Tag: Mobile app development

React Native vs. Native Apps: Which is better & why?

Posted on by Taha Shakeel

Up until a few years ago, mobile applications were normally written in Native languages. Now, most of the market is shifting towards React Native to write their apps. Some of the big companies, like Facebook, Soundcloud, and Bloomberg, are already using this framework, and their apps are running smoothly and efficiently.

Any mobile app development begins with choosing the right tools, platforms, and frameworks that one will need to design and build it. When it comes to app development for your product, there are two paths available: Native or React Native. Choosing between the two can be overwhelming. This is why to overcome this challenge you will need to explore factors like budget constraints and the development time of each method.

The debate about React Native vs. Native apps has been long-standing. Even though it varies from project to project, let’s explore the basics of how each development approach is different and why you must choose/prefer one over the other.

Differences Between Native and React-Native Apps

React Native allows developers to write the code once but lets it run on any platform, whereas Native development requires separate coding for each platform. React Native is written in JavaScript and is known as a Hybrid framework. On the other hand, Native apps are built for either iOS or Android. These apps are built with specific programming languages for specific platforms.

Before investing your money to build your iOS and Android app or a Hybrid one, it is smart to weigh all the pros and cons. Right from the beginning, you should be aware of the possible obstacles or difficulties that might occur.  

By now, you know React Native is a platform-independent framework because it gives you the freedom to build an iOS app and an Android app on the same framework while keeping the UI and UX design of the app intact. Native jumps in when you want to build custom UI components and have a unique user experience that requires external libraries. 

We took the liberty to divide the main differences between the two into points. 

  • Support of applications: Because React Native is a new technology it, unfortunately, does not have parent support. This precisely means that the Google Play store or App store may stop accepting your app at any given time. On the other hand, Native apps are built for specific platforms therefore they meet all the requirements. 
  • Performance: This can be measured from a lot of factors e.g. animations, lags, slowdowns, and load time. Nonetheless Native runs more efficiently because it was built to run on that specific platform only. React Native is built for both platforms so it is understandable that it utilizes more battery on the device and can cause lag or slowdown. 
  • User Experience: The UX on React Native apps is compromised as mobile screen size varies. On the other hand, Native apps have the edge to design and add built-in UX UI components however they wish to maintain a visual balance on all the screens. 
  • Development cost and maintenance: Native requires two development teams for making and maintaining the app. React Native allows you to build the app using a single code base, which saves you cost as well as time spent in mobile app development. 
  • Long-term app development: Although React Native is a faster and inexpensive way to launch your business app, it is not as efficient with updates. The app updates and app stores are not in sync at all times. This makes it tough to build and launch any future updates.  Since Native is supported by Google and Apple, it is more coherent with updates and resolves problems as they emerge. 

React Native vs. Native App Development

Native Application Development

Native app development is centered around designing mobile apps specific to a single platform, like iOS or Android. These apps are built with programming languages and tools that are specific to a particular platform. Android apps require coding in Java or Kotlin using Android Studio for the environment. IOS requires coding in Objective-C or Swift and the IDE is Xcode. Therefore, this process needs at least two developers or development teams to build two different versions of an application, simultaneously.

Native is without a doubt a time-consuming process. But there are some solid pros that Native has to offer:

  1. Faster and more reliable
  2. Better app design and performance
  3. Robust language
  4. Accessibility of APIs

The downside of opting for Native is the following:

  1. High cost of development of two applications
  2. Higher development time

React Native Application Development

React Native is the leading hybrid mobile development framework. With React Native, you write an iOS app exactly the way you would write a web app. That sounds very convenient, but it may also cause some issues.

By using the React Native Method you will need to write the code only once and the final product can be run on iOS and Android.

React native pros:

  1. Single codebase
  2. Lower development cost
  3. Time-efficient 
  4. Reusable components
  5. Faster debugging process
  6. Faster prototyping
  7. Open-Source: Most features already have a build solution
  8. Easy maintenance

Cons attached to this process are: 

  1. Reduced number of Native elements
  2. A limited number of Third-Party Libraries
  3. Absence of support for All Native APIs

Our Approach to App Development

VentureDive has been at the forefront of bleeding-edge technology for both Native Android and iOS development and has a large pool of resources from both competencies. When we speak about React Native vs. Native app development, we include two different competencies that require separate sets of expertise to develop apps that deliver excellence and true business value.

Here’s a quick list of tools and technologies we use for both approaches:

iOS

  • Swift programming language
  • Viper and MVVM (architecture patterns)
  • iOS storyboarding
  • Core Data for iOS
  • SwiftUI (for making interfaces & screens)

Android

  • Kotlin programming language
  • MVVM, MVP & Reactive Programming with Rx Java (architecture pattern)
  • Constraint layout (with Android previewer)
  • Scoped storage for better data security
  • Jetpack Compose (design through code)

Why Choose Native App Development? 

Here’s why you should go for Native app development:

  • If your app is going to be complexed
  • You are more inclined towards the user experience part of your app
  • If you want in-built features like brightness control
  • If you are targeting a single platform either iOS or Android 

Why React Native for Mobile App Development

Here are some reasons you should opt for React Native:

  • Your app is minimal in terms of UI and UX
  • You want your app to available on all platforms with a reasonable budget
  • You want your app to be launched in a shorter amount of time 
  • Your business is a start-up and has limited resources and funds

When it comes to app development, React Native has been at the center of VenD. We have delivered countless immaculate projects using React Native over the years and continue to conduct training sessions for the entire mobile development team. This helped the teams gain the necessary knowledge to quickly bootstrap and deliver a React Native application. By building upon the core knowledge and expertise of the Native platform, we are able to deliver better-performing apps in a much shorter time, be it using React Native Expo or React Native CLI applications. 

Wrapping up: Should You Choose Native or React Native?

It is apparent that React Native meets all the requirements of the client while saving on cost and time. It gives you the best of both worlds, which is lower effort and efficient use of time and budget. If you are looking for rapid prototyping and MVP, React Native is the answer. However, if you have a lot of manpower and resources to spare, you can always opt for Native. Ultimately, there is no silver bullet. If you are in between answers, you can try to consult VentureDive. 

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How we did it: Optimizing on demand delivery for Munchies

Posted on by Muhammad Amir Khan

When it comes to delivering food to customers through an app, on-time delivery matters the most. Munchies, a Pakistani e-commerce snacking solution, was founded in 2019 by Unilever and VentureDive with the aim of delivering snacks instantly to customers using an app. The app would allow them to choose from a variety of snacks including ice cream, chips, chocolates, and more.

Being the only on-demand delivery app for snacks in Pakistan, Munchies got the attention of consumers quickly and began receiving a reasonable amount of orders daily. However, it had to face challenges with on-time delivery as well as updating the customer on an accurate Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA). In other words, the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) for Munchies was longer than expected.

