How a React Native clothing app hit 900ms cold launch with disciplined builds

A development team at Nexona built a React Native direct-to-consumer app for an unnamed clothing brand, achieving a 900ms cold launch and 120ms hot launch on both Android and iOS from a single codebase. The team attributed the performance not to a single fix but to a series of deliberate decisions, including caching product catalogues in Redis, avoiding network-dependent first screens, and optimising image sizes in product grids. Developers noted that debug builds can be misleading and stressed the importance of testing on budget Android devices rather than only flagship phones. The post also highlighted that React Native is best suited to teams already running a React website, as shared logic and engineers reduce overhead. The core argument is that poor React Native performance typically stems from careless development practices rather than limitations of the framework itself.