Or you can just compile any HTML5 mobile app using Cordova and in 99% of the cases your users won't notice any performance difference between native-app and HTML5 app.
Maybe for extremely simple webapps that might be true, but for any non-trivial Cordova+React based app you can't come anywhere close to the UX you can get with React Native without some extreme engineering effort. I'd much rather eat the cost to port the HTML5 app to React Native instead. Yes, the users DO notice.
Inability to have the same level of control over soft keyboard behavior is one of the top problems with Cordova, IMO.
Source: wrote & maintained a Cordova+React app on iOS/Android for 3 yrs.
Yeah, you are right, I was mostly referring to the performance part. If you need native UI elements or native UI interaction it's harder to do that in a HTML5 app.
I mostly worked on games, where the UI is custom and there are very few similarities to the UI of the OS, so it worked pretty good.