Munchies’ on-demand delivery system

Similar to other on-demand delivery apps for the food industry, Munchies was designed to focus on customers, stores, and riders. Whenever a customer would place an order, a rider would be sent a request to accept the order. After a rider accepts the order, a store is shortlisted for picking up the order items. When all of the order items have been collected, the rider will be ready to depart for the drop-off location and deliver the order to the customer. The figure below shows the current dispatch system.

Problems with Munchies snack delivery workflow

While the on-demand delivery flow looked manageable, it had many unforeseen complexities. In a hypothetical situation, if an item is not available at the store, then the rider might need to ask the customer to either cancel that item or go to another store, which will result in an increased ETA. Similarly, the larger the basket size (number of items in an order) of an order, the larger the time to collect all these items. Another reason for altering the ETA could be the long lines at stores given the Covid-19 pandemic.

The current system that estimated the time of arrival was Google Maps, i.e., the Google Distance Matrix API, which simply estimated the time from order acceptance to arrival at the store and then from the store to the drop-off location of the customer. The total ETA is simply the sum of these two plus a fixed buffer of a few minutes. While Google is no doubt an efficient system to get ETAs, for Munchies, it just concentrated on the longitude and latitude of the rider, store, and customer’s dropoff location. It was not aware of the workings of Munchies and all the complexities discussed above.

The obstacle was that Google was providing an accurate ETA for the latitude and longitude pair, giving a time of 25 minutes, but because of the workings and structure of Munchies, an order would, almost all of the time, take longer than what Google had provided. All this was not leaving a good impression on the customer. Another reason for the longer ETA was that there were a lot of orders in some areas but only a few stores. This prompted the suggestion that some stores be added in order to reduce ETA and deliver faster.

VentureDive’s strategy to resolve the ETA prediction issue

In order to solve this obstacle, the data science team at VentureDive was put in charge of digging deeper and coming up with a viable solution.

After a thorough analysis of the data with respect to ETA, the team identified a number of key problems with using Google Maps. The main problem highlighted was that while Google is aware of the traffic conditions and the roads of the city, it knows nothing about the internal operations of Munchies. For example, there might be a specific area in the city that takes longer, or there might be some specific stores responsible for a longer ETA. The data of the orders at Munchies was being stored on a daily basis but Google does not consider any of the data recorded for predicting ETA except latitudes and longitudes.

The main purpose was to make use of the historical data we had at our disposal to predict the ETA. The team provided a solution that was simple but efficient. An in-house system (a prediction model) that will predict ETA for orders.

Benefits of accurate ETA prediction for on-demand delivery

The benefit of using this solution is that we will be using several more features to predict ETA than just latitude and longitude. The following are the features:

  1. Time & Location
    When an order is placed, we can tell our prediction system that the order is for this specific area or store respectively.
  2. Basket size
    We can also specify the basket size (the number of items in an order or even the rider information or vehicle type.
  3. Weather
    We can add weather data which, of course, has an impact on delivery time.  

The foremost benefit of having an in-house prediction system is that, since it will be using historical data, it will automatically take into account all those complexities that we discussed above. It was also cost-efficient and entirely under our control. We had the ability to make changes as needed, which Google Maps does not provide.

Building the ETA Prediction solution to enable on-time deliveries

Munchies’ on-demand delivery model was designed in such a way that cities are divided into service areas, and each service area has its own dedicated fleet of delivery that was instructed to remain near the restaurants to make delivery as quick as possible.

The team started by exploring the data and analyzing it specifically in terms of ETA. Data was already being collected from the app, so the data acquisition stage was relatively simple. In the analysis phase, the team’s research came up with some interesting insights. Three pieces of research highlighted that there were some areas in the city that were constantly taking longer than expected. Similarly, orders from some stores were also taking too long to deliver. The most fascinating find was the dispatch algorithm currently in use could be improved which would reduce the ETA.

After all the thorough research and solutions, now it was time to start building a machine learning model that would be trained on order data and then used to predict the ETA of future orders. In order to build this model, the team did processing on the data which included the:

  1. Feature Engineering
    The data had some timestamp features, so a month, day, week, hour, or even minute and seconds can be extracted from a single DateTime feature which can possibly add to the model’s performance and data analysis.
  1. Outliers Detection and Removal
    The real-world data is always disordered and comes with outliers, but not all machine learning models can handle them. Using statistical techniques, outliers were removed from the order data since it not only affects analysis but also the model’s performance as well.
  1. Missing Values
    Another problem with real-world data is that it contains some missing values. The same was the case with our data. Again, with the help of statistical techniques, the team solved the problem of missing values.
  2. Encoding
    There were some features that were categorical in nature. Since many machine learning models cannot process categorical data, these features needed to be converted into numerical form, and for this reason, encoding techniques were used.
  3. Drop Irrelevant Columns
    Not all the features are important for a machine learning model. Columns like timestamps, Ids, etc. So these features can be dropped.

Once the data was filtered, meaning it had no outliers, missing values, or categorical features, it was time to move toward the machine learning part, where the data was first split into training, testing, and validation sets. 

Overcoming the hurdles & challenges

One of the challenges in machine learning is choosing an appropriate machine learning algorithm. Since predicting ETA (continuous values) is a regression problem, we had to choose a regression algorithm. The most common choice was to go with XGBoost since it is widely used in the industry and usually outperforms other algorithms. Therefore, we tried three different algorithms, and XGBoost outperformed all other algorithms. We evaluated our models using regression metrics. A number of metrics could be used including RMSLE, RMSE, MAE, and R2 Score. We used some of these metrics for our case.

Initially, our models were not performing properly and there was an enormous error between the actual and the predicted values. This led to the hyperparameter tuning of models and which improved the results and reduced errors between the actual and predicted time of arrival.

One final step was to test the model in production. We deployed our model in production to see its comparison with the existing model. After months of comparison between the two, it turned out that an in-house solution was performing well in estimating arrival time by an adequate margin.

Conclusion

Long story short, with the help of data science and machine learning, our team was able to find the root cause of the problem. We provided viable solutions to the mobile app development team on how to reduce the ETA to enable timely, on-demand delivery of snacks and built an in-house model that started predicting accurate arrival times for orders. Ultimately we improved our customer experience in a cost-effective manner.

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VentureDive Rated 5-Star in App Development Reviews on Clutch

Posted on by Ureeda Asim

Boosting a business through app development could be a notable move for your growth. An app reaches marketplaces, both traditional and online, especially areas like Google Play, App Store, and more. Moreover, it offers additional functions such as coupon codes and forces update announcements. 

