It first started as an internal Hackathon project on Facebook back in 2013. At the time, the engineers at the giant social media company had no idea they were working on what will serve as the platform for some of the famous apps built with React. The hunger for application developed in React was about to intrigue millions of users.
Facebook officially released the open-source React Native in 2015, and since then, the framework has gone on to be hailed globally as the #1 solution for cross-platform mobile application development.
What is React Native?
React Native is a cross-platform mobile application development framework that uses JavaScript along with JSX. It contains several dozens of new and innovative features when compared to other frameworks. Many developers use React for mobile applications due to the unique features the structure offers.
React Native is the first framework that successfully combines the advantages of native and hybrid applications. On average, Android and iOS versions of the same mobile application share between 60-70 percent of the codebase. This significantly speeds up the development process while providing a native-like user experience.
And as a result of the success of using React for mobile applications, a cross-platform framework, many startups and companies of various sizes and from different industries have utilized the structure.
React components are pure, and its side-effect-free functions return views just the way they look in real-time. It is, therefore, easier to write state-dependent views. This implies that you do not have to care about updating the view whenever the state changes because the framework automatically does this for you.
The UI that is rendered makes use of real native views, so the final user experience is not as bad as other solutions that do nothing but render a web component inside a WebView.
The Top 10 Applications Developed With React Native
In this section, you will discover some React Native apps examples that you didn’t even know were built on the framework. Big brands and famous apps built with React have taken the world by storm.
The versatility of the framework is impressive, and that is why you will always come across one React app development company or the other advocating for the use of the cross-platform framework
1. React Native and Facebook
As mentioned earlier, the React Native framework started as the social media giant’s Hackathon project. It was developed in response to the needs that Facebook had at the time.
Facebook had one goal, and it was to bring all the benefits of web development – which include fast iterations, having one team build the entire product – to mobile. React Native was brought to life and was soon leveraged in mobile application development for both Android and iOS apps.
In order to test the efficacy and app performance – such as startup time, etc. – of the framework, the development team converted the ‘Events Dashboard’ feature present in Facebook for the iOS application to React Native.
Fast startup time is usually very crucial in this kind of app as it is a considerable part of a user’s first impression of the application, which could determine whether the user stays or leaves.
What the development team at Facebook achieved was incredible as they were able to cut time-to-market in half successfully.
The result of going this route saw the significant performance improvements that users enjoy today. The ‘Events Dashboard’ startup loads twice as fast since the majority of the advances were carried out at the framework level. This determines your React Native application will automatically benefit when transferring to the latest version of React Native application.
2. Instagram and React Native: Photo and Video Category
In 2014, Facebook acquired this photo-sharing social media network, and soon, Facebook’s development team started rewriting the app. And when React Native came out, later on, it became apparent the framework they will opt for.
The Instagram team of developers in 2016, started exploring the concept of implementing React Native into pre-existing native apps. They started with the simplest aspect, i.e. Push Notification. The satisfying results made the team start working on other parts of the application.
React Native allowed the development team to ship features much faster to both Android and iOS versions of the app. The percentage of shared code is from 85 percent in the comment moderation view to 99 percent in the Post Promote view.
3. Facebook Ads and React Native
Facebook Ads was the first React Native app for Android, and the first entirely React Native-based cross-platform built by the company.
The framework appeared suitable for several complex business logic that accurately handles differences in time zones, ad formats, currencies, currency conventions, date formats, and so on. A big chunk of the app was already drafted in JavaScript.
The app interface is incredibly clean with an intuitive user experience and simple navigation. The transitions and animations are perfect and don’t feel buggy or unnatural at any point.
Instagram is lightning fast, irrespective of the operation that users want to perform. All the app needs is a second or two to navigate to access the data with ease or navigate to the next level.
4. SoundCloud Pulse: Music Category
SoundCloud is presently the world’s biggest music and sound-gushing platform with up to 150 million tracks. The stage is currently developing to a humming network of artists always transferring new music.
SoundCloud Pulse’s React Native-based app gives users a chance to deal with records, check their details, and answer to remarks, irrespective of whether or not users are on the visit transport, in the studio, only away from their work areas.
SoundCloud is a brilliant app for imaginative makers where they can create and deal with their records, thereby keeping their locale alive and active. React Native came helpful when the company had to battle with the absence of enough developers to structure the second arrangement of native apps.
Due to an insufficient number of iOS designers, the company confronted the plausibility of a big gap between Android and iOS discharge.
The SoundCloud research group opted to use React Native models but encountered a few difficulties. However, the company was positive about the unique innovation because working with React Native app was far simpler than unadulterated native methodologies.
5.Walmart and React Native
Walmart operates a vast chain of supermarkets, grocery stores, as well as discount departments all over the world. There is, therefore, no doubt that the retail giant is one of the biggest corporations in the world as a whole. The corporation made more than $500 million in revenue in 2019, thus securing the top place on the Fortune 500 list.
Walmart’s application comes loaded with lots of different features. It permits users to shop online, check in-store prices, find products, and even use the Walmart Pay mobile wallet system.
