At present, there has been a sharp uptick in the demand for mobile development. Recent advancement in the field of mobile development is flutter development. Although it spent a lot of time in the beta version, Google I/O 2019’s attention made it reliable. It’s a new advancement in cross-platform mobile development.
Flutter has achieved its position at the top of the ranking of cross-platform technologies due to its ability to function flawlessly on both the iOS and Android platforms. Flutter, a challenging and powerful mobile app development SDK from Google, allows programmers to simultaneously target both the iOS and Android platforms with a single line of code. And because the same codebase powers both native Android and iOS apps, this is also receiving a lot of attention from business owners and users.
Nowadays, the development of mobile apps is increasingly being driven by the user experience. Flutter development is one of the most promising tools for mobile app user interface/experience design. Flutter is a well-known technology that you can employ if you’re a dedicated developer who is constantly looking for new methods to enhance the development of mobile applications.
Even if the development of Flutter apps appears to be simple at the moment, there are several benefits and drawbacks to keep in mind.
But let’s start with the basics of this phrase.
What is Flutter?
Flutter was a YC-founded firm in 2013 that was later acquired by Google. Google designed and released it in May 2017 as a free and open-source mobile user interface framework. It allows you to develop a native mobile application with only a single code. Flutter is a framework for building high-performance apps that are built on the Dart programming language and the React Programming Architecture. It supports Android Studio and Firebase APIs, as well as inline videos and advertisements.
Flutter is a fully functional SDK rather than a framework or library that comes with all the tools necessary to create cross-platform applications. This includes command-line tools, pre-built widgets, testing and integration APIs, and a rendering engine.
Flutter is one of the most widely used Google software types because of the many capabilities and advantages it provides. Flutter offers both advantages and disadvantages, just like any other technology.
Benefits of Flutter Development
Single UI Layout
Flutter facilitates the development of excellent UI designs for both Android and iOS mobile apps. You can build a single UI design and utilize it on both platforms using a single code base, saving you time and money on designer work. The Flutter cross-platform app typically adheres to the principles of Material Design.
There are pre-designed and bespoke widgets in Flutter. With distinct widgets for Material Design and Cupertino, powerful motion APIs, and straightforward natural scrolling, Flutter helps dedicated flutter app developers create expressive interfaces with a fully customized widget.
Rapid Development Process
A feature-rich Flutter app may be created quickly by developers thanks to excellent and cutting-edge capabilities like Hot Reload and a unified codebase for both Android and iOS platforms. Flutter’s built-in capabilities are simple to integrate with both Android and iOS, giving the app a native-like experience while saving developers a lot of time and effort. Additionally, Flutter offers a wide selection of ready-to-use, customizable widgets, which speeds up and simplifies the building of apps.
Effortless Learning Curve
Flutter is built on Dart, an object-oriented programming language that is simple to learn. The Flutter framework makes it possible for many developers with little experience in coding to create prototypes and apps. Developers with Swift or Java abilities can easily learn Flutter and build apps from the ground up.
Excellent Performance
Applications developed with Flutter run extremely quickly and efficiently thanks to the graphics and visualization engine embedded into C/C++. Flutter runs graphics at 60–120 frames per second. React Native, on the other hand, achieves 60 FPS. Frames render roughly every 16 ms for performance at 60 frames per second. The 120 FPS speed is only achievable on devices that support 120 Hz updates, which refresh the display twice as quickly as 60 Hz displays.
Comparing Flutter to other cross-platform technologies, there is a more significant boost in productivity. This was a key motivating reason for many mobile app developers to switch to the Flutter app development company.
Robust Community Support
Flutter features strong community hubs like Flutter Community and Flutter Awesome where developers can share ideas and find solutions to issues. You may communicate with other developers, get support, and learn more by using Stack Overflow, Gitter, Meetup, and r/Flutterdev on Reddit, and other platforms as well. The Flutter Developer Community can assist with all of your questions and keep you up to date on all the latest and most exciting Flutter app development services.
Complete Personalization and Quick Rendering
Flutter provides you control over every pixel on the screen because of its layered architecture. Furthermore, you may freely overlay and animate text, graphics, video, and controls.
Challenges of Flutter Development
Lack of Third-party Libraries
The programming task can often get more difficult because Flutter doesn’t support third-party libraries. Although it provides a fantastic UI package, it still needs third-party libraries for extensive development.
Huge File Sizes
Making an app that takes up minimal space on the user’s phone is one of the key responsibilities of app developers. To achieve this, programmers avoid animations, scale down image sizes, or employ the fewest possible packages and libraries. Flutter displays poor results in this instance, and their apps generally tend to be too large. The Flutter app is 4 MB in size; on other platforms, it is 500Kb in size. Google may address this flaw, but it won’t be effective for a while.
Issues With Code Maintenance
It can be challenging to maintain the code over time because the framework and the Dart language are constantly evolving.
Inadequate Support for iOS
Since Flutter is a Google product, iOS support is far less effective than Android support. Furthermore, it is possible that the majority of SDK features that operate correctly on Android behave incorrectly on iOS.
Lack of Password Management Support
There may be some issues if you want to employ custom features rather than native widgets. For instance, the use of specific iOS and Android capabilities has issues. With autocomplete input fields, Flutter applications currently have issues. If you have to use built-in or external password managers, you will find such issues.
Low Dart Adoption
Dart is a fantastic language on its own; it’s quick and object-oriented, and its paradigm ought to be familiar to most programmers. Both advantages and disadvantages exist in this. However, in terms of popularity, it lags behind other technologies, particularly industry leaders like JavaScript, C#, or native Objective-C and Java. There won’t be many new graduates who can use the Dart programming language to create an app. Therefore, this is a crucial consideration to have in mind while creating a cross-platform application.
Conclusion
Flutter has far more benefits than drawbacks for commercial and development teams. You can definitely create excellent cross-platform mobile applications that are appealing, high-performing, and meet your specific objectives. Flutter is a good option to think about, especially if you want to create apps for both ios and android. Compared to hiring two native app developers, hiring a Flutter developer is significantly less expensive.