Speaking of applications, VentureDive produces and invests in high-end technology products and solutions to help businesses and improve the lives of people worldwide. We are a technology solutions company with a team of passionate service leaders. They serve as our partners in solving B2B and B2C challenges and making our clients stand out in the competition.

We focus on understanding our client’s customers and business hurdles before developing unique solutions for them.

Rated 5-star by IslamicFinder

We are proud to announce that we’ve recently received a 5-star rating review from our Clutch platform. Clutch is a B2B ratings and reviews platform that connects businesses to the solutions providers they need.

The review is from IslamicFinder’s General Manager. We are currently working with them on their development projects. We are keeping all of their apps modernized with the latest iOS and Android updates. Our team also helped the client improve their product performance.

It’s been more than five years since they began working with VentureDive. Until now, we can still feel how satisfied they are with the work we do in our project with them.

Rated 5-star by Kashat

Another 5-star rating review we received was from the Chief Technology Officer at Kashat, a nano-lending platform. We have been in partnership with them for over 3 years, and offer app development services and financial services for the Android platform to them. 

Sumair Farooqui, their Co-Founder & Managing Director talked about Kashat’s collaboration with VentureDive, in-depth, and shared their story of innovation. Watch the complete video below:

Top-rated app developers in Pakistan

These reviews are only two of our many clients who are more than satisfied with the services and solutions we have offered.

Our great news doesn’t stop there. Our company was hailed as the best flutter app development company in Pakistan by The Manifest, a business guide that shows the most talented solutions providers in the market. Flutter is a popular development kit for creating cross-platform. 

It’s heartwarming to receive such recognition. Our team of more than 250 professionals has been working hard to provide the best UI/UX design, custom software development, and consulting services for startups to large firms. Finally, The Manifest sees all our efforts and hard work. 

Now, we’d like to show what we can do for your business. You can also visit our page to check our portfolio and send us an inquiry. We’d love to hear from you!

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A comprehensive guide on last-mile delivery solution: Features, benefits, and future implications

Posted on by Ameer Hamza

The term ‘last mile’ was originally used in telecommunications to describe the difficulty of connecting end users’ homes and businesses to the main telecommunication network. This ‘last mile’ of telecommunication cable was going to be used by only one user, thereby not justifying the cost of installing and maintaining it.

As the world increasingly turns to e-commerce for shopping, the ‘last mile’ issue is one of the biggest and most expensive challenges for businesses.

What is last-mile delivery?

As soon as you check out from your shopping basket on any online shopping website, your product begins its long journey from a warehouse shelf to your doorstep. Here the ‘last mile’ represents the last leg/gap between the fulfillment center and you. Most businesses depend on a third party, like a shipping carrier, to handle their orders in the last mile. This last mile can be just a few meters to 100 kilometers or more. The key objective of last-mile delivery is to deliver your package as soon as possible and as safely as possible.

Challenges of last-mile delivery

Just like in telecommunications, the last mile is the most time-consuming and expensive part of the whole shipping process. If done correctly, it can convert users to loyal customers and save you a lot of time and money. The problem with last-mile deliveries is that not all of them are the same, some of them are pretty straightforward and usually involve a big truck carrying a large number of goods through a major road or highway. The complicated ones are those which require the delivery person to navigate through crowded streets, confusing alleyways, similar-looking buildings, and even large swathes of uninhabited rural areas to make singular deliveries.

Inefficiency is a major problem for last-mile deliveries as most of them require multiple stops with low drop sizes. The issue has been further compounded by the continuous rise of e-commerce, which has dramatically increased the number of parcels delivered each day, as well as raised customer expectations to include not just fast, but also free delivery.

The last mile of the entire supply chain adds up to about 30% of the cost and as free shipping becomes more commonplace, customers are less likely to be willing to pay a delivery fee, leaving retailers to shoulder the cost. Other challenges include:

Allocation & Address Issues

Destination grouping/management is a major issue for last-mile deliveries. Many retailers allocate jobs manually, which leads to human error, allowing shipments to get misallotted or missed out on a particular route. Additionally, bad and incorrect addresses and a lack of proper signage are also major concerns.

Dynamic Routes

If the delivery person is not changing routes based on conditions that prevail on that particular day, then they are further complicating the scope of last-mile delivery and timeline adherence for order fulfillment.

Delivery Density

There is a fine balance between managing the number of deliveries in a day within a particular area. Taking into account the size of shipments, and considering the following use cases, the delivery density problem quadruples in magnitude:

  • Low-Density Short Distances
  • Low-Density Long Distances
  • High-Density Short Distances
  • High-Density Long Distances

Transit unpredictability and lack of communication

While this is something retailers have no control over, the least they can do is to have a communications plan in place so that the delays are communicated to the respective stakeholders in a proactive manner.

Fulfillment timelines

Missed timelines can prove to be very expensive to retailers. In the case of food deliveries, some companies cannot charge customers for the delivery if the guaranteed timeline is missed. Not just that, it also causes damage in terms to the reputation of the brand.

How is last-mile delivery changing?

App-based delivery and the gig economy

As traditional delivery companies have started becoming inefficient, last-mile startups are on the rise, providing a cheaper, faster option. From food to large item delivery, crowdsourced delivery is becoming a viable and popular option.

Payment

Once the user selects what they require, they make a payment to Postmates. The payment includes the price of the product, the delivery fee, and service fee.

In-house delivery

Another new development is that businesses have started to hire their own drivers and trucks to cut down on costs, although this brings up a host of other issues.

Warehouses in major cities

Businesses are also adopting Amazon’s model of having fulfillment centers in high-ordering areas to improve efficiencies, allowing for rapid order fulfillment in major cities, including same-day delivery. Reducing the distance from the warehouse to the final destination costs less and can shorten delivery time to same-day or next-day delivery.

How can you boost your last-mile delivery?

