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Comment by atcole | Hacker News Reader

In cases similar to desktops with electron vs. native (although with different requirements) where either you need access to significant native features that are not supported in the browser, or if your app is process intensive, i.e. graphics heavy games.

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The analogy to Electron makes me wonder if a possible mass migration to PWAs will make the experience on already-slow low-end phones even more atrocious.

it would be the opposite actually, since you don't have to wrap the app in a heavy bundle. avg iOS app size is like 30mb. a web app shouldn't even come close.

Extreme example has been Twitter.

Twitter PWA: 600KB

Native Android Twitter: 23.5MB

https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/twitter#lowe...

This has been a huge differentiator in countries where users are sensitive to data consumption, which is why you see many case studies about countries in India, Africa, etc. getting great traction with PWAs.

Disclaimer: I'm on Google Web DevRel team

Storage space isn't generally the bottleneck on older devices- it's the CPU/RAM. On that count, native apps are usually overwhelmingly preferable.

If these catch on a big way, it'll be catastrophic for more underpowered devices. Modern web pages are already starting to get acutely uncomfortable to use on older iPhones, let alone older Android devices- we aren't yet at the point where performance levels are high enough that we can slap the equivalent of an electron wrapper on everything, smirk at users' devices' vanishing battery life and call it a day.

Apples to oranges. The download size of a native app, while important to keep low, will have minimal effect of the actual user experience post-download. Web applications will in almost all cases be a strictly worse user experience.

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