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It is using the platform's API directly and renders native components. The XML is just an abstraction layer on top of that and not a web wrapper like you're implying. It's not using any WebView.

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I’m not saying it’s a WebView, but obviously it works extremely similarly. It is not a native app framework.

It's native by all definitions of it. It calls native APIs, renders native system elements and what you get is indistinguishable from an app written in Swift or Kotlin down to the machine code displaying it.

The "XML is just an abstraction layer" part is exactly what makes it not native. It's a big abstraction layer, it uses React under the hood, it's not native.

It's easy, instead.

It may render native components, but those components are still controlled by the non-native runtime, thus extra baggage.

So you think "it’s a web app with new syntax" is an accurate description? That's what we're discussing.

No, I don't think it's a web app at all.

It would definitely be using native UI components, which a normal web browser won't give you via the rendering engine.

But that's as native as it gets. The control logic for how those components operate outside of how they're internally built is likely done w/ React / JavaScript, instead of native.

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