CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mobilebrowserweb-applicationsmobile-application
meteorBuzz
meteorBuzz

Reputation: 3200

web apps vs mobile apps

Is there a significant advantage of creating a mobile app as opposed to a web application?

I pose this question from the following perspective, which is biased towards my lack of knowledge of the mobile phone architecture.

  1. You can build a web application with pure javascript, css, and html.

  2. You don't have to write different code for iOS, Android, etc.

  3. The user simply goes to a url, and that's your app, served right there from the server.

    I would like someone to highlight some of the advantages of writing specific code for a mobile web application.

What does a mobile app fundamentally have a significant advantage over a web application?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 1696

Answers (3)

bool3max
bool3max

Reputation: 2865

I am not very experienced with this topic, but these are some fundamentals of using mobile apps:

  • They are accessible offline. (but that is restrictable)
  • The assets of the downloaded app are stored on the phone itself, thus the main content loads much faster.
  • As stated before, they have access to the hardware of the device (GPS, camera, etc, sensors etc.)
  • You can store as much data on the device as you want (opposed to, let's say 5mb using the HTML5's Local Storage).
  • They have access to push notifications (such as in Android or iOS)
  • They can put all the powerful hardware of the phone to use.

Upvotes: 0

Starscream1984
Starscream1984

Reputation: 3062

Mobile apps have some advantages:

  • Assets are packaged on the phone - you only need to load data from the server, not your layout.

  • Users are familiar with the conventions of their chosen mobile OS,
    which your app will follow.

  • Trends show users are spending more time in Apps than web on mobile

  • Can work offline (even if limited)

  • Mobile apps have access to native features like push notifications,
    GPS, Camera, etc

There are also hybrid apps - which are web apps running in a native container. You may have heard of Cordova, which is a platform for acheiving this. You basically create your app as a web app, and it runs inside a native WebView - with this you can use a javascript API to access some native features, but you don't get many of the other benefits of a native app.

Upvotes: 7

Mahmoud Kelany
Mahmoud Kelany

Reputation: 16

  • Easy to use
  • Use native mobile design
  • Don't take long time to load just load data and images but web load (data/images/css/js)

Upvotes: 0

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