React Native Pros and Cons

Cross-platform frameworks have been useful for developers providing them with the capability of writing one code and using it across different systems. As a result, applications can be built faster while requiring fewer resources. React Native has been a hot topic in the world of mobile development.

According to a 2023 developer survey by Statista, React Native is the second most popular cross-platform mobile framework among developers worldwide. Based on the report, 35% of the software developers are using React Native for cross-platform development.

Companies like Shopify and Microsoft build their apps using React Native, making it a reliable option for businesses spanning across different industries. As of the 2024 Statista report, 790 applications using SDK (Software Development Kit) React Native framework earned a monthly revenue between 10,000 to 100,000 USD.

With a closer analysis of React Native, you can understand everything about it and the projects that can benefit from its use. Read on to understand more about React Native’s advantages and disadvantages, and its newest features in detail. 

Introduced by Meta, React Native is an open-source JavaScript framework. React Native is primarily based on React, the well-known Javascript library that helps create user interfaces, particularly for web applications. However, the React Native framework is used mainly for mobile app development. It enables developers to write a unified codebase that works across multiple platforms like Android or iOS. This approach lets you save significant time by reducing the need to write individual native code for every platform. Let’s explore scenarios where app development using React Native proves more convenient than opting for traditional native app development.

New Architecture constitutes a comprehensive rewrite of core systems that work with React Native as the foundation. It deals with how the components get rendered, the way by which JavaScript abstractions communicate with native abstractions and the method of scheduling work across various threads. The users need not wonder about how the systems operate, and the changes can introduce new capabilities and improvements.

In the old architecture, React Native used the asynchronous bridge to communicate with the native platform. Rendering a component or calling a native function demanded serialising and enqueuing native function calls with the bridge, through asynchronous processing. This architecture benefitted in such a way that the main thread never got blocked on rendering updates or managing native module function calls, as every work was performed on a background thread.

However, users expect quick feedback to interactions to get an experience similar to a native app. This implies that certain updates should render synchronously in response to the user input, interrupting any render in progress. As the old architecture was asynchronous, it required rewriting it to let in asynchronous and synchronous updates.

Also, in old architecture, serialising function calls quickly over the bridge posed a risk, particularly considering frequent updates or large objects. This was challenging for applications to attain 60+ FPS reliably. It also posed synchronisation issues: while JavaScript and native layer moved out of sync, reconciling them synchronously was tedious, which ended up in bugs similar to lists revealing frames out of blank space and visual UI jumps created by intermediate states rendering.

As the conventional architecture kept a copy of UI with the native hierarchy, and mutated copy in place, computing layout could only be done on a single thread. It has made it difficult to process prompt updates such as user inputs, and reading layout synchronously could not be done.

All the above concerns meant that it was impossible to support the concurrent features of React appropriately. The new architecture came as a solution to this problem with four major parts as follows:

• The New Native Module System
• The New Renderer
• Event Loop
• Removing bridge

All of these concerns meant that it was not able to support the concurrent features of React appropriately. The new module system lets React Native Renderer gain synchronous access to the native layer, thus enabling managing events, reading layouts, and scheduling updates synchronously and asynchronously. The New Native modules give applications high-performance gain through lazy loading by default

The New Renderer can manage multiple in-progress trees from multiple threads. This helps React to execute processing multiple concurrent updates, either with a background thread or the main thread. It also helps fetch layout synchronously or asynchronously from multiple threads, to back responsive UIs without quality issues.

The new Event Loop can implement task processing on a JavaScript thread in a highly defined order. It enables React to interrupt rendering to manage events so that the major user events can undertake priority than the UI transitions with low priority. Event loop also goes hand in hand with the web specifications, providing support for various browser features including microtasks, MutationObserver, and IntersectionObserver.

Also, removing the bridge helps with prompt startup and direct communication among native runtime and JavaScript, enabling minimisation of costs of switching work. It also facilitates error reporting, reduces crashes from undefined behaviour, and debugging.

The New Architecture is already utilised at Meta in the Facebook app and many other products. Intending to offer a master experience that appeared and felt at home for Meta Quest, the tech giant wanted to benefit from additional input types, big visual surface area, and gestures. Rather than just porting mobile social apps, React Native was chosen as it helped the team incorporate reliable animation capabilities, high-end performance and a shared platform that fuels 2D Meta Quest system applications.

The New Architecture in React Native provides holistic support for React 18, with features like concurrent rendering, and useLayoutEffect to improve app performance, user experience, and responsiveness.  

1. Transitions to implement seamless updates 

This is the latest concept in React 18 that distinguishes between urgent updates and non-urgent updates.  

• Urgent updates reflect direct interaction such as typing, or pressing. 
• Transition updates the user interface (UI) from one view to the other.

Urgent updates demand immediate transition response to align with the intuitions on how physical objects act. But, transitions are different as the user doesn’t expect to view every intermediate value on screen. In the New Architecture, React Native supports rendering urgent updates and transition updates individually.

Specifically, for the high-end user experience, a single user input should create an urgent update and a non-urgent update. Just like ReactDOM, events such as change or press are managed as urgent and rendered quickly. You can begin startTransition API within an input event to inform React which updates are ‘transitions’ and could be put off to the background.

With the separation of urgent events from transitions, you can build a highly responsive user interface and more intuitive user experience. For instance, let’s compare old architecture with no transitions and New Architecture with transitions. Consider a grid of tiles consisting of images and other components. Without transitions, updating the entire grid on user interaction would slow down the application. But with useTransition, you can make rendering the tiles deferred. This makes the app faster and more responsive during interactions.