To develop the app that will handle such a vast array of features was a pretty big challenge that Walmart’s development team had to surmount. And they turned to React Native as the way out. Of course, the framework did not disappoint the developers in any way.
At the present moment, up to 95 percent of Walmart’s codebase is shared between Android and iOS apps, indicating that cross-platforming worked seamlessly and amazingly well for the retail giant.
In the wake of adding Node.js to the company’s tech stack, Walmart composed the entire application in React Native.
Working on applications was going on simultaneously for both platforms, thus cutting costs of labor in half
6. Discord and React Native
Discord is a cross-stage text and voice chat application that works seamlessly on your desktop and smartphone as a mobile application. This mobile app is incredibly popular among gamers, though a lot of millennials also make use of Discord for non-gaming purposes just like a social media platform.
Discord application is one of the first apps on the market that was developed with React Native. The company opted to make use of this remarkable technology for its iOS mobile application even before the official release of the new structure a few years ago.
The app enables users to remain with all their Discord chat and voice channels even while they are away from the console. It is the perfect app for talking with colleagues as well as seeing who is playing on the web.
React Native has proven to be remarkably successful at Discord, allowing developers to write reusable code while iterating quickly and efficiently. A two-person development team can even manage the app!
Discord made a small attempt to go with React Native on the Android platform, which they managed to rewrite within two days with Famous Apps Built With React. However, the company opted for Kotlin. But they are still in the game with React Native on iOS.
7. UberEats and React Native
UberEats is another service provided by Uber. The idea behind this unique service is to make food delivery processes from restaurants incredibly easier for clients or users as well as to provide delivery partners with a uniquely flexible way of earning money. The tricky aspect of this service was how to seamlessly connect three abstract entities: drivers, restaurants, and consumers.
The Uber development team encountered the challenge of translating the existing restaurant dashboard to mobile, both to Android and iOS. They observed that its restaurant dashboard was being accessed majorly via mobiles or smartphones.
They also wanted to add a dashboard for restaurants with functions like push notifications, sound notifications, etc. The app itself made use of web application to render its interface on users’ mobile devices. But this created a lot of trouble for users in the form of incomplete and often delayed information, thereby resulting in loss of business.
And so the development team at UberEats turned to React Native as the solution. React Native, however, constitutes a small part of the mobile application. But the Uber development team is positive about the framework’s ability – since it has improved user experience for restaurant owners, boost downloads, and bumped up positive reviews – when it comes to expanding and scaling up the service.
8. Bloomberg and React Native
Bloomberg application provides global finance and business news to users. Its new consumer mobile app for Android and iOS offers users or clients an interactive and streamlined experience long with simple-to-access personalized content, live feeds, and video featured across Bloomberg’s Media.
To develop this app, an engineering team at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York City had to adopt React Native and spent a significant amount of time in developing and updating the versions of Android and iOS apps individually.
Team Bloomberg tested the prototype developed with React Native thoroughly and adopted the technology due to its simultaneous updating of applications for cross-platforms.
Another impressive advantage of React Native – which Team Bloomberg noticed and took advantage of – is that the framework automates code refreshes, thereby accelerating the release of new product features. Your mobile app reloads instantly instead of recompiling.
9. Townske and React Native
Townske’s goal is to be the leading travel inspiration city guide known out there. The application connects users with locals in order to get a list of favorite places. It also creates a curated list of places for exploration and experience as locals do.
It is not even compulsory for users to have an account, making it easy for users to find the next location that they want to visit quickly.
React Native is solely focused on building a mobile user interface. This makes it more like a JavaScript library than a framework, especially when compared with other JavaScript frameworks like MeteorJS or AngularJS.
The resulting outcome user interface is highly responsive and fluid, all thanks to the asynchronous JavaScript interaction with the native environment. This means that the application will have smoother and faster load times than the typical hybrid app as well as a smoother feel of Famous Apps Built With React.
10. Wix and React Native
Wix, which was launched in 2006, is an online company that provides both website design and web hosting services. Users can build and design their websites in CSS/HTML5 along with mobile sites using drag-and-drop utilities.
Two of the most popular features on the platform enable developers to create their own apps to market to other users. And users don’t need to know or learn any coding to create a website.
Several navigation options are available for handling navigation to React Native apps such as React-native-router-flux, Airbnb-native-navigation, react-navigation, and Wix-react-native-navigation.
Some users of Wix prefer using react-native-navigation due to its highly configurable screen option and navigation along with updated and properly maintained codebase.
Now that you have seen react native apps examples making their mark, it is clear that famous apps built with React are truly successful.
React Native holds the upper hand when it comes to agility and speed of web development over native app development which is usually linked with less developer productivity, inefficiency, and slow time-rate-to-deployment. And that is why Wix chooses this framework for its services.
As revealed in this article, React Native is a powerfully impressive modern technology that helps startups and established organizations all around the world to reach new – and existing – customers on mobile platforms.
React Native is effective, fast, and somewhat easy to learn for JavaScript developers. So, if your goal is to expand your reach and to provide services via smartphones, you should consider hiring a React app development company to help you create an application developed in React.
