Building an iOS or Android mobile application can be both fun as well as challenging. Luckily today, a number of frameworks are available which you can use for building your app with bare minimum effort and without facing any considerable challenges. React Native is one such framework that can help you build an application even if you aren’t a JavaScript wizard.



This Facebook-powered, open-source JavaScript framework helps you develop an application that can run smoothly on both iOS and Android platforms. Right from Fortune 500 companies to new start-ups, thousands of organizations today use React Native to build cross-platform mobile applications. Here are a few advantages:



#1 Apps built using React Native are Faster



React Native lets you build Android and iOS mobile apps using JavaScript-based declarative programming models, which results in a cleaner, simpler, and easy to understand code. The framework focuses on building highly responsive and fluid mobile UI owing to asynchronous JavaScript interactions with the native environment. This, in turn, results in lower app load time in comparison to a typical hybrid app.



#2 Reduction in App Load Time Makes All the Difference



Today performance is the differentiating factor between a popular and an unpopular mobile app. Reducing the app load time is the biggest challenge that the developers face. But fortunately, this problem is easily addressed by using React Native. React Native helps developers focus on key areas such as improving memory efficiency, list view scrolling performance, app startup time, and UI responsiveness, reducing app load time.



#3 Real Application built using React Native



It is virtually impossible to distinguish between an app built using React Native or an app built with Objective-C or Java as the fundamental UI building blocks are the same. All the developer has to do is to put together the building blocks which are reusable “native components”, ensuring consistency in look and feel of the app.



#4 Easy to Retain Application State with Hot Reloading Feature



React Native aims at enhancing developer experience, a major prerequisite to which is, reducing the time it takes between saving a file and seeing the changes. The framework achieves this goal with the help of the Hot Reload feature which works like magic. This unique feature is available in React Native 0.22, or later.



The ‘Hot Reloading’ feature can be enabled by opening the developer menu and tapping on “Enable Hot Reloading.”

The feature keeps the app running while new versions of the files edited during runtime are displayed. This way the state of the application is retained especially when you are tweaking the UI.



#5 React Native is Compatible with Native Code



The components written in Java, Objective-C, or Swift are compatible with React Native. This makes it easier as the app can be built partly in React Native and partly in native code.



#6 Get Automatic Upgrades for your App with React Native



Since most of the advancements are carried out at the framework-level, you can be assured that your React Native app will be automatically upgraded once you switch to the more recent version of React Native. React Native automatically refreshes code which accelerates the release of new product features.



#7 React Native is a Developers’ Delight



The whole process of developing an application on React Native is fast and seamless. You can reload the app instantly instead of recompiling. Developers more often than not find it easier to work on a React Native application than on a native application.



The Takeaway Message



React Native was born in 2013 when Facebook started developing its internal Hackathon project to address the company’s growing demands. Since then React Native has come a long way, becoming one of the most popular frameworks. In recent years, React Native has grown from strength to strength with an impressive adoption rate without showing any visible signs of slowing down. It is today the 14th most popular repository on GitHub. It wouldn’t be out of context to mention that React Native is regularly updated once every two weeks.



Some of the biggest brands using React Native-based applications include Facebook, Instagram, Walmart, Bloomberg, Pinterest, Skype, Tesla, Uber, Adidas, among many others.