Investing in a last-mile delivery solution that is feature-rich and can holistically transform your business by making your last-mile delivery more efficient than ever. Your custom mobile app can have features & benefits like:

  1. Route optimization
    Delivery route optimization is a crucial feature that can help in minimizing total delivery time by discovering the most efficient routes. It works by taking into account several factors like traffic, location, capacity, and time under consideration to come up with the most efficient routes. It also allows you to make last-minute changes or re-optimize by sending a real-time update to the driver. 
  2. Auto-dispatch
    This feature helps in efficiently managing your assignments and on-demand orders by assigning the right driver for the right task at the right time and thus minimizing the service time and labor costs.
  3. Bird’s eye view
    This feature allows you to get a bird’s eye view of all important aspects with the team, time, and status filtering. You can search using time, text, and status-based queries to quickly find the customers, drivers, and delivery tasks. 
  4. Proof of delivery
    This allows recipients to sign off on their goods through in-app signatures, photos, notes, and barcodes.
  5. Real-time status update
    This is an important feature that provides real-time status updates of the shipment to customers so that they know exactly when their goods would be delivered and by whom. They are also informed in case there’s any delay.
  6. Real-time visibility
    This helps you increase your fleet’s visibility by quickly being able to check where your vehicles are and how many of them are idling. It also helps in minimizing theft, spoilage, and pilferage. 
  7. Audit key metrics
    This feature allows you to visualize success rates, service times, on-time rates, distance traveled, feedback scores, and much more.
  8. Reports & analytics
    Gain detailed insight into your business through graphical and date reports.
  9. Delivery Flexibility
    A customized last-mile delivery solution will allow your customers to choose the time and location of delivery.
  10. Boost productivity
    The last-mile delivery solution can help you boost productivity by eliminating any unnecessary idling or unplanned diversions.

What is the future of last-mile delivery?

As e-commerce increases, time-critical deliveries will become paramount. Here are some ideas on what innovations will be necessary for last-mile delivery in the future:

Multiple Options

Companies must adapt to changing customer demands; home deliveries, same-day deliveries, time windows, delayed deliveries, alternative locations, unmanned pack-station at offices, neighborhood stores, and in public transport stations, customer-centric return processes for products and packaging, and just-in-time deliveries. There will be multiple touchpoints with customers in the future.

Robotisation

Robotisation will soon become an integral part of urban freight solutions. Unmanned deliveries by robots and drones, and unmanned pack-stations for pick-up and delivery at offices, stores, and public transport stations will become commonplace.

Smart planning, IoT, and reliance on ride-sharing

Since urban freight mostly involves finding an unloading zone, walking, and actual delivery, new transport planning, and scheduling systems will be developed using big data to forecast delivery routes and using real-time traffic information and availability of unloading zones for planning and scheduling. The reliance on ride-sharing will become commonplace as these social delivery networks will lead to innovation in urban freight.

Food for thought

Last-mile delivery is a major bottleneck for a lot of retailers. The solution is to shore up on last-mile delivery with a custom-made solution that is tailor-made for your organization, it will surely boost your last-mile delivery tracking and hence increase the profits.

Keep in mind the latest trends though, couple that with a last-mile delivery solution, and you are ready to take your business to new heights.

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VentureDive: A Top-Rated Venture by Clutch 2020

Posted on by Ureeda Asim

At VentureDive, we pride ourselves on our ability to innovate to improve lives. What sets us apart from other technology solutions companies is our underlying mission to solve real-world challenges through cutting-edge services, products, and experiences. 

Our technology solutions span web and mobile design and development, consulting, and data and analytics. To provide potential clients with insights into what it’s like to work with us and the results we’re capable of delivering, we often direct them to our Clutch profile. 

Clutch.co is a rating and review platform based in Washington, D.C. covering web, software, and mobile app development companies around the world. 

Clutch lists IT organizations across the world, rating them on their market presence, industry experience, and proven ability to deliver excellence and results to their clients. Instead of clients merely leaving reviews or star ratings, the Clutch team speaks directly with current and past clients to hear first-hand how each firm performs and delivers. 

This comprehensive approach gives users and buyers a realistic understanding of each service providers’ strengths and weaknesses.

It’s very important for us to receive honest and detailed feedback from our clients. This feedback helps us upgrade our strengths and correct our weaknesses. We are thankful to all our clients whose words will continue to inspire us to work, create, and evolve.

Many of our clients have given us amazing reviews on Clutch and shared their experience of working with VentureDive. They’ve rated us out of 5 in different categories; below are some insights from a few of our clients.

Kashat

Our most recent five-star review comes from Kashat, the first digital nano lending company in Egypt. They approached with a unique challenge, to deliver a cutting-edge solution to their customers which would be the first of its kind in Egypt. Considering the project and the regulatory requirements, it was paramount that the highest level of quality and security was maintained for this project. 

The client was thrilled with our team’s high level of understanding throughout the process and their professionalism ensured that the build process went smoothly and finished on time.

GoRead.pk

GoRead.pk, an educational startup that’s working to improve literacy and develop a love for reading amongst children in Pakistan, left us our first review on Clutch — along with a perfect 5-star rating! 

The startup approached us to develop their mobile app. A core part of GoRead.pk’s initiative is to have volunteers read stories aloud to children in underserved communities.

The startup wanted an app that would help facilitate volunteer registration and serve as the primary communication tool amongst all stakeholders in the program. They also hoped that eventually, the app would give children independent access to stories. 

Although the client had a short two-month deadline, the team was up for the challenge; we worked quickly and ensured effective collaboration between our teams so that the app was ready on time. 

When the app launched, it immediately generated a lot of interest, and GoRead.pk reports that it’s become a beneficial tool in their program. They appreciate that our team has come to their offices to help volunteers download and troubleshoot the app.

Tez Financial Services

We recently received another glowing review from Tez Financial Services, the first fully-digital and licensed financial institution in Pakistan. They wanted to provide frictionless financial access and aggregate various financial accounts, from insurance to savings, into a single mobile app — and they hired us to do so. 

The first order of business was to meet with Tez Financial to discuss their business goals and determine what end-user needs the platform had to fulfill. Then, we got to work developing a robust, comprehensive, forward-looking, and user-friendly mobile app. We designed the app and did both front-end and back-end development.  

Tez Financial reports that we played a pivotal role in the launch of their company. The app has a healthy NPS and a high rating in the Google Play Store. 

The client appreciated that our senior management provided full support throughout the project, which helped to ensure that all of the project objectives were met in a timely manner. They also commended our efforts to align with their vision.

Unilever

One of our recent high profile projects was the Munchies project with Unilever Pakistan. This was an important project as this was the first time that Unilever got into a joint venture with a tech-led company in Pakistan. 

The challenge was to build a delivery platform from where a consumer could order and get ice cream delivered in 10 minutes. Unilever initially approached us for a google sprint to the entire model and then moved on to partner with us to develop the entire framework.

A month after the launch, Munchies was downloaded over 7,000 times and the system had received 3,000 orders. The client appreciated our organization and attentiveness when it came to the project as we successfully met deadlines.

We strive to provide our customers and partners with solutions that perfectly match their requirements and these amazing reviews are a testament to our commitment and drive. If you want more information about our work and approach, feel free to visit our case study section, read our blog, & follow us on our social media pages.

We look forward to growing our Clutch presence and delivering more successful projects to our clients. If you have a business challenge that you’d like to run by us, don’t hesitate to reach out! We love taking on new partners and challenges.

