There is an ongoing debate among developers about the pros and cons of native, web, and hybrid apps. The truth is that each development approach has different points of strength.

Native apps are marked by better performance, snappier animations and transitions, and faster load times. Furthermore, native apps can store more data offline and have full access to a device's hardware and OS features. Typically native apps are more expensive to build and the build costs increase significantly for each new platform because the code base needs to be reworked for each OS.

Web apps are built using web standards, so it's possible to have a common code base for all the supported devices and it's much easier to find developers with the appropriate skills.

On the con side, a web app is not able to access the entire device's hardware and OS features and is not installed on the user device, which means that users cannot access it when the device is not online.

A hybrid app can be viewed like a web app on steroids; in fact it uses web standards and can access most of the device's hardware and OS features. However, it's still subject to the store's approval process and revenue sharing and it's not immediately updated.

At first glance the hybrid app seems to be the perfect solution for every app, but actually it isn't. In fact I believe that the right solution depends on the software requirements (for example, a 3D game should be built as a native app while a card game may run just fine when built as a hybrid app). Note also that the current trend is to make mobile web apps look like native apps, which is why the hybrid approach seems the most reasonable right now.

Unless you are an experienced client-side developer, building a high-quality hybrid app can be a challenge because the available tools are still evolving and documentation is scarce. For this reason mastering in-browser debugging techniques is important for your success.