There are two types of apps on mobile, native apps and web apps.
Web apps are largely websites with features which let them store large amounts of HTML on the client, can be pinned just like a regular app, and can tap into many of the same APIs as a regular app.
What they can do exactly various from system to system and version to version as the folks at Mozilla, Google, etc. are busy at work expanding to more and more things native apps are capable of and trying to squeeze every bit of performance they can.
Native apps have the benefits of being written in languages like Objective-C and Java which are a fair bit faster than JavaScript, however they involve installing a binary which may be harmful in some circumstances and you have to write multiple apps for every platform you want to target with wildly different tool-chains and wildly different stacks.
Web apps are largely websites with features which let them store large amounts of HTML on the client, can be pinned just like a regular app, and can tap into many of the same APIs as a regular app.
What they can do exactly various from system to system and version to version as the folks at Mozilla, Google, etc. are busy at work expanding to more and more things native apps are capable of and trying to squeeze every bit of performance they can.
Native apps have the benefits of being written in languages like Objective-C and Java which are a fair bit faster than JavaScript, however they involve installing a binary which may be harmful in some circumstances and you have to write multiple apps for every platform you want to target with wildly different tool-chains and wildly different stacks.