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The changing market of food delivery businesses

Posted on by Saad Fazil

Getting your favorite food delivered with a single tap, especially in the times of COVID, has exploded the growth of many food delivery platforms such as Grab, Uber Eats, and DoorDash. 

Despite the uptick in demand, the food delivery business model remains highly fragmented and at least at this time a money-losing proposition. There are quite a few challenges that the food delivery industry faces

  • Network effects are limited to a given geographic area. Cross geographic network effects are minimal at best.
  • Most users are not loyal and switch to a competing provider in search of a better promotion or an offer, better user experience, or quality of the service. In other words, switching costs are very low.
  • Unit economics are tough. Riders do not make enough money, vendors run huge losses on promotions, and users do not seem convinced they need to pay the premium and would rather hunt for a promo.
  • The business model seems to have exploited a weakness in labor laws allowing them to “hire” riders without the need to add them to the companies’ payroll. Uber and Lyft are facing legal challenges in California that threaten to shut them down.  

In the end, companies that overcome most of the challenges above will thrive. Uber and Doordash have already started to offer rundles — a bundle of offerings, such as rides and food delivery in the case of Uber, and grocery and food delivery by Doordash along with monthly subscriptions. These rundles can be somewhat effective at increasing network effects and customer loyalty.

Despite these initiatives, we will see more mergers and acquisitions in the space as different food delivery providers join hands to minimize the crazy spend on promotions. It is hard to track investments, mergers, and relationships between companies and investors. We have tried to map out the intricate landscape of food delivery business models across the globe. We welcome readers to help us fill in any gaps.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what the food delivery industry looks like, worldwide:

food delivery infographics
Infographic on the leading food delivery brands of 2020

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How to create an app: 10 stages of mobile app development

Posted on by Umar Javed

The world is becoming mobile, more so each day. In such a rapidly evolving tech world, ‘How to create an app’ is a milestone question. Industries and business areas not related to mobile in some manner are scarce. Consequently, businesses are seeking new opportunities for growth. One of the modern era options to increase the number of sales, and attract a large, diverse user base, is a mobile application.

The graph below shows the increasing number of app downloads globally. This goes on to confirm that the future is mobile.

Number of mobile app downloads worldwide from 2017 to 2022 (in billions)

To survive and thrive in this competitive app market,  the key is to focus on real problems. The solution to these problems often comes in the form of a bespoke mobile application. So all you have to do is begin by finding appropriate problems, fresh ideas & new perspectives around you.

To create something beyond expectations, it is essential that you never stop revisiting the basics and asking yourself the questions fundamental to literally creating anything. For instance, in this case: find the answers to why do you want to create a mobile app? Do you want to jump on the bandwagon or did you uncover a specific & genuine problem that you feel an app can solve? The answers to such questions can predict whether your application will be successful or not.

If you’re new to building an app for your product or business, you could be facing certain challenges. Therefore, we decided to call in the mobile experts across VentureDive, and list down ten steps that will help you get started with creating your first mobile application.

Steps of mobile application development process

1. Validate your idea

Merely having a ‘great idea’ is not profitable – you have to make the best out of it. A popular application always depends on two things: either it’s a solution to a new problem, or it’s an improvement/alteration of an existing solution. 

Look around yourself, find the real issues to get the winsome ideas. Try to involve creativity in the idea to give it wings. If your application has an engaging UI, is easy to navigate, and is extremely intuitive and helpful for your users, they will be bound to use your app over any other. So, the first and foremost thing is to work on the idea and strengthen your base.

Research is king

Conducting thorough market research is the way to go about it. This includes competitor research and more importantly, user/customer research. There are two parts of identifying your target audience: ‘who’ and ‘how many’. Next, identify your most notable competitors, analyze their product offerings, compare their product, release & market strategies. Try to come up with something they are missing.

2. Design your app

  • Wireframes:
    This step involves creating mock-ups of your app to understand and map out the user flow and how the app should be functioning. This is called building an information architecture – a scheme reflecting all possible user actions. A wireframe is a preliminary template that you can edit and correct at the early stages. Consider it a rough draft of how your app should look & work like. We find this resource can help you better understand wireframing and the processes that go into it.
  • UI/UX
    When wireframes are drafted, transform them into an interactive prototype using the latest design tools and technologies, such as Figma. This will be a final design prototype using the color pallets, supported design elements, icons, graphs, or any other design elements. It will also demonstrate the navigation of the application that will further increase the efficiency of the mobile application developers. It is important that we stress the importance of UI/UX design and the impact it can have on your business.

3. Construct the back-end

This step is all about building the app architecture, for which you should choose the platforms, set of tools, technology stack, programming language, and services. ‘How to make an app’ is a question that in most part assumes building a back-end or an app structure. There are two primary ways to develop a back-end: SaaS as the back-end – e.g. Firebase, AWS Mobile Hub, CloudKit, etc. or a custom developed back-end. We prefer the latter since it makes it easier for you to scale your mobile app in the future by either adding new features and/or growing in the number of users. Adding more functions or customizing it would be easier with its own back-end system.

4. Identify the mobile development approach: native, web, or hybrid

Selecting the right approach for developing an app is very important. Different businesses follow different approaches for mobile app development, based on time, budget, and technological considerations:

  • Native: Native apps enable the best user experience but require significant time and skill to be developed. These apps are, in essence, platform-specific and require expertise along with knowledge. The development of native apps is costly as well as time taking but it delivers the highest user experience amongst all the approaches.
  • Web:Web apps develop much faster and are the low-cost option to go for. Another plus? They can run on multiple platforms as well.  These are built using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript code. However, when compared to native apps, web apps are considerably less powerful.
  • Hybrid: Hybrid or cross-platform is the latest approach to develop an app. This approach is a combination of prebuilt native containers and on-the-fly web coding, that helps to achieve the best of both worlds. Herein, the job of the developer is to enhance the web code with native language to create unique features and access native APIs that are yet unavailable through JavaScript.

5. Write your code & bring it all together

This is the most crucial stage when the development team sits down and writes the code. Developers complete the tasks under the guidance & direction of a project manager. 

Writing a clean code & following industry standards helps create a scalable, flexible, and testable application. Different static code analysis tools are used to analyze the code quality and measures are taken to ensure the highest quality of the code.

6. Test your application

As a next step, the quality assurance engineers test the application. This includes testing for code & UI/UX bugs, followed by their resolution. Software testing plays a major role in the mobile app development process – it helps to improve and clean the final product. All the bugs should be squashed during this process.

7. Integrate an appropriate analytics tool

Why is this important? An appropriate analytics gives you a detailed picture of the size, demographics & interests of your users, as well as how they interact with your app.

