Expo SDK 57 shipped this month, bringing React Native 0.86 into the Expo ecosystem. On its own that’s a routine version bump. What makes this release worth flagging is what it builds on: SDK 56’s Expo UI reaching stability, which put native SwiftUI (iOS) and Jetpack Compose (Android) components — layout primitives, buttons, inputs, sheets — behind one shared, universal API.
That’s a meaningful shift in what “cross-platform” means in practice. The old cross-platform trade-off was binary: write once and accept UI that’s visibly not quite native, or fork platform-specific code to get truly native look and feel. Expo UI narrows that gap by letting a single React Native codebase render actual SwiftUI on iOS and actual Jetpack Compose on Android from the same component calls, rather than a custom-drawn approximation of both. Combined with React Native’s New Architecture now being stable and mature, the practical performance and fidelity gap between “native” and “cross-platform” keeps shrinking for the kinds of app most businesses are commissioning.
So what
This doesn’t settle the Flutter-versus-React-Native debate — that’s still a team-skills and ecosystem question — but it does change the calculus within the React Native camp specifically. Teams that ruled out React Native in the past over UI fidelity concerns have a materially different starting point now. If you’re scoping a cross-platform app and the “does it feel native” question has been holding back the decision, it’s worth revisiting with current tooling rather than the state of the ecosystem two or three years ago. See how we approach framework selection on our cross-platform development page, or get in touch to talk through your build.