web apps vs mobile apps

Question

Is there a significant advantage of creating a mobile app as opposed to a web application?

I pose this question from the following perspective, which is biased towards my lack of knowledge of the mobile phone architecture.

1. You can build a web application with pure javascript, css, and html.

2. You don't have to write different code for iOS, Android, etc.

3. The user simply goes to a url, and that's your app, served right there from the server.

   I would like someone to highlight some of the advantages of writing specific code for a mobile web application.

What does a mobile app fundamentally have a significant advantage over a web application?

Binnacle

Answer 1

Mobile apps have some advantages:

• Assets are packaged on the phone - you only need to load data from the server, not your layout.

• Users are familiar with the conventions of their chosen mobile OS,
  which your app will follow.

• Trends show users are spending more time in Apps than web on mobile

• Can work offline (even if limited)

• Mobile apps have access to native features like push notifications,
  GPS, Camera, etc

There are also hybrid apps - which are web apps running in a native container. You may have heard of Cordova, which is a platform for acheiving this. You basically create your app as a web app, and it runs inside a native WebView - with this you can use a javascript API to access some native features, but you don't get many of the other benefits of a native app.

Bosky

Yes, I agree. There is a great famous package for Meteor,` meteor add raix:famono.` It is possible to achieve a very native feel. The cordova platform builds the ios and/or andriod app. I guess my question should also address my objective which I should have stated. – Binnacle

I have a web application created with meteor. Im in the process of amending the code so the css and transitions will have a native feel. I am yet to find a coder to collaborate with that can build the application for ios and android. So, although the ui would in fact offer a better user experience, which is my top priority, my circumstances suggest I should build a web browser and wrap it up for ios and andriod – Binnacle

Although all the big players have a full suite of excellently engineered native apps for all platforms - for a lot of situations I would definitely recommend a hybrid approach, you can still get a very good user experience with a bit of care. – Bosky

Answer 2

• Easy to use
• Use native mobile design
• Don't take long time to load just load data and images but web load (data/images/css/js)

Beheld

Answer 3

I am not very experienced with this topic, but these are some fundamentals of using mobile apps:

• They are accessible offline. (but that is restrictable)
• The assets of the downloaded app are stored on the phone itself, thus the main content loads much faster.
• As stated before, they have access to the hardware of the device (GPS, camera, etc, sensors etc.)
• You can store as much data on the device as you want (opposed to, let's say 5mb using the HTML5's Local Storage).
• They have access to push notifications (such as in Android or iOS)
• They can put all the powerful hardware of the phone to use.

Heeley