Guide on Choosing the Best Tech Stack for Mobile App Development
Planning to develop a Mobile app for your business?
If so, let’s think for a moment that the mobile app is a dish and the tech stack is its ingredients. Just as we cannot make a delicious dish without the right ingredients, similarly, we cannot develop a smooth and functional mobile app without the right technology stack.
So, to give away the recipe for building an app, we have shed light on the advanced ingredients using which you can develop a future-proof app.
Let’s dive in..
Native App Development
Businesses invest in native app development because of its various benefits like fast performance, full-device integration, excellent user experience, security, and responsiveness. This approach requires platform-specific languages, software development kits (SDKs), integrated development environments (IDEs), and other tools provided by OS vendors. Besides, native apps are perfectly compatible with specific operating system – iOS or Android. So, you have to employ different app development technologies for each platform. Apps like Pokemon Go and Lyft are the results of native app development.
Technology Stack for iOS Apps
Programming Languages: Objective-C and Swift
For developing an iOS app for your business, you can choose either Swift or Objective-C. Objective-C is a superset of C language and provides a dynamic runtime environment, along with object-oriented capabilities.
However, businesses incline toward Swift because it is more functional and provides code that is less prone to errors, thanks to its inline support for manipulating data and text strings. Besides, this programming language has dynamic libraries that developers can directly upload to memory, thus reduce the initial size of the app, and improve its performance considerably.
Toolkit: Apple Xcode
Apple Xcode is a fully-featured development environment that allows you to develop mobile as well as desktop apps. This resourceful toolkit comes with a graphical editor for designing interactive user interfaces, integrated support for Git repositories, built-in documentation, and instrumentation and debugging tools.
Software Development Kit: iOS SDK
The iOS SDK has an application programming language (API) that serves as a bridge between the apps and the platform they operate on. This SDK provides specialized tools for the touchscreen interface of Apple and its proprietary iOS, which is used to run apps on iPhones as well as iPads.
Technology Stack for Android Apps
Programming Languages: Java and Kotlin
Java and Kotlin are the sought-after programming languages for native Android app development. Java has been around for years and has established itself as a language with vast open-source tools and libraries to support Android app developers. However, it has some limitations that hamper the Android API design.
On the other hand, Kotlin has lately introduced itself as a more stable development option for Android apps. The language is designed to overcome the limitations of Java and is inherently clean, lightweight, and less repetitive. As a result, Kotlin helps to create a fully operational Android app having animated micro-interactions and smooth transitions between screens.
Toolkit: Android Studio and Android Developer Tools (ADT)
Android Studio gained popularity because of its offerings like code editing, performance tooling, a flexible build system, debugging, and a quick build/deploy system. The toolkit allows Android app developers to create high-performance applications.
Besides, ADT provides Android-specific coding support and enables developers to exploit various on-device debugging tools, emulators, a graphical UI builder, and fully scriptable test automation support.
Software Development Kit: Android SDK
To write codes with the latest features, developers should download and install each version of SDK for a particular mobile device. The components or tools of the Android SDK can be downloaded individually. Third-party add-ons are also readily available for download.
Both Apple and Google provide their own development tools, SDKs, and interface elements for building a native app. You have to consider your budget, goals, and target audience to decide which native app development approach suits the best to your business.
Hybrid Mobile App Development
Hybrid app development uses a shared code developed using standard web technologies, including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The shared code is subsequently wrapped in a native container – the WebView and shipped as a regular application. Businesses usually prefer this app development approach because of its various benefits like low cost and easy maintenance.
Technology Stack for Hybrid Apps
Cordova/PhoneGap
Apache Cordova is an open-source framework designed to run HTML/JavaScript-based apps inside the native container on a mobile device. These apps can access device-specific features like cameras and sensors, thanks to the native device that JavaScript APIs exposed.
Moreover, PhoneGap supports multiple frameworks and libraries, such as AngularJS, jQuery, and Knockoutjs. Thus, hybrid mobile app developers do not have to rely only on HTML and CSS to design user interfaces.
Ionic
Ionic is an open-source Angular-based framework that allows hybrid mobile app developers to build robust and versatile apps having a native look and feel. The framework is used to design basic native functionalities within an application to facilitate its operation on different OS and devices. The key benefits of this Ionic are:
- Supports robust and rapid app development
- Several ready-made plugins
- Mainly built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which are familiar technologies
- AngularJS compatible
- Engaged community
Besides, the development and maintenance cost of Ionic apps is far less than native apps.
Cross-Platform App Development
Cross-platform app development is sought after among businesses due to its code reusability, low development cost, and easy deployment and maintenance. Developers use a single code base to develop a cross-platform app that runs on different platforms simultaneously. This codebase also connects to native components via APIs to provide native-like UX.
Also, you need to know that hybrid and cross-platform apps are not similar. The only common feature between them is code shareability, which speeds up their development process.
Technology Stack for Cross-Platform Apps
There are multiple frameworks for cross-platform apps. Let’s take a closer look at some of the popular ones.
React Native + JavaScript/TypeScript
React Native is the most demanding JavaScript framework used to create mobile apps with a native look and feel for both Android and iOS. The framework uses a similar fundamental UI building block as native Android and iOS apps. The only difference is that React Native app developers need to put these blocks together using React and JavaScript in case of cross-platform app development.
Besides, React Native brings forth a novel and highly functional methodology for developing user interfaces. The React Native apps are written and run in JavaScript, but their UI is entirely native.
Alternatively, cross-platform apps can also be built using TypeScript language that provides excellent features for rapid and simple error detection when building React components. Generic components are beneficial in the TypeScript toolbox as they offer an additional security layer while writing components. This, in turn, tightens the feedback loop and helps developers to detect errors rapidly.
Businesses prefer this platform because the cost of developing a React Native app is about 40% lower than a native app.
Xamarin + C#
Xamarin is a quite handy tool for cross-platform development that enables developers to share approx. 90% of code across major platforms. The framework uses C#, which is a statically typed programming language with mature tooling and IDE support. Apps developed using this language are cross-compiled to native iOS and Android binaries. Developers can also utilize device-specific APIs and functionality from within C#.
How to Choose the Best Technology Stack
Now you have a stack of technology stacks for developing a mobile app, how would you find the best one for your app development project? Having a solid plan of the tech stack is imperative to create a high-quality, secure, scalable, and easy-to-maintain app. So, we have outlined a few factors that you can take note of, to choose the best app development technologies.
Type of Project
If you’re planning to develop a complex mobile app with excellent performance and a fully custom UI implementation, go for native. Kotlin and Swift have commonly used programming languages for developing Android and iOS apps, respectively.
Validating an idea
If you are a startup and want to validate your app idea with an MVP, get feedback of users, and gain a competitive advantage, count on cross-platform approach. React Native is the right choice of developing an MVP as it is cost-effective and easy to create with wide platform coverage.
Time to Market
If you want to expedite your app development and quickly step in the market, consider a framework or language with a plethora of ready-made solutions for common development purposes like authentication and social media integrations.
Final Words
To wrap up, we would say that choosing the best tech stack aligning with your goals and vision can help you hit the moon and create a dominating presence in your respective industry. If you want more insights on how to choose a tech stack for your app development project, book a free consultation with our expert.
