Native Apps
A native app will “live” on the device and it will be accessed by clicking an icon on the home screen. Native apps will be installed through an app store such as google play or the iStore. These apps are developed for one platform and they can often access the devices features such as camera, GPS location, compass, contacts, etc. These apps can also incorporate the gestures of the phone or it can use gestures defined by the app. Native apps will also use the devices notification system and most of them will work offline.
Mobile Web Apps
Web apps are not really real applications and they are more websites than anything. They will look and feel like native apps but they aren’t implemented as such. They run through your browser and they are usually written in HTML5. Users would access them like they would any other webpage and they will have the option of installing the app. The installation functions like a bookmark more than anything.
Web-apps became hugely popular when HTML5 came out and developers realised they could achieve a similar functionality to native apps, in a browser. These days more and more sites are using HTML5 and the distinction between web apps and normal websites has become quite blurred.
Web apps are often hard to distinguish from native apps because there are no visible browser bars or buttons even though its running in the browser. Users can swipe horizontally to navigate to different sections of the app and because a wonderful little thing called web caching, you can access the app online and then go offline and read whatever has been loaded.
The above features are all available in HTML5. Other available features are the GPS and an option to call. There is also talk of a camera API but so far no one has really taken advantage of it. Note that there are some native features that aren’t available in the browser such as notifications, running the app in the background, the accelerometer and some other complicated gestures.
Many people will argue that many apps, native or web, do not take advantage of the many features available to them but if you really want those native features then it is better to create a native app or a hybrid app. A hybrid app is a combination of a native and a web app.
At Applord, we have an expert team of app developers that will create some of the best apps you have ever seen. Your customers can use your app to read up about your business and also order goods or make payments.
