We started to keep an eye on React Native after Facebook announced support for Android and of course we started to play around with React. We also kept an eye on Ionic2, which was expected to become a ground-breaker in comparison to Ionic1.

We have experience working with both frameworks and for us, React Native is undoubtedly a winner.

Here are the main React Native pros comparing to Ionic:

• Response time
• Opportunity to reuse the code parts for desktop and mobile apps
• Convenient and easy toolchain for developers that saves time on debugging
• Great amount of elaborated components
• Even greater amount of components from community
• Ability to implement functional programming in development which adds stability and reliability to the app

However, we can’t say that React Native is perfect. It has its disadvantages as well, if we compare it to native apps:

• Parts of the code that are connected with hardware solutions, camera, external libraries integration, have to be done in Native parts
• The interface between javascript and native part is a bit tricky
• ReactNative has to be constantly explored, meaning you cannot forget about it after you’ve done part of work

Below we give situations that we believe are the best to use Ionic2:

• when you have an app written on ionic or angular
• when the app depends on ready code for which Ionic would be the best choice

It’s hard to speak about which tool is the best as different people have different opinions. So the choice of the tool depends on the project and the developer’s preferences. This article is nothing more than our experience and observations and we hope it will help you.