Native iOS and Android App Development
Native means two codebases, written in each platform's own language, with nothing between your code and the device. It costs more to build and more to maintain. These are the cases where it earns that.
Discuss your projectWhen to choose native
If none of these describes your app, cross-platform will probably serve you better and we will say so.
- Camera is the product. Live filters, on-device vision, document scanning with edge detection, or manual control of exposure, focus and capture format.
- Bluetooth Low Energy against your own hardware, particularly background connections and firmware updates over the air.
- Sustained background work — continuous location tracking over a shift, audio that keeps playing and recording, or significant processing while the app is not in the foreground.
- Platform surfaces beyond the phone: Apple Watch, Wear OS, CarPlay, Android Auto, widgets, App Clips, or Live Activities as a core part of the experience.
- On-device machine learning with Core ML or ML Kit, where the model runs locally for latency or privacy reasons.
- Adopting new OS capabilities in the weeks after a platform release, rather than waiting for a framework to wrap them.
- The app is the entire business, and two well-staffed codebases are affordable.
iOS
Swift and SwiftUI, with UIKit where a screen needs behaviour SwiftUI still handles awkwardly. Mixing the two is normal and not a compromise.
Swift and SwiftUI
Swift Concurrency for asynchronous work rather than nested completion handlers. SwiftData or Core Data for local persistence, chosen against your minimum supported iOS version.
Hardware access
AVFoundation for camera and audio, Core Bluetooth, Core Location, and Core Motion — used directly, with the permission and background-mode declarations each one requires.
Platform integration
Widgets, Live Activities, Shortcuts, Sign in with Apple, Apple Pay, StoreKit for in-app purchase, and Keychain for credentials.
Beyond the phone
watchOS companions, iPad layouts that use the extra space rather than stretching into it, and CarPlay where it applies.
Android
Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, against the fragmentation that is Android's defining engineering problem.
Kotlin and Compose
Coroutines and Flow for asynchronous and reactive work, Room for local storage, and Hilt for dependency injection. Compose for interface, with Views where a library has not caught up.
Background execution
WorkManager for deferrable work and foreground services where the job must keep running. Android's background restrictions tighten with nearly every release and vary by manufacturer, so this is tested on real devices, not just a Pixel.
Device reality
Testing across screen sizes, OS versions, and the aggressive battery management some manufacturers apply, which silently kills background work that is correct by the documentation.
Play requirements
Target API level deadlines, the Data safety declaration, and the permissions policy — including the ones, like all-files access and background location, that need written justification.
Native against cross-platform
| Native (Swift + Kotlin) | Cross-platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Codebases to maintain | Two | One |
| Build cost | Higher | Lower |
| Cost of each later feature | Built and tested twice | Once |
| Hardware and sensor access | Direct, complete | Through a wrapper, usually adequate |
| New OS features | Available immediately | When the framework adds them |
| Watch, TV, car targets | Full support | Limited or none |
| Hiring | Two skill sets | One |
| Ceiling on quality | Highest | High for most app categories |
The row that decides it for most companies is the third: the cost of every future feature, paid twice, for as long as the app lives.
Common questions
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