Cell networks were also really terrible when smart phones hit the scene. I remember outside of big metro areas 2G with 20+ second latency, at times (yes, second

Cell networks were also really terrible when smart phones hit the scene. I remember outside of big metro areas 2G with 20+ second latency, at times (yes, seconds) It's pretty hard to use traditional responsive web apps over such an abysmal network Native apps can offer a layer of insulation with prepulled assets and more advanced network handling (you can change pages and even close a native app with outstanding requests and it's usually fine--it'll handle changes asynchronously when the network is available)