How it works
An iOS app is written in Swift with Apple's tools and interface frameworks. An Android app is written in Kotlin with Google's tools. Each is a separate codebase, packaged and released through its own store. Because there is no layer in between, the app can use new platform features as soon as the platform makes them available.
Strengths and costs
- Strengths: the closest fit with each platform's design conventions, direct access to the camera, sensors, Bluetooth and background tasks, and fine control over performance.
- Costs: two codebases, two skill sets and usually more total effort to keep both apps in step.
Ask which of your features really need native access. If most of the app is forms, lists and content, a cross-platform app may cover it. If the product depends on advanced graphics, augmented reality or deep hardware integration, native is often the safer choice. See our iOS and Android development service and the article on native or cross-platform.
An example
Imagine a fitness app that reads data from a wearable over Bluetooth, records workouts in the background and draws live charts. Those needs lean heavily on platform features, so a team might build it natively on each platform. This is a hypothetical example, not our work.
Common mistakes
- Going native on both platforms for a simple app that does not need it.
- Building iOS first and treating Android as an afterthought, or the reverse.
- Letting the two apps drift apart in features and wording.
- Skipping the right-to-left testing that Arabic users need.