Evaluation of Server-Rendered Cross-Platform Native Mobile Applications

High level description

Today the most common way to develop crossplatform mobile apps is through frameworks like React Native Flutter or Kotlin Multiplatform. Each of these frameworks employs different strategies to build applications for both Android and iOS. However they share a common limitation: any changewhether its a minor text update or a new featurerequires the app to go through the App Store or Google Play Store approval process.

At Jfokus 2024 a talk introduced an alternative approach: rendering mobile applications directly from the server using JSX as a unified language across platforms with native components used to display the app interface. This od enables developers to update applications by simply updating the server byping the need for frequent app store submissions.

This thesis aims to evaluate the feasibility of serverrendered apps and explore whether they can be a viable alternative to traditional crossplatform development approaches.

Who are we looking for

Bachelor/Master of Science in Computer Science/Engineering

Project description

In this thesis two mobile applications will be designed and implemented. The first will be a proofofconcept (POC) serverrendered application while the second will be a fully native mobile application. The serverrendered app must utilize native components for the user interface avoiding the use of web views that merely display webbased content. Both applications will provide the same functionality ensuring a fair comparison.

The POC serverrendered app will be evaluated against the native app in terms of performance usability and maintainability to ess its viability as an alternative to traditional native development.

Purpose and Scope

In this thesis investigate these questions:

• Are there any significant drawbacks to use the serverrendered solution
  • Limitations in terms of functionality
    • How does navigation work
    • Can we use native functions (ex. detect call state)
• How does the development experience compare between the different approaches

References:

Jfokus Talk (Recording and presentation)

Example application from the talk