Part 2: The “Why” and the “Why Not”

If I counted correctly (I can count to 2, for sure), this is the second and last article of a two-part series. In this article, I write about the pros and the cons of each of the three methods for building a mobile app.

Typical Timelines for Mobile App Development Methods

The three major stages to most software development processes involve design, development (coding) and quality assurance (QA). The chart below attempts to show a rough comparison of those project timelines for an imaginary mobile app project that involves three platforms (iOS, Android and Windows) and the web. Based on past experiences here at meltmedia, the impact on time is shown by the length of the bar, as a percentage and in actual (imaginary) hours. Actual miles may vary, of course.

We’ll refer to this chart in each of the three sections below. For the sake of having numbers that we can wrap our brains around, our project chart up there shows (vertically and by color) the three main segments of a typical application development timeline: Design (orange), Development (green) and QA (blue). The imaginary “Native App” project has three tracks (iOS, Android and Windows) of 250 hours each (62.5 hours for design, 112.5 hours for development and 75 hours for QA), totaling 750 hours for all three platforms. The “Hybrid App” project will total 550 hours. The imaginary “Mobile Web App” project (the bottom track) will take 250 hours total for design, development and QA.

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Part 1: The “How” and the “What”

It turns out this topic of building a mobile application is difficult to write about. In our experience at meltmedia, all the methods discussed below have their merits and their caveats. In reading around the blogosphere and web-o-whatever-it’s-called-sphere for more opinions, I’ve found that there are many great discussions about building mobile apps and even more opinions and defenses for each of them. After all that, my answer to your question, “Which method?” remains the same: “It depends.” Today, for you only, that advice is FREE.

This first part of the series describes the methods by which mobile apps are built and gives some familiar examples of apps that use those methods. The next article will look at which method might work best for your project by examining the benefits and caveats to each method and other considerations in making the best choice.

Let’s get on with some definitions, shall we? There are three major ways to build your mobile app: Native, Web and “Hybrid.”

Native Mobile Apps

A native mobile app is built specifically for a particular mobile platform using that platform’s native programming language and tools. The app works directly with the operating system and device hardware (see diagram above). Since native apps have a direct line to the operating system and hardware, they are arguably the fastest type of app. I say, “arguably” because the increasing power of mobile hardware and the maturity of the tools is making it difficult to distinguish native apps from the next two types in terms of user experience and performance.

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