In the last two decades, the digital market has been focusing on websites. With the arrival of smartphones, we discovered a new world of features and functionalities. The cell phone quickly established itself as a must-have device in the digital world.

In this revolution some problems also arose; web browsing had not been designed for mobile. In general, it was slow and the user experience degraded as the complexity of web pages increased.

The ecosystem of mobile applications grew, it was possible to build applications faster and with more functionalities but their development was complex and expensive.

In 2012 we were at a point where mobile development had become focused on the web and we needed to find a better way to build mobile solutions.

What is React Native?

In 2012 Mark Zuckerberg commented, "The biggest mistake we made as a company was betting too much on HTML as opposed to native".

In 2015 Facebook released the first version of React Native (RN) the goal was a new mobile development technology that will facilitate development and user experience.

It is a mobile development platform, where its strengths are:

• Being able to use React on mobile, developed by Facebook a few years earlier to build interfaces with a better user experience.
• Provide an API to use device resources natively, giving us better performance and more functionality.

What are PWA?

Progressive Web Apps are a set of technologies similar to RN with the goal of bringing together the best of web and native apps. To do this, they use APIs to access native modules and different strategies to provide the best possible user experience.

The difference from a RN is that it is web-based, while with RN can generate native code, thus allowing higher performance.

Expo

Expo is a set of tools, libraries and services to develop native applications written in Javascript based on React Native.

It also provides you with a set of services such as the Push Notification, updates in the cloud (OTA), credential management and publication in stores...

They have achieved a more universal, accessible and powerful mobile development solution.

Pros of using Expo

• Performance close to native development.
• Multiplatform development philosophy.
• Facilitates development, reduces time and costs (cost-efficient solution).
• Support in the deployment and distribution in Apple Store / Google Play.
• Cloud update system (OTA) - Over the air updates -.

Cons of not using native development

• Lower quality and performance compared to native applications.
• Not all native APIs are available.
• It requires more time spent on fixing small issues or complex client customizations.
• The app size is slightly larger.

Conclusion

React Native is a mature technology to rely on for your mobile apps. Expo should be your first option if you consider a project with React Native,it is a solution that is constantly growing and that increasingly reduces the gap with native development.

¡Try it out!