Table of Contents
Overview
When you start learning Android development, one of the first strategic choices you face is whether to build apps with native technologies or with cross platform tools. This decision affects how your app looks and feels, how much code you write, what skills you need, and how easily you can support other platforms like iOS or the web later.
This chapter focuses only on comparing native Android development with cross platform approaches, not on teaching you the details of each technology. The rest of the course will use native Android with Kotlin, so the goal here is to help you understand why that choice makes sense for a beginner and when cross platform tools might still be useful.
What Native Development Means on Android
Native Android development means using the official tools and languages recommended by Google for the Android platform. In practical terms that means writing your app in Kotlin or Java, using Android Studio, and building your user interface with Android frameworks such as Views or Jetpack Compose.
When you build natively, your code is compiled specifically for Android devices. It talks directly to Android system APIs for things like notifications, sensors, camera, storage, and navigation. The result is usually apps that feel very integrated with the operating system.
In this course, "native" always refers to this official, Android specific way of building apps with Kotlin.
What Cross Platform Development Means
Cross platform development tries to let you share most of your code across multiple platforms from a single project. Instead of writing an Android app and an iOS app separately, you write one main codebase that can run on both platforms with some platform specific adjustments.
Common cross platform frameworks include React Native, Flutter, and Kotlin Multiplatform. Each has its own language and way of building interfaces, but they all aim to reduce duplicated effort when targeting more than one platform.
Most cross platform tools provide:
A shared core, such as business logic, networking, and data handling, that can run on different platforms.
A bridge to each platform, so the shared code can display UI and use device features like the camera or GPS.
The key idea is code reuse. You trade some platform specific control in exchange for writing once and running on multiple systems.
Native vs Cross Platform: Performance
Performance is one of the main technical differences between native and cross platform development. Native apps are compiled and optimized for Android hardware, so they usually have very fast startup times, smooth animations, and responsive interactions.
Cross platform apps often introduce extra layers. For example, some frameworks interpret code at runtime or use a bridge between your code and the platform APIs. This can introduce overhead such as slower UI updates or heavier memory usage, especially on low end devices.
Modern cross platform frameworks work hard to minimize these costs, and many apps perform well enough in real use. However, if your app needs intensive graphics, complex animations, or very low latency interactions such as real time games or AR, native development still tends to have an advantage.
For apps that demand maximum speed, minimal latency, or heavy graphics, native development is usually the safer choice.
Native vs Cross Platform: User Experience and Look & Feel
Native apps use the platform’s own UI components. Buttons, lists, dialogs, and navigation follow Google’s design guidelines and behave the way Android users expect. This usually gives you:
More consistent behavior across different Android versions.
Better support for accessibility features.
Smoother integration with system level gestures and animations.
Cross platform frameworks often provide their own UI components. Some try to mimic the native look of each platform, while others define a custom look that is the same on Android and iOS.
This can be an advantage if you want your app to look identical everywhere. It can also be a limitation if you want to fully adopt the latest Android specific design patterns or Material Design details as soon as they appear.
If your main audience is Android users and you care about feeling "truly Android," native development tends to align more naturally with that goal.
Native vs Cross Platform: Access to Device Features
Native Android code accesses device features directly through the official APIs. When Google adds a new hardware feature or system API, it appears first in the native SDKs. You can then use it immediately in your Kotlin code.
Cross platform frameworks need time to catch up. For each new feature, someone must:
Add support in the framework itself.
Expose a plugin or library so your shared code can use it.
Until that happens, you might need to write native Android code inside your cross platform project as a "bridge." This reduces the benefit of having a single shared codebase, and it increases the complexity of your project.
If your app relies heavily on the latest Android capabilities, or uses many sensors and low level hardware features, native development gives you earlier and more complete access.
Native vs Cross Platform: Code Sharing
The biggest benefit of cross platform development is code sharing between platforms. If you need to support Android and iOS at the same time, using one shared codebase can reduce:
The number of features you must implement twice.
