In terms of reach, a native app seems like a pretty big win. KA are aiming for global reach, and, in countries like India where tons of folks are running on old devices, any bandwidth or performance upgrade is significant.
Native apps save bandwidth on each request by relying on the API, which primarily transmits semantic data rather than presentational data. On a slow, metered connection, that's significant.
And, once the exercise framework lands on Android, it oughta have way better performance than the current Javascript implementation that the mobile website uses - especially for manipulating those fancy graphs. When users are frustrated by KA's unresponsiveness, they drop off and don't learn.
That said, the current Android app is definitely just a starting point; until exercises and all the personalized learning features land, mobile web will still be the best tool for KA's non-casual mobile users.
I haven't tried the Android app, but on an iPad the app experience vs the web-experience is like night and day for doing math problems.
You can easily draw your calculations anywhere on the screen, and when entering final results, you handwrite it, making square roots and fractions so much easier.
It is much more fun to do math problems on the iPad app than any other way I've tried.
Giving a look at the content and length of videos, this also looks like a great way to consume educational content while on the way to work (On the train, of course. Not driving! :))
Native apps save bandwidth on each request by relying on the API, which primarily transmits semantic data rather than presentational data. On a slow, metered connection, that's significant.
And, once the exercise framework lands on Android, it oughta have way better performance than the current Javascript implementation that the mobile website uses - especially for manipulating those fancy graphs. When users are frustrated by KA's unresponsiveness, they drop off and don't learn.
That said, the current Android app is definitely just a starting point; until exercises and all the personalized learning features land, mobile web will still be the best tool for KA's non-casual mobile users.