Flutter App Development: An Ultimate Guide

Flutter App Development has gained tremendous popularity in the last couple of months. If you can’t find enough information about it on the web, here’s your complete guide to understanding what Flutter does, how it works and what makes it better than other similar options available in the market.

The Internet is laden with numerous mobile apps to help you do just about anything. The only problem is that most apps only run on one particular operating system (OS). This means if you are an iPhone owner, you can’t avail all these apps. Similarly, an android user cannot access all the iOS applications.

It doesn’t matter if you are using an iPhone or an Android device; there is no app for everything (yet)!

This is where Flutter comes in. Flutter is a UI toolkit made by Google to help developers quickly create mobile apps that work seamlessly across iOS and Android devices.

Here are some interesting facts about flutter app development-

• Flutter is a cross-platform mobile app SDK that enables developers to develop apps for Android and iOS devices quickly.
• Flutter has popularity as it offers a wide range of rich widgets and UI elements that follow particular guidelines, making it easier for developers to build an app with stunning designs and experiences. Also, Flutter comes with a free price tag, and it’s customizable too.
• And Flutter also supports Hot Reload, which allows you to view changes in your code without restarting the application instantly.
• Flutter experience a variety of use by many companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Hamilton Musical Company, DocuSign, Moleskine, etc., who are using it to build their mobile apps.
• Flutter uses the skin graphics library, which allows it to render at 60fps on both platforms (Android and iOS). Also, it provides native performance because code written in Dart can compile directly into machine code.

Flutter app development for business-

Every single company has the vision to grow its business and offer users a quality service. But it’s only possible when they have a reliable app development partner who can help them achieve their goals.

Customers are constantly changing in the present competitive business world, and businesses must constantly change. In this case, flutter app development companies’ custom mobile apps help companies to stay ahead of the competition.

Understanding the flutter app development services for businesses-

1. High-end rendering engines: With Flutter, you can enjoy a hassle-free compilation of high-end rendering engines and native code. The online flutter app development business model focuses on providing a high-end app development solution to the developers. For this purpose, it abandons the presentation of the user interface from one platform to another. This easy adaptation can be helpful for business owners who wish to create a single app for multiple platforms.

2. Creating AR/VR apps: If you want to create an app combining Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), you have to know that Flutter allows developers to build immersive experiences on iOS and Android devices through plugins by ARKit and ARCore. You can also use a 3D engine in a Flutter application. However, in this case, it’s better to use a cross-platform solution like React Native or Xamarin and check the flutter tutorial.

3. Highly Productive: Flutter app development provides a “write once, compile anywhere” approach to code development. This makes it one of the most productive platforms in terms of development time. It uses the same language, Dart, on both Android and iOS, making it easy for you to scale your app’s development across multiple platforms seamlessly.

4. File size Highly Customizable: Another benefit of Flutter app development is creating custom widgets for any purpose. That means you end up with highly customizable apps that are attractive and functional in every way.

5. Cost-effective: Flutter app development is considered cost-effective and easy to develop mobile applications. The Flutter framework encounters cross-platform mobile app development and a pure react native mobile development tool.

What problem does Flutter solve?

Flutter is an excellent fit for businesses that want to develop custom mobile apps to support their business needs. If you need a more specific solution, you might consider other platforms like React Native.

Flutter language has been gaining popularity since its launching in 2016 by Google. It is supported by Google and other companies like Alibaba and Hotels.com, which should give you a fair idea of how it works and what benefits you can reap from using it as the preferred platform to build your custom business apps.

In simple terms, Flutter allows you to build native apps for Android and iOS from a single codebase and test them simultaneously on emulators or connected devices. The app development paradigm with Flutter is reactive or data-driven. In other words, the widgets are rendered when the data changes instead of when the user interacts with the UI (user interface).

A Flutter app is put together into native code that runs on a mobile device, and it is much faster than a rendition of an app using the JavaScript engine and DOM. Due to this reason, Flutter mobile app development is much more efficient and much quicker than its competitors like React Native and Ionic. Mobile app Development Company believes that the build time for a Flutter app is also swiftly differentiated to other platforms like Android Studio or Xcode.

Are there any cons of using Flutter?

However, I have been using Flutter for a while now, and there are a few areas that I believe need tweaks and modifications. These areas are as follows:

1. Documentation:

Flutter has excellent documentation, but it is not as detailed as I would want. In addition, the documentation is lacking on some parts, such as how to do onboarding for your app. While the documentation may be enough for a seasoned developer or an experienced one, new developers will find it hard to understand at first.

2. Third-party libraries:

Third-party libraries and plugins remain a limitation and need to be improved by the Flutter team. Although the Google team is working on it, we can expect more third-party libraries in future updates.

3. Creating small-sized spontaneous web and mobile apps:

If you’re going to develop an app that doesn’t require an intensive development process but only quick implementation with simple functionality, then Flutter is not the right choice for you. React Native or Ionic might suit your needs better in such a case.

4. File size:

Flutter has a large file size compared to Java. However, Flutter apps perform well and are good enough to use. Flutter’s file size is more significant than Java’s because it uses the Dart programming language and the Skia Graphics Library, a complete 2D rendering engine written in C++. However, it’s not as much as you think: Flutter apps use intermediate languages and the final app experiences translation to machine language at runtime. This is how Flutter achieves near-native speeds. Flutter will automatically detect your device’s capabilities and optimize the size of your app accordingly.

5. Lack of IOS feature support:

Flutter has rich features that help you create native apps for iOS. It’s effortless to use and pretty straightforward. The biggest drawback is its weak support for iOS features. For example, the platform doesn’t support NavigationStack, which Apple recommends using in their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). The problem is that Flutter apps are written totally in Dart, which does not support all of Apple’s native UI elements, like UITableView and UIPickerView.

6. Weak password manager support:

Flutter is not compatible with 1Password, LastPass, Dashlane and many other popular tools. It cannot also encrypt your data locally. And it’s not likely to be in the future as the Flutter team is working on their password manager that will come as a separate extension. However, if you’re someone who travels around with a laptop with all your passwords, you should be using a password manager anyway. Flutter uses an open-source platform known as Credential Storage to handle its application credentials. Credential Storage doesn’t work with LastPass at this time, but there’s a possibility that it will undergo integration soon.

Conclusion:

According to experts, Flutter app development has grown in popularity in the last few months. For instance, Forbes reported a 250 per cent increase in the use of Flutter since January 2018. Many developers are also developing acquaintance with Flutter due to its fame among developers on StackOverflow. As per Apptronik, a website that provides information on app development, 65% of new mobile app startups prefers Flutter.

Flutter provides everything you need to develop an app in one package: a reactive framework, an IDE, tools, a rich set of widget libraries, and a rendering engine. Flutter works with existing code supports older versions of Android. And it helps you write your application once and deploy it to all major app stores.

So to say all in a nutshell, Flutter is an intelligent toolkit and an answer to all your development issues.