All Good and Bad of Flutter App Development: A Mini Guide
4 min readYou want to develop a simple/complex cross platform mobile application but you also want a hassle free, all-in-one solution for this. This is a challenge to many enterprises who credit brilliant application ideas but fail to turn them into reality since they lack money or time. What If we tell you that the latest addition to the technology can solve all your problems without compromising your app’s performance or quality?
We are talking about Flutter app development. Yes, you heard that right. Every reliable mobile apps development company prefers Flutter over any other trending technology since the former is making the headlines and all for the right reasons. We are sure you have now been surrounded by tons of questions regarding Flutter.
In this article, we will explore several aspects of Flutter app development along with its benefits and drawbacks. So that whenever you decide to work along with Flutter, you start with a clear picture of the technology.
Let’s start with the basics:
What is Flutter?
Flutter is a complete mobile app toolkit (SDK) with widgets, framework and tools that helps any mobile application development company to create interactive and visually attractive mobile apps on both iOS and Android.
Therefore, you get to perform cross-platform mobile application development under one codebase in a minimum amount of time.
What is more to know about Flutter?
- Flutter is created by Google it is open-source technology
- Flutter creates its own designs and widgets from scratch with the help of a high performing rendering engine called SKIA. These widgets are fast, user friendly and customizable.
- Since you get to customize your app design, the final mobile app developed looks as expected, you can also create additional design elements using the readily available UI memos in the toolkit.
- Flutter’s architecture is the real hero that gives the cross-platform applications a native-like appearance without interfering with other features.
- Flutter is a serious competitor to React and other frameworks; however, it still stands ahead since it gives you a considerable amount of control over your application development.
Now that we are familiar with the basic concept of Flutter app development, here are some of the major benefits the technology serves to your business.
Top 5 advantages of Flutter App Development for Product owners:
From the product owner point of view, significant advantages of Flutter include- less app development cost, a fast app development process, an interactive and beautiful cross-platform app with unique UI and animations. Let’s get into details:
- Hot Reload
For developers, Flutter is equal to faster and dynamic mobile app development. How is that possible? You make changes in the code and can straight away see them in your application.
Due to Flutter’s Hot Reload technology, it takes a few seconds to add new features, fix the code and experiment with the design.
Hot Reload is a modern and advanced introduction in app development where you can improve your code and check the changes on the spot. Not to forget that this feature also saves significant time for the developers going back and forth to see the modifications.
- Single codebase for multi-platform
Developers have to use just one codebase for both Android and iOS. The good news is, Flutter does not depend on the operating system or the platform. It simply creates its own designs and relies on its engine. Hence you can have the same application for both platforms.
- Testing
Now this one is quite obvious that If you have the same applications on both platforms, the quality assurance process takes less time. You require automatic tests only once, and the engineers will have only one app to test.
- Interactive designs and animations
Let’s see, Flutter takes less time, creates apps on a limited budget and also offers interactive designs? All of this on one technology sounds like a golden deal. You have the options to customize your widgets and make changes to the existing design templates. Therefore, with Flutter, you are the king of your application development process.
The important point to remember here is that you do not have to pay for the compatibility of your app in the older versions of iOS and Android. Your application is going to look just the same on the older versions of the systems.
- Ideal MVP
When you come up with a fantastic application idea, you are constantly under pressure to exhibit a prototype to your investors in the least time possible. Therefore, if you need an MVP and are running short of time, Flutter is the perfect choice for you.
All these benefits make you wonder, does Flutter have any drawbacks.
The answer is yes, it does. Although the technology does not bear any major limitations, it still has a lot to discover.
Cons of using Flutter App Development:
- Unpopularity of Dart
One major drawback of Flutter is the unpopularity of Dart. Not many enterprises are familiar with the language, which is a surprise since Dart works wonders for mobile application development. However, if we go with the statistics, many developers have started experimenting with Dart and are constantly improving and creating better results.
- Limited Libraries
We would not call this a major limitation since Flutter is best at what it is providing currently. You would still get many libraries to experiment with; however, the varieties are not as comprehensive as in Native.
Conclusion
Flutter can be a perfect solution to instant and progressive web applications, fintech or educational apps or cross-platform applications that highly focus on the interface. You can consider other technologies like React if you are looking to develop small-sized applications. In case you require any technical insights on Flutter, you can always contact a mobile app development company to help you with the technical details. Now go ahead and turn your idea into a reality.
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