[ozten]

> Is this basically a mini-browser that looks like an "app"?

React native combines native UI widgets, gaining the performance and polish that those toolkits have in delivering a polished iOS or Android look and feel.

If react native were merely a wrapper around the embedded WebUI widget, you're re-implementing these UI widgets with HTML, CSS and JS. You have the performance and web standards limitations of the platforms Web UI widget.

In a way React Native is an improvement to developer workflow, bring the speed of iterating on webapps to native mobile projects. Unlike phonegap, it avoids the semantics of the web and targets platform specific APIs and UI guidelines.