Mobile App Development with Flutter – Should You Be Afraid of the Teething Troubles

Flutter …  You can now come across this term on the internet more and more often, but is it really as good as it’s promoted?

This Google framework is claimed to be a new milestone in cross-platform solutions creation because mobile app development with Flutter makes them very fast, compatible, fine-looking, and quality maintainable.

With the newest stable release, this framework can already be deployed not only to mobile but to web and desktop, that’s why we will have a deeper insight into this promising toolkit today.

Flutter: history in short

At present Flutter is among the most dynamically developed programming solutions, launched in May 2017 it was stable and fit for production at the end of 2018. In 2019, it was the 3rd in the number of contributors.  13 000 contributors, it tells volumes that the community is eager to take part in its development, and more and more Flutter mobile app development companies enter the market. 

Axisbits will also come into the line. We will delve into Flutter mobile app development because our experts believe that this technology allows us to create business apps, which are easy-to-modify, scale, and maintain. In fact, Flutter is rather an SDK for touch screen solutions developments. It was initially aimed at iOS and Android devices but can now run on other platforms as well.

Flutter strengths

Simultaneous Android and iOS development

Flutter allows to develop mobile solutions for iOS and Android at a time because the code base is the same. This also results in less testing, because automatic tests are written only once and though quality assurance should be performed on both platforms, there is just one app to test. 

So you can save time and get wider opportunities for your business through a simultaneous launch on Google and Apple platforms. At the same time, in case you need or wish you can differentiate your applications.

Speedy coding

Flutter has the exquisite feature of hot reload happening in milliseconds. It permits seeing the code updates and the alterations to the widget tree right away and makes the process of development more dynamic. It’s unnecessary to restart the app. So, the experiments go faster and the bugs, which appear, are also spotted immediately and dealt with right away. Besides, it makes cooperation between the developers and designers much faster and more comfortable. To craft a state-of-art UI design, developers can simply combine widgets in the way they need, they can choose shapes, animation, and text they like or build complex components from the simpler widgets.

All these factors combined speed up code writing dramatically.

Great performance

There are 2 reasons for Flutter exceptional performance—its usage of Dart and having its own widgets. While this language of programming easily compiles into native codes, it does not require OEM. In such a way, a mobile app using Flutter requires less communication with the platform and demonstrates quick startup times along with fewer performance-related problems during its operation.

Perfect compatibility

Since all the widgets and their renderers are part of the application, no additional libraries needed to provide compatibility with the devices on which it operates. It’s essential to mention that Flutter now operates on Android above 4.4 and iOS 64-bit devices. With the releases of new versions of the operating systems, Flutter widgets will need updates. However, it’s not a big problem since anyone can do that. The widgets are customizable and the new ones can be used on old OS versions.

Open Source

Flutter has a big and active community, being an open-source technology. It makes the prospects for the tool’s development almost boundless and the customizing possibilities enormous. The community contributes to the framework’s documentation, actively produces helpful resources, and provides support.

Flutter or React Native – what to choose?

We have revealed Flutter’s key advantages above, but is it really better than other present-day cross-platform technologies? 

When deciding on a framework for your future mobile solution should you consider to build native mobile apps with Flutter or, for instance, with React Native?

Below we compare these two technologies a bit.

Documentation

Being a product of Google, Flutter has received clear and accurate documentation. Besides, it is supplemented and expanded by the community we mentioned above. More than that Dart, Flutters programming language has many features common to those of Kotlin, C#, Java, JavaScript, and Swift. So the learning curve for developers is gradual and not complicated.

Though React Native is also open-source, its documentation is poorly structured.

Performance

As we can see above Flutter does not require any bridge for the interaction with iOS or Android elements, while React Native needs a JavaScript bridge to work with the native components. The key function of the bridge is to convert JS variables into the native ones.

Dart programming language combined with high-speed C++ in its core compiles code much faster than the JS V8’s engine. So the animations on Flutter run faster and the app behaves like a native solution in real-time.

User Interface Elements

The major feature which makes Flutter out-stand is its own UI components, they are customizable, compatible with native screens and features, and extremely flexible. It makes the mobile apps built on Flutter not only look but also operate naturally on both iOS and Android.

RN uses native components, which are updated simultaneously with the UI of the operating system. However, to make the React Native product look the same on both platforms, developers should turn to third-party libraries.

How much a Flutter application cost in 2020

Now as we realize that Flutter is one of the technologies that is going to top the market in the nearest couple of years, it’s natural to find out how to create a mobile app using Flutter and how much it may cost.

However, there is no plain answer to the question. While we have found out that Flutter is rather a flexible and expandable technology with compatible components, the cost of development will depend on its complexity, features, size, and the Flutter mobile app development company or specialist you will choose. The expenditures may vary between 5000 and 50000 USD. To get a professional consultation and detailed price estimation of your project, you can contact Axisbits expert. Just fill in the form on our site.

Anyway, the technology being fresh yet innovative, is affordable even for startup projects. They can also skip license fees because the platform and its toolkit are open-source.

Conclusion

Since our company is interested in development and innovation, Axisbits sees great prospects in Flutter. It not only accelerates development, benefits to the quick MVP creation, decreases costs and time Flutter mobile app to the web, but allows crafting fine-looking cross-platform solutions with fast and smooth animations. 

Flutter can interest tech-related companies, eCommerce businesses, and startups that want their mobile software solution to be fast, efficient, and stable on both platforms. 

Though they claim the technology is young, the main teething problems have already been overcome and the giants like Alibaba and Tencent are good proof that Flutter can even be used for complex projects.