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It's not native in the strict sense. They ported over their web app using PhoneGap: http://phonegap.com/app/untappd/

Untappd uses webviews to serve up local HTML/CSS/JS. To me, that's not native.

They stopped doing that. It's fully native now.

I don't think so. The showcase on PhoneGap was posted in July 2012. Additionally, it's easy to tell that the app isn't utilizing the Cocoa Touch UI framework. Look at how the views bounce, how the buttons "feel". Those are dead PhoneGap giveaways.

I've never heard this given as a reason to choose one app over another. Are many people fussy like that?

I've found that most people don't care about this unless you're delivering an extraordinary native experience (ala Path) A native app is great if you've got a team who can do it well. If you can't, simple PhoneGap-ish apps will suffice. It's a sunk cost in that if you get traction, you'll eventually need to switch over to native to compete: effectively a re-write.

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