At Google I/O 2018 a lot of time and attention was dedicated to discussing Flutter. Flutter is comparatively a new development technology for mobile app development and the rate at which apps Flutter apps are being published on Google Play is constantly increasing. Whether or not you decide to use Flutter, in order to further develop and improve your mobile app, you will need to learn about Flutter, what it is like, and its pros and cons.
Google’s mobile app SDK- Flutter, comes with a complete framework, tools, and widgets that provide the developers with a tool to develop visually attractive and efficiently working mobile apps for both Android and iOS apps. Flutter allows a smooth and easy cross-platform development. You will be able to use a single codebase for both iOS and Android.
Reasons to use Flutter
- Flutter is free of cost and open-source.
- Based on fast, object-oriented programming language called Dart.
- Provides its own widgets which look good and are easily customizable.
- The widgets make the Flutter apps look and feel great.
- The architecture is based on a widely used reactive programming.
- It is direct competition with React Native.
Advantages of using Flutter
- Faster coding. Flutter provides mobile app development that is not only quick but also dynamic. The hot reload only takes a few seconds and allows the teams to add features and fix bugs. Hot Reload also helps in developer-designer coordination when you want to improve an app and check the effect of the changes applied right then. Almost all changes can be hot reloaded, but there are also certain changes that can’t be.
- Single Code. You can write just one code which can be used for two different platforms.
- Testing. When you use the same code for two platforms, the testing required also decreases. Automatic tests are to be written only once and there is less work for the Quality Assurance team. But if there are differences on the apps, they will obviously have to tested on both the platforms.
- Fast & Smooth. Flutter provides you with apps that are fast and smooth.
- Designs. Flutter allows you to easily create your own widgets or bring changes to the existing widgets.
- Same app UI. Your new app will be able to look the same even on older versions of the iOS and Android apps. For supporting older devices, there is no additional cost.
- MVP. Works as a perfect Minimum Viable Product to show the investors. Flutter will be a perfect choice in cases where there are time constraints.
Risks of using Flutter
- Beta version. The beta 2 version was announced earlier in April 2018. The stable version of Flutter still hasn’t been released after so many months. There can be changes and improvements which will create the demand for change in the code.
- Libraries and Support. The libraries and support offered by Google for Flutter are quite impressive with functionalities that can be readily implemented. But not every functionality can be found in the libraries. Your developers will be required to build it themselves, which is a bit time-consuming.
- Continuous Integration. The developers will have to use and maintain custom scripts in order to build, test and deploy.
Conclusion
Flutter has definitely many more advantages than risks. It allows cross-platform app development for beautiful and high-performance mobile apps. It also saves you time and money so Flutter is an option that must be considered. Even though Flutter lacks some important aspects, it is pretty great that through Flutter Google is creating a new pathway for cross-platform mobile app development. To exactly know how it works, you must try using Flutter and check for yourself, you will know better then.