Some mobile analytics tools that we’ve used and can vouch for, are:

  • Apple’s App Store & Google’s Play Store Analytics
  • Firebase Analytics
  • Mixpanel
  • Preemptive

With data sciences, including predictive analytics, quickly gaining traction in mobile apps, it can make your apps highly marketable.

8. Deploy your app

Deploying an app requires a plan, schedule and control of the movement of releases to test and live environments. This is where Deployment Management comes into play; the major goal of it is to protect the  integrity of the live or production environment and release the correct components.

You can launch the beta version of the application and hand it over to the audience or testers. They can then review the application and share their feedback for any improvements or augmentations

9. Capture the metrics

There has been a significant rise in the number of mobile users in this decade. Consequently, the need to collect accurate metrics is becoming increasingly important. Unfortunately, many of the methods used to measure the app’s performance are taken from web analytics.

Major input metrics that should be considered:

  • Funnel analysis to identify why users fail to complete desired actions like in-app purchases or ad clicks
  • Social sharing to monitor the aspects of your app are capturing the attention of your users
  • Correlating demographic data with user behavior
  • Tracking time and location to get insight into the contexts in which your app is used
  • Closely observing user behavior to track changes & augment your app accordingly

10. Upgrade your app with improvements & new features

As you capture the metrics, it’s also important to get valuable insights into evolving user interests over time, and innovating to upgrade your app with improvements and engaging features to meet consumer demands. A mobile app without innovative features loses its usability in the long run. This will help enhance its visibility, expose it to a wider, more diverse user base, and help boost downloads of your app. You have to ensure that you keep updating your app to meet new guidelines offered by various platforms. Remember: don’t let your apps stagnate.

Wrap up

These are some of the steps that can help you develop your very first mobile application. Using these, you can develop an app and ensure that it’s successful in the long run. Of course, these steps will vary for each and every one of you, but the general process follows a similar pattern. 

VentureDive is actively working on multiple mobile development projects. Our global clientele has trusted us with crafting the most engaging, aesthetic & functional mobile apps for their products & solutions. Our experts stick to these basic principles throughout the mobile development process. Therefore, each of these steps are tried and tested, and can reap you results with long-term success. 

Feeling a bit anxious about taking the first step? A discovery workshop can help you get started with confidence. Our domain experts shall work with you to create an app perfectly tailored to meet your needs. 

Pumped up to start working on your app? Perfect!

Don’t forget to share this blog and help spread the awesomeness!

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Hybrid vs. native mobile development: which is better?

Posted on by Faizan Ellahi

Mobile applications are regarded as one of the most powerful business tools in the industry. They have become the new standard for connecting with customers. Mobile app development has also been on the rise at VentureDive as audience interests shift towards mobility, ease of use, quick access to information, and work on-the-go.

This is backed by the mobile industry stats, such as the smartphone shipment volume is expected to touch 1.65 billion in 2022, with the number of users crossing the 3 billion mark the very same year. This growth is exponential and is not expected to slow down anytime soon.

It is clear as day that companies must adopt mobile development if they wish to accelerate their journey to growth. Having a strong mobile presence is no longer an option for businesses – it’s mandatory if they wish to stay relevant in the ever-evolving industry.

With more than 4.4 million apps on Apple Appstore & Google Play Store, it’s essential to choose a platform, first and foremost, if you’re looking to launch your own app. Choosing between native or cross-platform app development is one of the most important decisions to make.

My goal, in this blog, is to focus on the critical differences between Native and Hybrid Apps. You’ll learn the pros and cons of both approaches and which one almost always leads to a better customer experience for your users. If you are going to opt for mobile development, the first thing you need to ask is whether you will build a native app or a hybrid app.

Native vs. hybrid mobile development: what’s the difference?

Native app development is centered around designing mobile apps specific to a single platform, like iOS or Android. These apps are built with programming languages and tools that are specific to a particular platform. I have talked about some frameworks and languages that we commonly use for building native apps at my organization, below.

Native apps

Languages for Native Apps
  1. iOS apps
    iOS applications are created by Apple Inc. and use Objective-C or Swift as a programming language in native iOS app development. Swift is popular because it’s general-purpose, and takes a modern approach to application performance, security, and software patterns for mobile app design. iOS apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac are created using Xcode, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
  2. Android apps
    Android applications are designed by Google and use Java or Kotlin programming language for native app development. Java is a commonly used programming language used by more than 9 million Android app developers, globally. The benefits of Java are that it’s object-oriented, robust, and user friendly. However, in recent years, Kotlin is gaining more popularity in native mobile development. Android apps for touch screen devices are built using an IDE called Android Studio.

Hybrid apps

Languages for Hybrid Apps

Can iOS and Android apps work together? Unfortunately not, this means that native Android apps won’t work on iOS phones and vice versa. Cross-platform development involves creating an app that works on multiple platforms without needing any changes to its core architecture – in essence, they are called hybrid apps.

Using the cross-platform or hybrid approach, you can compile the code and execute it on multiple platforms. Imagine, the code is written once, and the final product can be run on iOS and Android. These apps are developed for multiple platforms such as Android and iOS using a single code base, using tools like React Native, Xamarin, and Flutter.

Understanding native & hybrid apps

Development Flow: Native Apps
Development Flow: Hybrid Apps

Pros & cons of native vs. hybrid mobile development

Both hybrid and native approaches to mobile development have their own strengths and weaknesses that companies must keep in mind when embarking on their journey to becoming mobile-first. 

At VentureDive, we develop both kinds of apps depending on the use case. For instance, if our client’s (let’s say they are a Fintech startup) target audience are the low-income group, chances are that there would be more Android users within that group as opposed to iOS users. So why make a hybrid app? A native app for Android would work better, and it’ll save time as well as cost.

Depending on your target audience and use case, you can easily decide the best approach to app development for you. Both approaches, native & hybrid, have their own pros and cons. I have listed the advantages & disadvantages of both, below. 

Native app development

Advantages

  • They are built with a native framework so platform-specificity allows them to offer fast and smooth performance.
  • Native apps are interactive, natural, and run more smoothly in terms of user actions.
  • Native development allows developers to access the core features of the selected operating system.
  • Native apps follow specific UX/UI standards for creating Android or iOS apps, making it more straightforward for users to understand and navigate the apps.
  • A native toolset allows the developers access to core features like camera, location services, etc. without the involvement of any third-party interference.
  • Native apps can be more secure for various reasons like the more straightforward implementation of two-factor authentication, certificate pinning, and access to built-in security features like TouchID.
  • Native apps tend to be more maintainable and scalable, thanks to the flexibility in resources management and the available tools.
  • Native apps receive complete support from app stores. The process of publishing your program in stores is as easy as possible, which is understandable as native app features perfectly meet all their requirements.
  • Native apps are built for particular platforms, so they dominate the app stores of all platforms.

