React Native is a JavaScript framework, designed for building genuine native apps on mobile operating systems like iOS, Android and most recently even Windows. It’s a framework based on JavaScript libraries created by Facebook known as ReactJS, and thus brings its power from websites to native mobile app development.
A great amount of debate has evolved around what framework is best for building mobile apps. React Native is a framework that continues to get praise and adoption from more and more developers. Therefore, we wanted to give an overview of the most popular mobile apps using React Native:
1. Facebook & React Native
You know what they say – you have to be willing to eat your own dog food – and that goes for Facebook as well. While Facebook will not rewrite their entire suite of features for their mobile applications, it is clear now that Facebook is on the path to rewriting more and more features into React Native.
Originally, Facebook only developed React Native to support iOS. However, with its recent support of the Android operating system, the library can now provide mobile UIs for both platforms. For the social networking app, Facebook implemented React Native for their Events Dashboard feature and saw great performance improvements as a result. The Events Dashboard is now booting up twice as fast! With millions upon millions of people using Events on Facebook, that’s amounts to hours and hours of time saved every day.
2. Facebook Ads & React Native
The social networking platform isn’t the only React Native application that was developed under Facebook’s roof. Facebook used React Native to rebuild its own Ads Manager app, creating both an iOS and an Android version. Interestingly, the same team of developers created both versions. Facebook also made React Native open-source, letting the developer community to have a go at it. That allowed the React Native framework to evolve much faster than an internal team at Facebook could ever accomplish.
Facebook Ads was the first React Native app for Android. At the time, many thought React Native was too premature for deploying to Android. But in the end, the framework was absolutely suitable for a lot of complex business logic required to accurately handle differences in ad formats, time zones, currencies, date formats, currency conventions, and so on. This became particularly handy for Facebook because a big chunk of Facebook’s Ads services was already written in JavaScript.
From a design perspective, the interface is clean with an intuitive UX and simple navigation. The animations and transitions are next to perfect, without feeling unnatural or buggy at any point. The overall experience is outstanding, and if your marketing team isn’t using the app, now would be a good time to join the party!
The first thing you will notice is that the app is lightning fast, regardless of the operations you want to perform. From checking the status of a current campaign to building a new one, all it takes is a swift moment to navigate to the next level or access the data requested with ease.
3. Instagram & React Native
Another Facebook-powered service! Instagram accepted the challenge to integrate React Native into their existing native app, beginning with the most basic feature you can imagine – the Push Notification view. Basically, Instagram implemented the push notification as a WebView due to the UI’s simplicity. In other words, the team did not need to rebuild the navigation infrastructure.
The choice of switching to React Native turned out to work out really well for Instagram. 85% to 99% of code was shared between the Android and iOS apps, lowering development cost dramatically. Thus the team was able to deliver updates to their apps much faster than they would have with a native solution maintaining two codebases.
4. Bloomberg & React Native
Bloomberg’s new consumer mobile application for iOS and Android gives clients a streamlined, interactive experience with simple-to-access personalized content, videos and live feeds featured across Bloomberg’s Media. The engineering team at Bloomberg’s New York City headquarters produced the app using React Native. This was a big change for an organization that had otherwise built their apps using native technologies like Java and Objective-C.
5. Walmart & React Native
Walmart aims really high, striving to become the world’s largest retailer, both offline and online. If they don’t, Amazon, Alibaba and the likes will surpass them. With such lofty goals, the company needs to take bold moves that typically involve higher risks in order to gain a competitive advantage. That is why Walmart always seek ways to improve customer experience by trying new technologies. React Native allows for great performance, nearly identical to native apps, and extremely smooth transitions, all while the team only has to maintain one codebase in JavaScript.
Walmart has already proved its innovative approach to software development by introducing NodeJS into its stack. A few years later they went a step further in terms of rewriting their applications into JavaScript, by revising their mobile app into React Native. Walmart managed to improve the performance of their app on both iOS and Android. They were using fewer resources and within a shorter time span for implementing their mobile app. A record 96% of the codebase was shared between Android and iOS, while developer’s skills were leveraged across the organization. Now that’s how cross-platform development should be done!
Are you ready to get your next app build or rebuild into React Native? Don’t hesitate to start a conversation with Wiredelta today!
