Flutter mobile development is a new trend in the mobile development arena. Though it was in the beta version for a long, it received a lot of attention from Google I/O 2019 and made it stable. It is another addition to cross-platform mobile development. In 2019 Google brought many new features in Flutter as follows:

• A preview version of Flutter for the web was released previously, which was known as Hummingbird.
• Flutter 1.12 came into the picture with many improvements.
• The new release supports building Chrome OS applications.
• Google released Dart 2.3 that supports the UI-as-code feature.
• Google released Flutter 1.12 with many improvements (check out the Flutter changelog that documents noteworthy changes)
• The latest Flutter release adds support for building Chrome OS applications.

So, why Flutter has received so much attention? Is it better than other cross-platform development frameworks like Xamarin, Ionic, or React Native? To know Flutter in a competitive view, we need to know the pros and cons of it, which we have discussed in this blog.

What is Flutter?  

To know the basics of Flutter mobile app development, please refer to this blog – Is Flutter the future of mobile development?

In development mode, Flutter is compiled Just-in-Time. This makes it possible to hot-reload or restart fast. However, for cross-platform support during release mode, the Flutter code is compiled Ahead-of-Time (AOT) into native code. This allows Flutter to communicate with the targeted platform without a JavaScript bridge, which is the case for React Native. As a result, the app startup times reduce, and overall performance increases. Flutter is no doubt fast, object-oriented, and powerful.

Pros of Flutter app development

In a nutshell, you will get an expedited mobile app development process, reduced cost of app production, and scope to build a beautiful app UI with smooth animations from the perspective of an app owner. Now come to the detail on these points:

·        Relatively fast development. Like any other cross-platform development framework, Flutter also allows developers to build the code once and use it for Android and iOS. This saves time and money and speeds up the whole process.

·        Hot reload. Flutter’s “hot reload” feature makes it possible to see the results in real-time whenever any change is made to the code. This does not need to recompile the code. This helps fix bugs easily and experiment with different features and UI elements once you’re at it. 

Code once and use it on two platforms. Flutter is independent of the platform as it has its own widgets and designs. So, you can get the same app on two platforms, although you can differentiate it. 

Less testing. Testing is a crucial part, especially when it is a mobile app. Now, If you have the same code for the app for two platforms, it means less testing! Hence, it expedites the quality assurance process. This also makes ways to design test cases also.

Perfect for MVP. Since development and testing both take less time in the case of Flutter mobile development, it is ideal for MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to your investors.

·        Full customization with fast rendering.  Flutter has layered architecture, so it gives you control over every pixel on the screen. Besides, you can overlay and animate text, graphics, video, and controls without limits. 

Cons of Flutter Mobile development

Flutter is not all about pros. Let explore the cons of it –

·        Flutter is still not a mature framework. Flutter is not yet a fully stable framework. Some issues remain in it. This is specific to the advanced features related to the operating systems. Alongside, many of the features are not yet supported; since plenty of libraries are in the pre-alpha stage, it is showing limitations when comparing them to native counterparts.

Libraries still not so rich for native development. Google has provided many useful libraries to enrich Flutter. However, Flutter is still new, and you may not get all the functionalities in those libraries. So, developers need extra effort to develop those. It may be time-consuming.

·        Dart is also pretty immature. The programming language used in Flutter is Dart, which is also immature comparing to Kotlin or Swift. It has existing features either not well built or has fewer features.

·        Flutter apps are large. Flutter apps occupy a lot of space. Hence, they take a longer time to download or update. This is not user friendly.

·        There are no single “guidelines” when it comes to developing Flutter apps. This can be problematic when building more complex software. 

·        Problem in code maintenance. The framework and Dart language are changing rapidly at times, which makes maintaining the code difficult in the long run. 

Is Flutter a good idea for every kind of mobile app?

Flutter may not be ideal for every situation. However, there are a few cases when it’s worth to consider Flutter for mobile development. 

– Whenever you need a solution for MVP

– Progressive Web Apps and Instant Apps. This typically will be small and essentially optimized Flutter apps. Usually, these are bigger than native ones. The size of the build may vary from just a few to megabytes in scale. This depends on whether it is a development build or a release build. The maximum allowed apps are 10MB.

– Apps that perform Bluetooth communication with any hardware. Developing this kind of apps feature with Flutter can be done in two ways:  You can separately develop these features for iOS and Android and then add them to the main Flutter app using platform channels. Develop these features for both platforms simultaneously, using an existing Bluetooth plugin for Flutter – e.g., FlutterBlue.

Final verdict

To conclude, both Flutter and other established cross-platform mobile development frameworks like React Native have their pros and cons. No doubt, being a new entry in the market, Flutter has its limitations, but at the same time, the benefits are hard to ignore and are a perfect fit for specific use cases. Essentially, Flutter is the right choice if you want to reduce development cost and time while releasing the app on all available platforms simultaneously. However, before that, you should explore whether cross-platform mobile development is the ideal solution for your app or not!