Hybrid vs Native Development(Android & iOS)

Question

I would like to know the difference between hybrid and native mobile development. I have only a fair experience in Android only so in both cases I would be learning something new.

My project is simply a mobile application composed of 4 pages only, simply fetching some articles from a website nothing more.

1. Would hybrid development be better in this case or just stick to native?!
2. Which is better in terms of performance?
3. What about phonegap/cordova learning curve?

If I am going hybrid, what's the different between phonegap and cordova?! As far as I know from this question that Phonegap is built on Apache Cordova nothing else. You can think of Apache Cordova as the engine that powers PhoneGap

Does that mean there is no difference between creating phonegap project and creating cordova?

Answer 1

So far as the difference goes you are correct. Phonegap is the implementation of cordova..And it goes hand in hand..the documentation also jumps from one to other so you can say that phonegap is a son that looks exactly like his dad cordova.

Hybrid apps have their limitations for example you as of this moment cannot create widgets using hybrid apps. Also you have to rely on plugins to access parts of the device like location,notification etc

Having said that the plugins are open-source and are well maintained by the community.

Unless you are doing something really complex the performance isn't an issue. You will need a good framework for that like angularjs or IONIC which is custom made for cordova.

If you are already a web developer then there is a very low learning curve as most of the code is in html,css and JavaScript.

The biggest advantage that makes hybrid app more suitable for data-driven and other type of apps is that you get android, ios and windows Apps from the same code. While in native you would have to code each app natively.

For fetching the web article kind of app you can go with cordova and there won't be any performance issue.