Android SDK vs React Native

Overview

Android SDK

Stacks27.6K

Followers20.7K

Votes800

React Native

Stacks34.4K

Followers29.5K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars124.4K

Forks24.9K

Android SDK vs React Native: What are the differences?

The Android SDK is for native Android app development with Java or Kotlin, while React Native, developed by Facebook, allows for cross-platform mobile app development using JavaScript and React. Let's explore the key differences between the two.

Performance: Android SDK is a native development platform that provides high performance as it directly interacts with the device's hardware, while React Native uses a bridge to communicate between JavaScript and native components, which can introduce overhead and impact performance.
Development Speed: React Native allows for faster development as it uses a single codebase for both Android and iOS platforms, reducing the need for developers to write separate code for each platform. Android SDK requires developers to write separate code for Android and iOS platforms.
UI Components: Android SDK provides a wide range of customizable native UI components that are specifically designed for Android devices, offering a native look and feel. React Native uses its own set of UI components that are rendered using native components, which may not perfectly match the native design of Android devices.
Third-Party Libraries: Android SDK has a vast ecosystem of third-party libraries and tools available, providing developers with a wide range of options for integrating additional functionalities into their Android applications. React Native also has its own ecosystem of third-party libraries, but it may not be as extensive as the one available for Android SDK.
Debugging Tools: Android SDK provides a comprehensive set of debugging tools, such as Android Studio and the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), which offer advanced debugging capabilities for Android applications. React Native also provides debugging tools, but they may not be as powerful or specialized as the ones available for Android SDK.
Platform Independence: React Native allows for code reusability and offers a platform-independent approach, enabling developers to write once and run the same code on both Android and iOS platforms. Android SDK, on the other hand, is specific to the Android platform and does not offer cross-platform compatibility.

In summary, Android SDK provides high performance and extensive native functionality for Android devices, while React Native offers faster development speed and platform independence, allowing for code reuse across Android and iOS platforms.

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Advice on Android SDK, React Native

Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

491k views491k

Comments

Andrea

May 26, 2020

Needs adviceon

Vue.js

Vue Native

React

I'm a huge fan of Vue.js and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I need to build a mobile app for my company and I was now wondering whether I could make use of VueJS with Vue Native instead of switching to React. I know Vue Native builds on top of RN. My question is whether I'd have as much freedom with Vue Native over RN and whether you feel like Vue Native is "production ready" or not. Not sure of which shortcomings I may find using Vue Native... Thanks a lot!!!

336k views336k

Comments

Omran

CTO & Co-founder at Bonton Connect

Jun 19, 2020

Needs adviceon

Kotlin

We actually initially wrote a lot of networking code in Kotlin but the complexities involved prompted us to try and compile NodeJS for Android and port over all the networking logic to Node and communicate with node over the Java Native Interface.

This turned out to be a great decision considering our battery usage fell by 40% and rate of development increased by a factor of 2.

622k views622k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Android SDK	React Native
Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.	React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
-	Native iOS Components;Asynchronous Execution;Touch Handling;Flexbox and Styling; Polyfills
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 124.4K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 24.9K
Stacks 27.6K	Stacks 34.4K
Followers 20.7K	Followers 29.5K
Votes 800	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 289 Android development 156 Necessary for android 128 Android studio 86 Mobile framework 82 Backed by google	Pros 214 Learn once write everywhere 174 Cross platform 169 Javascript 122 Native ios components 69 Built by facebook Cons 23 Javascript 19 Built by facebook 12 Cant use CSS 4 30 FPS Limit 2 Slow
Integrations
Java	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Android SDK, React Native?

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Related Comparisons

Android SDK vs React Native: What are the differences?

Performance: Android SDK is a native development platform that provides high performance as it directly interacts with the device's hardware, while React Native uses a bridge to communicate between JavaScript and native components, which can introduce overhead and impact performance.
Development Speed: React Native allows for faster development as it uses a single codebase for both Android and iOS platforms, reducing the need for developers to write separate code for each platform. Android SDK requires developers to write separate code for Android and iOS platforms.
UI Components: Android SDK provides a wide range of customizable native UI components that are specifically designed for Android devices, offering a native look and feel. React Native uses its own set of UI components that are rendered using native components, which may not perfectly match the native design of Android devices.
Third-Party Libraries: Android SDK has a vast ecosystem of third-party libraries and tools available, providing developers with a wide range of options for integrating additional functionalities into their Android applications. React Native also has its own ecosystem of third-party libraries, but it may not be as extensive as the one available for Android SDK.
Debugging Tools: Android SDK provides a comprehensive set of debugging tools, such as Android Studio and the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), which offer advanced debugging capabilities for Android applications. React Native also provides debugging tools, but they may not be as powerful or specialized as the ones available for Android SDK.
Platform Independence: React Native allows for code reusability and offers a platform-independent approach, enabling developers to write once and run the same code on both Android and iOS platforms. Android SDK, on the other hand, is specific to the Android platform and does not offer cross-platform compatibility.

Android SDK vs React Native

Overview