Disadvantages

  • Native apps are more expensive to build unlike web or hybrid apps.
  • Native apps use difficult programming languages that required experts of specific technologies and programming languages for each mobile team.
  • Android apps will not run on the iOS and vice versa, so every platform you choose has to work with the different codebases to develop an app.
  • Native app development requires solid knowledge, expertise, and experience over respective app platforms.
  • Native apps are OS-specific so they require more time to be developed. 
  • Writing applications for multiple platforms naturally increases the size and cost of a development team.
  • With different codebases, it is challenging to release the same features on all platforms simultaneously.
  • Longer development cycles.
  • Native apps are not an excellent choice for simple applications.

Hybrid app development

Advantages

  • One of the most significant pros of a hybrid app is the economic cost of development.
  • Instead of having multiple teams, you’ll need only one team to build a cross-platform app. 
  • A hybrid app can be built just once and published on both iOS and Android stores.
  • Due to single codebase hybrid apps are typically much quicker to build as compared to native apps.
  • Cross-platform app developers do not need to learn multiple programming languages, frameworks, and technologies before creating their apps.
  • It’s generally simpler to maintain and update hybrid technology than native app technology.
  • A single codebase of the app is created with cross-platform development.
  • The application logic works the same on all platforms, so developers don’t have to do double work, which can significantly simplify the process of updating and enhancing your mobile services. 
  • A single codebase allows cross-platform applications to have an identical user interface on all platforms.
  • Hybrid app development is less time-consuming than the native because developers don’t have to create a new codebase for each platform.
  • Developers have to run a single cycle of development to create an app that runs on both platforms.
  • Popular hybrid mobile app development platforms offer a range of frameworks and plugins that allow you to access features on the device, including gestures, photos, cameras, and contacts.
  • Hybrid apps offer better customer experience and performance across different operating systems.

Disadvantages

  • Apps developed using a shared codebase may fail to offer high performance and robust user experiences, unlike Native apps.
  • Cross-platform apps cannot fully take advantage of native-only features provided by the operating systems due to inconsistent communication between the device native and framework non-native code.
  • Cross-platform apps are slower than their native counterparts because they need additional abstraction layers and a bridge for communication between your code and the native code.
  • It hasn’t been long since the advent of hybrid apps, which is why the code may not auto-generate across devices, especially when we try to accommodate different Android models.
  • When a new OS version is released, hybrid developers would have to rely on third parties and frameworks for updates before designing an app on the latest OS.
  • Hybrid apps involve more complex features and functionalities as compared to native apps. 
  • Every time Apple and Google releases a new feature for the iOS and Android platform, it takes some time for hybrid app developers to add support for the new feature.
  • All third party libraries and SDKs may not work in sync with the development frameworks of cross-platform applications.
  • The process of approving a cross-platform application in google or apple store may take a lot of time.

How to decide which platform to build your app on

There are a number of factors that play their part when it comes to choosing which platform to go with when developing your mobile app. Speaking from my experience of working as a mobile developer at VentureDive, I made a mind map of the factors that can influence your decision.

  1. Application complexity
    Building an app that involves heavy processing or requires access to low-level APIs native development will be the right choice. If the app just displaying information fetched from the network, go with the native development.
  2. Cost
    If you have a limited budget to develop an app, then cross-platform is a perfect choice. But on the other hand, native apps are costly to build, but they provide high performance and user experience.
  3. Development time
    If you want to get an MVP app up as soon as possible, consider cross-platform development. A single development cycle is needed for an app to be released on multiple platforms. In the native app development, you have to work with the two versions of the app.
  4. UI/UX
    If you’re looking for beautiful visuals and experience, the answer lies in native development. Because in the native app development, developers have access to native UI components. Opting for cross-platform will significantly limit the UI/UX element of the app.
  5. Purpose of the app
    If you’re still verifying your ideas, then hybrid app development is a better option to start an MVP and demonstrate your product in the market.
  6. Features
    Native apps can make use of the device’s native feature. Cross-platform apps cannot utilize native features because they have limited access to the API.

Wrap up

Lastly, to help you make a better-informed decision, I have created a table summarising the features you can leverage for each mobile development approach. 

Features: Native vs. Cross-platform Apps

In today’s day and age, everybody is going mobile! If you’re still thinking whether it would be a good idea to develop one for your business, chances are it would be one of the best decisions you can make. Go for it! Dive into it head-first: do some research, set your audience, gather a list of requirements, create a prototype, test, and improve. 

It would be a wise idea to start with a discovery workshop when creating your mobile app. Our experts can help you understand and map out the scope of your project, enabling you to deliver a robust and aesthetic business solution. 

Excited to create your mobile app? Awesome!

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VentureDive: Top software development company by Techreviewer 2020

Posted on by Techreviewer

VentureDive is a custom software development company that has proved its worth by delivering top-notch solutions to clients and providing them with flexibility and support. Not long ago, they were classified as a top-rated venture by Clutch 2020.

Extensive experience in delivering full-cycle software development services along with deep technology expertise enabled the company to hit the lists of the leading web and mobile companies according to prominent online directories and research agencies.

Let’s talk about some of the many notable projects delivered by VentureDive, along with the appreciation they received from the clients.

Careem: E-hail platform for affordable ride-hailing in the Middle-east

Careem is the leading cab booking service in the MENA region. In 2012, when it was still just an idea, they needed a technology partner to develop Careem’s Core platform & apps.

VentureDive worked with Careem to successfully deliver e-hail systems using Artificial Intelligence, Growth Management, and Security Protocols.

careem
Testimonial from Magnus Olson (Careem)

Unilever Munchies: A mobile app for instant delivery of snacks to your doorstep

VentureDive & Unilever brainstormed the idea for a digital platform for instant snacks’ delivery. Munchies’ hyperlocal model gives it the agility to deliver within minutes.

The company worked on product design, design sprint, and growth hacking for Munchies.

Unilever
Testimonial from Amir Paracha (Unilever Pakistan)

Kashat: Nano-lending mobile app offering small loans to micro-business owners

Kashat is the first Nano lending mobile application in Egypt, offering short term loans. They needed an outsourced software development team to develop the app and ensure tech alignment with business needs.

Through mobile development and product design, VentureDive helped the company grow and boost its bottom line. 

Kashat
Testimonial from Khalid Elaimy (Kashat)

Tez Financial Services: Android app for frictionless financial access to the masses

Tez Financial Services is Pakistan’s first fully digital Non-Bank Microfinance Company. They needed a technology partner to design and develop the Tez Financial Services platform & app.

