Over the past few years, React Native has quickly become one of the most popular frameworks for building mobile apps. Let‘s explore why it‘s emerged as such a power player.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll cover React Native benefits like blazing speed, reusable code, amazing UIs, robust community, corporate usage, and more.
Here‘s what we‘ll be looking at:
- Performance approaching native code
- Declarative UIs using built-in components
- Developing 2-3X faster than pure native
- Support from Facebook and the community
- Code reuse across iOS and Android
- Adoption by leading corporations
- Bright future roadmap ahead
So if you‘re considering technologies for mobile development, read on to see why React Native checks all the boxes…
Lightning Fast Performance
Unlike HTML5 mobile apps, React Native actually compiles down to native code rather than running in a mobile browser. This means performance nearing parity with pure native Java/Kotlin or Swift apps.
Some real-world benchmarks:
- Geekbench benchmark: React Native app scored within 5% of native Objective-C app [cite]
- Animation benchmark: React Native draws animations within 10% duration of native iOS animations [cite]
There are also ways to boost your React Native app performance further with native code integrations and optimizations around images, graphs and navigation.
Tips for Optimizing React Native App Speed
Here are some tips for getting maximum React Native performance:
- Pre-load and cache key assets during launch to improve cold start
- Encode images as WebP or SVGs to decrease size
- Run profiling to catch slow UI renders and memory issues
- Use FlatList instead of ListView for smoother scrolling
With the right optimization strategy, React Native can match or exceed fully native mobile app speed and responsiveness.
Declarative UIs with Built-in Components
A huge part of developer velocity relies on reusable frameworks and components. React Native includes over dozens of built-in native components like View, Text, ScrollView, Slider, Switch, Button and more for building UIs rapidly.
These core components render to native platform equivalents – unlike HTML5 hybrid app frameworks. So the look, feel, performance and usability matches what users expect from iOS and Android apps.
React Native even includes native platform-specific components:
- iOS – ActionSheetIOS, AlertIOS, DatePickerIOS etc.
- Android – BackHandler, DatePickerAndroid, ToastAndroid etc.
So not only do apps built with React Native look native, they include platform-optimized behaviors where needed.
And creating custom reusable components for app specific UI patterns is simple.
Develop 2-3X Faster Than Pure Native
Between extensive components allowing declarative UIs, code reuse across iOS and Android, and advanced debugging/profiling tools React Native enables incredibly fast mobile app development.
According to research by Visual Studio community, React Native can cut development time approximately in half compared to native languages:
[Insert image of data]Some ways React Native accelerates development:
- Hot Reloading instantly reflects code changes without recompiling
- Huge ecosystem of open source libraries & frameworks
- React Native Debugger and Reactotron for debugging
- Fastlane & Bitrise for code integration and release automation
With skills transferable across web and mobile, plus extremely fast build/run/debug cycles, React Native boosts productivity massively.
Backed by Facebook & Large Community
With over 85K GitHub stars and 2,000+ contributors, React Native has perhaps the largest open source community around any mobile framework.
And it‘s not just volunteers contributing. Major companies actively develop React Native:
- Facebook – Started and maintains React Native
- Microsoft – Built code editor and DevOps tools
- Expo – Developer platform and services
- Software Mansion – Contributed JSI, TypeScript support, Navigator
Other contributors include Infinite Red, Callstack, Shopify and thousands more developers.
For help learning or troubleshooting, React Native communities offer abundant support:
- Reactiflux Discord – Active chats channels
- StackOverflow – 18K+ questions tagged
- Reddit -Discussion forums
- DevTo – Blog discussions
Given Facebook‘s heavy investment plus a vast community, expect React Native to keep maturing and improving for years to come.
Cross-Platform Code Reuse
While React Native does require some platform-specific code, the majority of app logic can be shared seamlessly between iOS and Android apps.
Components encapsulate UI code:
<View>
<Text>I render on both iOS and Android!</Text>
</View>Business logic resides in JavaScript files imported into components:
function getUserData() {
// Call API
return userData
}
export default getUserData With code reuse ranging from 60-90% across platforms, React Native drives immense productivity gains for mobile teams. The same feature developed once can release simultaneously on iOS and Android apps.
Proven Viability for Enterprise Apps
Given its popularity among startups and consumer apps, some enterprises questioned if React Native would scale sufficiently and offer enough native functionality for their needs.
But companies like Walmart, BMW, Bloomberg, Shopify, and others have adopted React Native after concluding it does provide the capabilities and performance required even for large B2B and internal business applications.
Key drivers of React Native traction in enterprise:
- Code reuse – Faster feature development
- Performance – As fast or faster than hybrid HTML5
- Ease of integration – Leverage existing infrastructure
- Security – Added assurance from Facebook and community reviews
And modules from the community enable capabilities like annotation, charts, data visualization, internationalization, document handling, analytics, messaging, networking and much more.
So React Native now securely powers apps at Fortune 500 scale.
Bright Future Ahead
Given Facebook‘s long-term strategic commitment plus a huge community contributing ideas and code, expect React Native to continue maturing rapidly.
Compare it to past mobile frameworks that blazed brightly for a couple years then quickly faded. The future looks very bright for React Native in contrast given:
- Continual Facebook investment – Multiple major updates per year
- Expanding community – More libraries and integrations
- Exponential job demand – React Native developers sought after globally
There‘s no sign of plateauing. If anything, React Native growth keeps accelerating year over year.
Concerns and Considerations
No technology comes without trade-offs. React Native does still face criticisms around app size bloat, memory management issues, dependencies slowing launch times, and the need to "eject" from Expo to enable native code access at times.
However, we find most developer teams agree React Native‘s benefits dramatically outweigh these concerns given:
- Performance approaching native apps – With some optimization
- Much faster feature development velocity – Faster innovation
- Code reuse – Reduces total dev time 2X-3X
- Huge community – Constant improvements
For many mobile apps, React Native strikes the right balance between developer convenience and end user experience.
And community resources plus continued core framework improvements aim to address common concerns. React Native build size and launch speeds continue tightening compared to native code.
React Native empowers teams to build mobile apps with excellent performance while leveraging web developer skills and code reuse across iOS and Android.
The framework continues rapidly evolving. And demand for React Native developers grows exponentially each year.
While trade-offs exist, React Native improves developer velocity, app quality and business agility so profoundly most teams never look back.
If you‘re beginning mobile development today or aiming to consolidate teams and codebases, choosing React Native means setting your project up for success short and long-term.
So give React Native a shot for that next mobile project!
