Product & UX

React Native in 2025: A Practitioner's View

New Architecture rollout, Expo vs bare workflow, and where we still reach for native modules.

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The New Architecture is no longer experimental — it is the baseline for greenfield React Native apps we ship. Fabric and TurboModules cut bridge overhead enough that animation-heavy screens feel native on mid-range Android devices.

Expo covers 80% of our mobile projects. We eject only when a client needs proprietary SDKs or deep background processing. The trade-off is maintenance cost, not capability.

Release trains pair OTA updates with store builds on a fixed cadence so marketing never promises features the binary cannot support.

Where we still write native modules: biometric auth edge cases, background geolocation with strict battery budgets, and hardware integrations on industrial tablets.

Performance budgets are enforced in CI: cold start, scroll FPS on a reference device, and memory after a 30-minute session.

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