Flutter App Development - The Future of Modern-day Cross-platform Apps

While mobile devices were increasing significantly, the demand for mobile app development services grew when Flutter came to light. When tech innovators unfolded their minds to create something revolutionary to dominate the technology world, it became a reality.

Introduction to Flutter

Flutter is a cross-platform app development framework launched by the tech giant - Google. It is a rich open-source UI tool kit. The strategy behind creating Flutter is to evolve the way developers build native-like mobile apps both for Android and iOS using one programming language and one codebase.

Discussing details

Flutter is a collection of Software Development Kit (SDK) that assists in developing mobile applications. SDK tools help in assembling your multi-platform code (code for iOS and Android) into a single native machine code.

For fully-customized applications, Flutter developers consider using a UI framework that includes a collection of reusable UI widgets (buttons, text inputs, sliders, etc.).

Only one language, Dart, created by Google in October 2011, is used in developing Flutter mobile applications. It has the lowest learning curve. You can create mobile and web applications. Flutter enables apps to run at a speed of 60FPS. This platform comprises a few development tools - hot reload, analyzer, debug, etc.

Why is Flutter the best cross-platform framework?

Flutter is the future of cross-platform app development. Developers are accepting Flutter mobile app development at an incredible pace. Even top tech companies like Alibaba, Groupon, eBay, Tencent, etc., have already updated their applications on this platform. Dart, the programming language, is one of the reasons why developers are looking forward to developing apps using Flutter. There are various other reasons why Flutter stands out in the cross-platform development landscape.

• One codebase - Developers need to write only one code to publish an application on multiple platforms like Android, iOS, and Windows. Entreprises are looking to develop apps with minimal effort and time - Flutter is the solution.

• High-performance - Flutter boosts the application's performance, which is hard to achieve using other cross-platform tools. Flutter has Skia, a rendering engine for rendering itself onto the platform-provided canvas. Because of this engine, the in-built UI of the framework can be launched on any platform virtually.

• Fully-customized widgets - The UI/UX framework of Flutter is compiled with platform-centric widgets. Flutter comprises mainly two widgets - Cupertino and Material- allowing platform-specific UI/UX design. Tailor-made designs on front-end development give a remarkable experience to the users, which is closest to native.

• Efficient development process - Flutter uses one programming language and one code base, which speeds up the app development and testing process. Additionally, the development tools like hot reload to make it easy for developers to build an app while testing it in real-time.

• Collection of open source tools - Google introduced Flutter with comprehensive open-source tools and built-in packages that support easy and fast development. Some of those are Frideos_flutter, Youtube_player, and Flutter eCommerce. The significant advantage of being an open-source platform is that developers from all over the world keep adding their distinctive work to the library, making it more extensive.

• Extensive learning resources - The wide range of open-source tools enables developers to learn more about them and apply more to their declarative UI style.

• Testing efficiency - Flutter has been around enough to showcase its reliability and efficiency concrete proof. It can manage millions of queries a second, increasing usage and more - no wonder the technology leaders trust Flutter for app development. Apps like Google Ads, Reflectly, Alibaba are a clear testimony of Flutter's capabilities and dominance in the market.

• Rich community support - Flutter is backed by a solid open-source community in documentation, feedback, and development contributions, along with desktop support and state management.

• Best platform for MVP - Based on a single code, Flutter makes it easy for you to develop the MVP of your product without investing much time and resources. Due to its compatibility with Firebase, you don't need to create different backends to create a basic MVP. Flutter is the crucial framework to developing an efficient and effective MVP for startups looking to attract investors by presenting MVP.

Flutter vs. React Native - Which one to choose for the best-performing application?

With regard to cross-platform application development patterns, both React Native and Flutter are comparatively similar, and both are still very new to the market (React Native was introduced in 2015, while Flutter in 2017). The two innovations rank exceptionally high on GitHub with 71,9k stars (Flutter) and 79,6k (React Native).

Flutter is rich in fully customized resources, while react lacks platform-specific modules. This platform is becoming the first choice for gaming or heavy animations app development, while this is not the same case with React Native.

The development of cross-platform applications using Reach Native is not as smooth as Flutter.

Both frameworks are great for developing mobile apps. Still, Flutter offers many features to help you develop aesthetic mobile apps with improved user experience. It also enables you to save time and money.

Cost of Flutter app development remains in control

When things move efficiently and effectively, the development cost automatically comes down. Today, thousands of small businesses are emerging and contributing to the world economy. Some entrepreneurs are looking to disrupt the digital space but can't invest an enormous amount in specific app development for their business with limited funds. Operating any business involves various other expenses like team building, hardware, marketing, and more. At least, Flutter helps in reducing development costs. Only a single Flutter app developer can do the magic; enterprises don't need to hire platform-specific developers.

Wrapping up

The ease of developing multi-platform mobile applications has ballooned ever since Flutter released its final version. Developers can create applications for multiple platforms using only one codebase solution. Consider Flutter as a go-to cross-platform framework to build extensive mobile apps by a single codebase. The cost-efficient process does not need to keep different teams for other platforms.

Google recently announced that more than 2 million developers are trying their hands on Flutter. It is one of the fastest-growing open-source UI software development kits used by developers and organizations worldwide, including enterprises, agencies, and startups - with thousands of apps being published each month on play stores using Flutter.