[TeMPOraL]

In a native app, such modal would be pushed on the activity stack (on Android; I assume iOS has a similar pattern). It would essentially be a native equivalent of a new page. Modern web developers are, for some reason, more afraid of having multiple pages than they are of black death.

[saagarjha]

iOS does not push modals onto the navigation stack by default.

[half-kh-hacker]

To be fair, iOS doesn't have a universal 'back' button, so you wouldn't reach for it to exit a modal anyway.

[saagarjha]

Sure, but the general guideline for modals is to have a "Cancel" or "Done" bar button item somewhere to exit. This is a different action than popping a view controller off the navigation stack.