VentureDive worked on role-based security, SSL pinning, and fraud prevention to help Tez establish a safe and secure financial inclusion platform for people across Pakistan.

tez financials
Testimonial from Noureen Hayat (Tez Financial Services)

Droobi Health: Mobile app & platform for chronic disease management

Droobi Health is a digital therapeutic company specialized in transforming chronic disease management. They needed mobile apps for diabetic patients & healthcare consultants to collaborate & keep a check on their health and lifestyle.

Using Apple health kit and J&J one-touch glucometer, VentureDive built and delivered a mobile application with chat and video features to help patients monitor their diabetes. 

droobi
Testimonial from Racha Zarzour (Droobi Health)

Now,  there is another feather in their hat: VentureDive has been featured by a trustworthy analytics company, TechReviewer.co, as a leading Software Development Company in 2020. 

“We are honored to be recognized as one of the best software development companies worldwide. We will continue to justify the confidence placed in us by TechReviewer, our clients, and partners. We believe we will reach new heights, expand our technology expertise, and gain more winning awards in custom software development, mobile, and web app development.”  — VentureDive Team

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Expo CLI vs. react-native CLI: Which is better for hybrid app development

Posted on by Mehroze Yaqoob

Building a mobile app in native is a piece of cake but to publish an app on the app store & play store, you probably need to work twice as hard and write the same feature in two different languages i.e Kotlin for Android and Swift for iOS. Solution? Hybrid app development.

What if we write one code that can be used for both Android and iOS? Yes, you heard that right. React-Native is designed purposely to support the ‘write once and deploy anywhere’ paradigm. It was launched in 2015 by Facebook and it took the mobile development world by storm. At VentureDive, we experimented with React-Native to develop a new product, Muslims by IslamicFinder. If you are developing a new product and are not sure whether to go for hybrid or native app development, here’s a guide by one of our mobile experts that will help you make an informed decision: Hybrid vs. Native Mobile Development: Which Is Better?

In this blog, I will shed some light on which CLI did we choose while developing Muslims app,  and what were the reasons behind it. It will help you better understand how to go about choosing a CLI during hybrid app development. 

Tools for hybrid app development using react-native

There are a lot of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) out there that can be used for the development of React-Native apps. However, the most frequently used is Visual Studio Code. It’s a lightweight tool that can be used in systems with low RAM space. Other stable IDEs that are popular with the developers’ community are Atom and WebStorm.

Languages for react-native

The good thing about React is that it can be used with multiple languages. Moreover, if you are coming from a web development background, you can certainly use the knowledge of HTML and CSS with Flexbox – a CSS module defined to make better layouts – which is used for User Interface (UI) development. The main supported languages are Javascript and Typescript, which are really easy to understand for all developers regardless of which domain (web or mobile) they are experts in. 

Selection of CLI

A Command Line Interface (CLI) is a visual interface where programmers can run commands to develop apps. Getting started with React-Native is a tricky thing since, in the beginning, you don’t have enough knowledge to make a CLI decision and this is the area where almost everyone makes a mistake. React-Native comes with two CLIs and you need to be absolutely certain about which one suits your requirements. The two CLIs are:

  1. Expo CLI
  2. React-Native CLI

Which CLI is better for hybrid app development?

That’s a million-dollar question and the answer lies within the overall requirements. There are certain limitations of both CLIs that could hamper your development efforts. If you choose to work with Expo CLI, you need to make sure that you understand its limitations and the same goes for React-Native CLI. While working on Muslims, a community engagement app by IslamicFinder, there were few requirements that were either not supported by Expo or it was not available with full configurational control. I have talked about them under ‘Expo Limitations’, below.

Expo limitations

When I started hybrid app development for Muslims, I wasn’t sure about which CLI I should choose but I knew one thing and that was: Expo makes it easier and faster to develop applications by handling all configurational changes, version conflicts, and certificates. It also signatures itself and provides a seamless way of deployment and debugging. That is all I needed as a newbie in React-Native to start, however, later I found out that Expo has some limitations as well:

  1. We cannot configure older versions of the Android/iOS operating system, for installation, using Expo.
  2. The executable size is large which can hurt the overall downloads.
  3. A lot of Firebase – a product by Google, that provides various services for app development –  products are not supported by Expo, for instance:
    • FCM, a Firebase service used for sending notifications to Android/iOS applications, is still not supported in iOS. 
    • Crashlytics, another Firebase service used to report crash events in the live environment, is not supported. Instead, you have to rely on Sentry, a paid tool for application monitoring and error tracking, for that.
  4. Video streaming player is available with very few configurable controls.
  5. Certain features cannot be tested on Expo’s client application. Instead, you need to make a build to test them. An example of such a feature is ‘Firebase Authentication’.
  6. Image caching libraries in Expo are not efficient enough to support apps like Instagram.
  7. You need to have a paid subscription for a faster build creation process, else you will have to wait for 45 to 60 minutes for the build, depending on the queue size. 
  8. Realm, an external database, is not supported by Expo.
  9. If any native module is required to be plugged in then this is not a possibility in Expo.
  10. Things appear to be working fine in the Expo client app but they are not when compiled and built as a standalone app.

React-native CLI limitations

The first thing which is very important to note here is that once you have decided to migrate or eject from Expo CLI to React-Native CLI during hybrid app development, there is no turning back since it’s an irreversible process. The good thing about React-Native CLI is that it gives you complete freedom to implement any third-party plugins you want with the liberty to customize any implementation. You are not bound or restricted with any version of React-Native or minimum OS version handling and you are free to create builds at any time without any need of having a subscription to Expo servers. Saying this, you might face a few issues as well:

  1. You would have to handle Expo versions yourself along with managing all certificates and fingerprints. 
  2. It will take extra effort to create builds for Android and iOS using their respective IDE’s where you will be handling all permissions and plugins using Gradle, a build automation tool for software development, for Android and Pods, a tool that manages dependencies and libraries, for iOS. 
  3. Overall development time will increase since you will now have to consider dependencies separately.
  4. You will miss the Over The Air (OTA) feature for sure if you want to update or fix any important bug without publishing it and reflecting it on end-users’ devices. This feature allows the developers to modify something in the live users’ application.
  5. You will need MAC hardware for the iOS build creation process which isn’t required with Expo.

Conclusion

With React-Native, one can easily develop a hybrid app for both Android and iOS with the same lines of code. However, the selection of the CLI is dependent on the requirements and feature set that is to be implemented. 

For beginners, I would recommend going with Expo since it will take a lot of your headache on itself, and later when you are more familiar with the React environment, you can always eject from Expo to Bareflow, which works similar to React-Native CLI but comes under Expo. 

In my opinion, React-Native CLI gives you more freedom, liberty, and control to express and experiment over your code, whereas, Expo binds you in a shell where you rely more on Expo dependencies. The choice is yours depending on your level of React expertise. 

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