What would be the difference between using a native map and opening a webView with google maps loaded inside.

What would be some performance hindering differences between the native maps and one loaded from the web in a webview?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1080

Answers (3)

FalsinSoft
FalsinSoft

Reputation: 191

Very late in reply but for give my 2 cents the difference in performance came from the map management way. Using WebView you use the javascript API code as regular web page but with the difference in the android browser it seem a "reduct" set of performance since is not very responsive as standard deskop browser. Someone suggest this problem came from the limited bandwidth you have in mobile data connection. On the contrary native google api don't use javascript code and download directly map tiles and show on screen. This make much faster the app. Get map tiles is quite easy but is forbidden cause the Google TOS. You can do it only if you have an agreement with Google and, obviously, official Google app have it...

Upvotes: 0

Ben Clayton
Ben Clayton

Reputation: 82237

In our experience MapKit (i.e. Native) is much, much, faster and smoother that using a UIWebView containing Google Maps. It's slower to start up as all the map rendering code has to be downloaded from google's servers, and it's quite a lot slower to render as it's in a browser. Theoretically apps running in a browser can be just as fast and smooth as Native, but in actual reality this rarely happens.

Even on a iPhone 4S the difference between native and browser is noticeable. Android is even slower as, except perhaps for the very latest devices, the web browser doesn't use hardware acceleration.

If you have the choice, always go native.

Upvotes: 2

Leon Lucardie
Leon Lucardie

Reputation: 9730

There is a performance loss when using a WebView instead of a native map SDK. It's not that major though (and on faster phones it's almost unnoticeable).

The main advantage of using native API's is the fact that they have tighter integration with mobile functions such as sensors and GPS. But the disadvantage is that the native API's won't support all features the Web API does, and aren't updated as frequently as the Web API.

Upvotes: 0

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