The number of bugs that appear differently on each platform.
The amount of maintenance effort when you add or change features.
Cross platform tools work best when your app has a lot of shared logic and relatively simple platform specific interfaces. For example, apps that are data focused such as news readers, dashboards, and simple forms often fit well.
Native development does not share code across platforms by default. If you also need an iOS app you must either:
Build a separate native iOS app.
Use partial sharing techniques such as shared backend services or shared business logic libraries.
This course focuses on Android only, so full multi platform sharing is not a priority here, but it becomes important if you later decide to target more than one platform with a single team.
Native vs Cross Platform: Development Experience
Your development experience affects how quickly you learn, how fast you can build features, and how easy it is to debug problems.
Native Android development:
Uses official tools like Android Studio, which are deeply integrated with the Android SDK.
Provides first class support for debugging, profiling, and inspecting your app.
Has extensive documentation from Google and a large community of Android specific examples.
Cross platform development:
Requires you to learn the framework’s language and tooling. For example, JavaScript and React for React Native, or Dart for Flutter.
Adds another layer of libraries and build tools on top of the platform tools.
Can have very productive workflows once you are familiar with them, such as fast UI hot reload and shared components.
Since this course is for absolute beginners, using the official Android toolchain with Kotlin avoids the extra complexity of a cross platform framework and focuses your attention on understanding how Android itself works.
Business and Team Considerations
Outside of pure technology, there are practical questions that can affect the choice between native and cross platform approaches.
If a business needs both Android and iOS apps with limited budget and a small team, cross platform development can be attractive because it reduces the amount of separate code to maintain.
If a company already has strong web or JavaScript developers, frameworks that use familiar languages can shorten the learning curve.
On the other hand, large products that rely heavily on platform specific polish or advanced hardware features often invest in native teams for each platform. They accept the cost of multiple codebases in exchange for tight control over quality and performance.
As a beginner, you do not need to make these decisions for a company yet, but understanding the trade offs will help you speak about them in interviews and team discussions later.
Why This Course Uses Native Android with Kotlin
This course uses native Android development with Kotlin for several reasons that relate directly to your learning experience.
First, Kotlin and the Android SDK are official and stable. Investing time in them gives you skills that apply to almost every serious Android job and project.
Second, native development exposes you directly to how Android works. You see the real activity lifecycle, resource system, permissions model, and architecture components, without a framework hiding or reshaping them. This makes you more capable later, even if you move to cross platform tools.
Third, many cross platform frameworks still require some native knowledge when you need to write plugins or fix platform specific issues. By learning native Android first, you build a strong foundation that remains useful even if you later adopt React Native, Flutter, or another tool.
Finally, focusing on one platform and one toolchain keeps the learning path clearer for beginners. You avoid the extra complexity of managing multiple targets before you are comfortable with the basics of building and running Android apps at all.
When to Consider Cross Platform After This Course
After you complete this course and are comfortable with native Android basics, you might decide to explore cross platform development. This can make sense in several situations.
You want to build personal projects that run on both Android and iOS without maintaining two completely separate apps.
You join a team that already uses a cross platform framework, and your Android knowledge helps you understand how the framework interacts with the platform.
You are interested in comparing development styles and choosing tools based on the needs of each project.
Your native Android background will make it easier to understand how cross platform frameworks map their concepts to activities, views, permissions, and system services. You will also be better prepared to debug platform specific issues when they arise.
Summary
Native Android development focuses on one platform, uses official tools and languages, and provides the best access to Android’s capabilities, performance, and design patterns. Cross platform development aims to share code across platforms from a single codebase, which can reduce effort if you need to support multiple systems at once, but often adds layers and trade offs.
In this course, you will learn native Android with Kotlin. This gives you a direct understanding of how Android works and builds a strong foundation that you can reuse whether you continue with pure Android apps or later add cross platform tools to your skill set.