Introduction to Mobile Technologies

Last modified: November 1, 2024

Introduction

Mendix supports different technologies to build mobile applications. Besides responsive web apps, you can build native mobile apps or progress web apps. You can use pages, widgets, nanoflows, JavaScript actions, microflows, and many other familiar elements to build your app.

These different technologies (for example: responsive, native phone) can be configured in a single model using navigation profiles. Mobile profiles can be added and removed separately. If you add a profile, you must also provide a home page for it. For more information on navigation profiles, see Navigation.

Progressive Web Apps

Progressive web apps (PWAs) are an evolution of traditional web apps. Overall, PWAs tend to behave more like native mobile apps. One key difference, however, is that PWAs are not distributed via app stores but can be accessed directly in the browser.

Progressive web apps have several advantages over regular web applications:

They can be installed by adding them to the home page on Android and iOS devices. This makes the app easily accessible for the user, provides more screen space to the app by hiding the browser controls, and stores the offline data separate from the browser making it more secure.
They can be used offline. PWAs can be configured to pre-load all resources allowing them to start while the device is offline. They can also make use of offline data allowing full offline operation.
They can make use of more native capabilities, such as push notifications.
They can be deployed using mobile device management solutions.

Publishing PWAs is the same as publishing regular web applications with Mendix. Once the application is deployed, users can simply access the PWA by opening the application URL. Considering PWA and web apps are equally easy to publish, we recommend you use PWAs to take advantage of their additional capabilities.

For more information, see Progressive Web App.

Native Mobile Apps

With Mendix 9, it is possible to build fully native mobile apps. Native mobile apps do not render inside a web view, but use native UI elements instead. This results in fast performance, smooth animations, natural interaction patterns (like swipe gestures), and improved access to all native device capabilities. To make such responsive native mobile apps, Mendix leverages the popular open-source framework React Native.

For more information, see Native Mobile.

Hybrid Mobile

Hybrid mobile applications are web applications that run inside a native application. They can access device capabilities via JavaScript or by relying on the native application to provide the required functionality in native code.

Hybrid mobile apps are deprecated as of Mendix 9. This means that hybrid mobile apps are still supported in Mendix 9 but their usage is discouraged. Accordingly, the creation of new hybrid navigation profiles is disabled.

For more information, see Hybrid Mobile (Deprecated).

Deciding Between a PWA or Native Mobile App

Mendix offers building native mobile apps and PWAs, enabling companies to choose the right technology for the right use case. Depending on your app’s requirements or constraints, one or the other can be a better fit. It is also possible to have both native mobile and PWA profiles in a single app, running next to each other.

In general, Mendix recommends building a PWA for your mobile app project. PWAs are easier to build and deploy than native mobile apps, and in many cases, companies can achieve everything needed with them. However, there can be also good reasons to build a native mobile app instead of a PWA. Consult the following list to help decide between the two technologies:

User Experience: If providing the best possible user experience is key for your mobile app, for example when targeting consumers in a public app, then you should build a native mobile app. The native UI elements, page transitions, animations, and gestures of a native mobile app allow you to build superior experiences that are more polished and run smoother than web-based applications.
App Store Publishing: The Apple AppStore and Google Play Store serve as distribution platforms for millions of apps. If your app should also be published via these stores, you should build a native mobile app. Mendix PWAs cannot be published via these stores without additional steps and third-party solutions. Note that publishing your app via these stores can be complex while providing only limited benefit especially for apps that are primarily used internally.
Deep Device Integrations: PWAs can access a multitude of device capabilities via Web APIs, including the camera, GPS, and push notifications (see Progressive Web App for a comprehensive list). However, not everything is supported. If your app requires a capability that is not supported via Web APIs or needs to execute custom native code, you should build a native mobile app.
Offline Data: PWAs also allow offline-first operation. However, the size of the database is limited and cannot be stored securely. If your app requires storing large amounts of data reliably or requires that offline data is encrypted, build a native mobile app.
Developer Experience: If most of your developers and designers are experienced in web technologies (and you have no developers familiar with building and publishing native mobile apps), you should build a PWA. Training your team to learn new native technologies while simultaneously developing apps can delay application production.

If you decide to build a native mobile app after considering these requirements, please consult our documentation on Building Efficient Mobile Apps and Building, Testing, and Distributing Apps.