Flutter App Development — Everything You Need To Know (Updated 2021)
Do you want to develop mobile apps more quickly? And to reduce costs with cross-platform development? Of course, you are. That’s why in this article, we will give everything you need to know about Flutter App Development — from the app owners’ perspective.
What is Flutter?
First, here is the basic (a.k.a essential ) knowledge about Flutter app development.
Let’s put ourselves into the mind of a mobile app developer. You built a cool app and everyone loves this. But there is just one problem, it’s only on iOS. So, every other day, you get the questions like “when is it coming to Android?”
It’s when you need cross-platform development like Flutter. With Flutter development, you can use the same code base to compile apps directly into machine code for Android, iOS, web, desktop, or anywhere that you might want to paint pixels on the screen.
Flutter app development: Advantages and Disadvantages
The Stack Overflow survey showed that Flutter is one of the most loved tools and technologies of 2020 by developers worldwide. And Xianyu, which is created by using Flutter, was downloaded more than 50 million times and has over 10 million active users every day. Sound interesting?
But which is like all programs, Flutter has both pros and cons. So that, in these paragraphs below, we will tell you what the advantages of Flutter are as well as some advice based on our experience.
Flutter Advantages
1. Faster code writing
With Flutter’s hot reload, developers can check the effects immediately or without delay. In other words, your development team, together with QA engineers and designers, can cooperate more effectively, make quick changes, and see the outcome as well.
2. Quicker time to market
As a business owner, you may think that one of the biggest Flutter’s advantages is hiring one team for both iOS and Android platforms. However, another important benefit of Flutter is fast time-to-market.
Flutter significantly reduced the time we needed to develop new features from one month down to two weeks. Bruce Chen, Senior Development Engineer, Alibaba
3. Less testing
Because you have the same application on both platforms, your quality assurance process will test less. Then it will be much faster.
4. One single code base, for many platforms
In 2019, at Fluter Interact, Google announced Flutter Octopus, which allows debugging on multiple platforms. That said, developers can create a solution that works simultaneously on the mobile, web, and even Mac.
5. Native performance
The Flutter software renders use an internal graphics engine known as Skia. This software allows fast and well-optimized development than most other mobile app frameworks. A Flutter application will be ultimately indistinguishable from the native app.
6. Beautiful UI
This year, Flutter partner with Google Assistant and Lenovo teams to the most recent contest: Flutter Clock. In fact, we are always amazed by what developers around the world are building with Flutter. Let’s take a look at the following video:
7. Perfect for MVPs
If you’re looking to test and assess your mobile app idea before moving forward with a full-blown software rollout, Flutter is the perfect option, especially if time is short.
8. Low-cost app development
You only require one Flutter development team to developed and manage your apps for both Android and iOS versions. Hence, it significantly reduces expenses on human resources and shortens the time required to complete the development tasks.
Flutter disadvantages
1. Small developer community
Flutter app development is making trends. However, it’s a relatively new tool that needs to do some catching up with more established frameworks. Therefore, the pool of developers fluent in Flutter will be moderately smaller than in the case of other tools and frameworks.
However, that is not to say that finding tech talent with Flutter expertise is impossible. Contact us now!
2. Apps’ size
Applications written in Flutter are bigger than native ones. Check out the article Comparing APK sizes. However, the Flutter team is working on reducing the size of apps made with Flutter.
Flutter has pros and cons. But, the advantages of Flutter for businesses far surpass any disadvantages. Grab some advice from our experience here and make your decision to choose Flutter or not.
Why should choose Flutter for cross-platform development?
While there are many cross-platform developments of apps including Xamarin developed by Microsoft, and React Native developed by Facebook, etc. Why should you choose Flutter for cross-platform app development?
- Fewer Development Effort — Cross-platform apps require less effort when comparing with native apps. Because developers can use a single code and reuse it on multiple platforms. Hence, the apps will be developed faster.
- Less Time In Testing — You don’t need to have separate quality analysts for each platform or multiple devices to check the app. Instead of two versions for Android and iOS, they have to test only one version of the app.
- Faster Development — What’s more? If you want to customize the app, it is easy for the developers to modify the minor changes in a single code.
- Less Development Cost — As a result of all the above advantages, cross-platform app development reduces time to market. On the other hand, the cross-platform apps can run on both Android and iOS alike
So, if you want to deep dive into the reasons why your business needs cross-platform, we already shared our thought in this article.
How Flutter reduce app development cost?
Let’s see what’s great about Flutter in this Developer Keynote (Google I/O ’21) below.
That said, ByteDance, the company behind TikTok is using Flutter in more than 70 apps. Productivity is why they continue to use Flutter. Their engineers say that switching to Flutter has allowed them to ship new apps and features 30% faster.
That’s huge!
By working with one codebase instead of two, the technology reduces significant app delivery time. As a result, the more productivity it offers, the more development cost savings it unlocks!
Flutter app examples
At Google I/O ’21, they also revealed that there are more than 200,000 apps using Flutter in Google Play store like WeChat, myBMW, and Grab. Not only that, within Google, more than 30 teams choose to build with Flutter for its productivity.
- WeChat super app has over 1.2 billion userbases on Android and iOS uses Flutter.
- Other popular names like BMW, SHEIN, DiDi, Grab, Alibaba, Reflectly have Flutter-based apps.
- Innovative apps such as Kite (investment trading app) and Wombo (singing selfie app) are built using the Flutter framework.
- Toyota is bringing Flutter to their next-gen vehicle infotainment systems.
- Samsung is porting Flutter to Tizen (a Linux-based Operating System) with an open-source repository.
As you can see, Flutter apps examples presented above prove that are creating a next-gen mobile app industry. And we can’t deny that with the new Flutter v2.2, Flutter app development will become a choice for many developers as well as business owners.
Flutter vs React Native: Which one is better?
More and more companies choose Flutter app development for their next projects. Plus, Flutter enables us to create not only mobile applications but also apps for the web and desktop. It benefits projects impacted by a tight budget and time constraints.
What’s more interesting is that Flutter joined the cross-platform mobile development race with a bang and now stands a good chance of winning it in the long run.
Recently, Flutter is moving forward incrementing that version number to 2.2 with lots of updates. Google also said the Flutter platform is also seeing gains from leading companies including Microsoft, Samsung, and Adobe.
As for React Native, the framework has all the necessary components to maintain its position as a cross-platform mobile development powerhouse.
Still, both Flutter and React Native offer more than just speedy development, they can reduce project costs as well. But which solution brings the fastest development time? Or fits your app idea best? The answer depends on your needs and preferences.
Conclusion
Flutter is one of the most forward mobile development trends in 2021. Google makes it a strong candidate to dominate cross-platform mobile app development shortly. Still, it has certain limitations.
So, it’s always worth discussing your project with an experienced team — who consider the different approaches with a varied enough skillset.
If you are looking for Flutter developers for your next projects, contact us at contact@agiletech.vn or (+84) 936 281 059 for more information.
We’ll give you a consultation that’d suit your needs best.