2. Automatic Batching

An upgrade to the New Architecture helps you with automatic batching from React 18. With Automatic batching, it becomes easy to batch together more state updates while rendering. It prevents the rendering of intermediate states. This enables React Native to be least susceptible to logs and act faster, with no additional code from the developer. In the old architecture, it renders more intermediate states, and the UI keeps updating even while the slider stops its motion. With automatic batching updates, New Architecture reduces intermediate states and finishes rendering much faster.

3. useLayoutEffect

The New Architecture adds relevant support for useLayoutEffect in React Native by building on the Event Loop and the feature to read layout synchronously. In the old architecture, it was required to use an asynchronous onLayout event to read layout information for a view. As a consequence, there might be at least a single frame in which the layout used to be incorrect until reading and updating the layout was completed. This caused concerns like placing tooltips in an inaccurate position. The New Architecture solves this by permitting synchronous access to layout information in useLayoutEffect. This modification lets you read layout data synchronously and update UI in the same frame, enabling positioning elements correctly before displaying them to the user. The old architecture had a reading layout asynchronously performed in onLayout, which caused the tooltip position to be delayed. The New Architecture encourages reading layout synchronously in useLayoutEffect, enabling updating the tooltip position before displaying.

4. Suspense Support:

Suspense enables declarative specification of the loading state for a part of the component tree in case it is not yet prepared to be displayed. React 18 adds complete support for the Suspense version. Until now, React Native was not able to offer support for its concurrent rendering. However, the New Architecture ensures full support for Suspense, which was introduced in React 18. Hence, you can now use Suspense to manage the loading states for your components in React Native. This leads to suspended content render in the background when the loading state is displayed, focusing highly on user input on visible content. 

Let’s take a look at the benefits of React Native to understand why it is important and how choosing it for your app development helps your business.

1. High performance

The new React architecture offers efficient and faster communication among both modules with the new JSI (JavaScript Interface). It minimises the overhead that serialising and deserialising data causes.

2. Synchronisation

React Native architecture enables more synchronisation as it makes real-time interactions quicker, and improvises gestures, and animations.

3. Quick UI updates

The New Architecture in React Native has launched ‘Fabric’ to enable selective rendering. This updates only the essential UI components without requiring the whole interface rendering, thus making sure of quick UI updates.

4. Lazy Loading of Native Modules

Using ‘TurboModules’, you can reduce the startup times. Native modules will be loaded based on the requirements only so that the applications can work better.

5. TypeSafety

Using Codegen, you can ensure the type safety to bridge native code and JavaScript. Since it generates bridging code on its own, it avoids usual bugs and the errors developers could generate. This helps with a highly stable and reliable code.

6. Great Flexibility

The New Architecture supports various JavaScript engines such as V8, Hermes, etc, based on the need for React app development. It offers high performance for low-end devices, catering to more flexibility.

7. Improved Developer Experience

The New Architecture offers enhanced debugging tools to resolve performance concerns and fix any bottlenecks between native code and JavaScript. Concurrent mode facilitates responsive and smoother UIs.

8. Scalability

With effective communication, lazy loading improvements and high-end synchronisation, React Native development ensures scalability in the New Architecture. Concurrent rendering also facilitates better options for app scaling. You can scale your React Native applications by hiring a top React Native app development company. 

Though it comes with unique advantages and numerous growth possibilities, you should also consider the hindrances the framework can cause. Here are the React Native limitations you should consider.

1. Not native

React Native applications communicate with native modules using a JavaScript bridge. This can result in performance issues when compared to fully native applications. Although it facilitates cross-platform development, specific features might not feel as effortless as native implementation.

2. Limited innovative out-of-box components

It offers basic components enabling app development. However, it lacks advanced UI components. Developers usually need to depend on third-party libraries to build unique and complex user interfaces.

3. Choices are limited

The ecosystem offers fewer libraries and plugins while growing, compared to the native development frameworks like Kotlin or Swift. This barrier can hinder options to implement specific functionalities or features.

4. Abandoned packages and libraries

Many third-party libraries in the React Native ecosystem are no longer maintained well. This can pose challenges in fetching reliable solutions and may need significant workarounds.

5. UI can be impacted and needs to undergo vigorous UI testing

The UI components of React Native can work inconsistently across various platforms and devices, especially while using third-party packages. Rigorous UI testing is essential to achieve a high user experience. Rigorous UI testing is inevitable for various screen sizes and operating systems.  

React Native offers a range of advantages making it an ideal business choice, particularly for those who focus deeply on innovation. It is well known for reusability and pre-built components that accelerate development, minimise costs, and cut down time. Facilitating cross-platform development with a unified codebase lets you optimise resources and make the process efficient.

The quick time-to-market capabilities of React Native support rapid testing, iterative improvements, and feedback all supported by a powerful developer community. While it’s necessary to be careful about the possible limitations such as minimised native functionality and performance issues, React Native has the potential to let a business build quality-centric and efficient mobile applications. Before reaching a decision, closely identify the React Native pros and cons, and learn its complexity and performance requirements to make sure this is the right fit for you.

React Native proves to be a viable framework for cross-platform development in 2025. While this might not be the ideal choice for every business project, it is a perfect option for startups and mid-sized companies due to its cost-effectiveness, prompt development, and vibrant community.

React Native is advantageous when incorporated into your business strategy. You can collaborate with a React Native development company to build great cross-stage applications. This approach not only saves time but helps with saving expenses, making it a wise decision for organisations that are equipped to streamline asset utilisation.

In short, React Native lets you grow your digital presence without holding you to the time and resources the third parties provide. It offers scalable, cost-effective, and secure web solutions. You can ensure that your applications meet the standards of modern users and stay unique in the market with our team of experts at WAC, offering the best React Native app development services dedicated to making your app development a big success.