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That is one way to define native. Another is to use the platform native source code and provide access to that. E.g. on Android Xamarin includes an overhead due to constantly passing thru the slow JNI bridge when it needs to communicate with the native UI widgets. It also includes a relatively large overhead because of standard C# libraries that need to be included on iOS/Android.

OTOH Codename One ( https://www.codenameone.com/ ) has a very different interpretation of "native". They use their own widget toolkit like QT which makes them "less native" in that regard. But they are native to Android (being Java based) and translate directly to C/Objective-C which means you can literally write OS native code and use native widgets within the hierarchy.

I think native is a worthless word in that regard as it doesn't properly convey meaning in these sort of complex situations. Once PhoneGap started billing itself as "native" this all went out of the window...




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