§The Native vs. Cross-Platform Debate: Our Honest Take
For 90% of products, React Native with Expo delivers an experience indistinguishable from native — at a fraction of the cost and timeline. The remaining 10% are apps that push hardware boundaries: high-performance games, AR applications, and those requiring deep OS-level access.
§Our Mobile Stack in 2025
We have refined our mobile stack over dozens of shipped apps. Every choice is deliberate.
- React Native + Expo SDK 52 (managed workflow)
- Expo Router v4 for file-based navigation
- Zustand for lightweight global state
- TanStack Query for server state and caching
- Reanimated 3 for 60fps animations on the UI thread
- EAS Build + EAS Submit for seamless CI/CD to app stores
§Performance: The Make-or-Break Factor on Mobile
Mobile users are merciless. A 300ms jank and they leave. Our performance checklist includes hermes engine optimizations, memoization strategies, virtualized lists for large data sets, and image caching with expo-image.
§Offline-First Architecture: Building for the Real World
In Nepal and across emerging markets, network connectivity is unreliable. We design mobile apps to work perfectly offline and sync gracefully when connectivity returns — using optimistic UI updates and conflict-resolution strategies that users never see.
- WatermelonDB for local-first relational data
- Background sync queues for deferred server mutations
- Optimistic UI patterns for instant perceived performance
- Conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs) for complex sync scenarios
The Mantra Devs Team
@mantradevsWe are a team of engineers, designers, and product thinkers based in Kathmandu, Nepal. We build digital products that scale — from healthcare platforms to commerce experiences. If you want to work with us or just want to geek out about tech, we would love to hear from you.