Flutter is a free-to-use, open-source application development platform by Google launched in May 2017.
It’s considered among the best software development platform with comprehensive built-in tools and development kits, with cross-platform capabilities, allowing you to build both IOS and Android mobile apps using the same codebase.
Despite being a relatively newer edition to the cross-platform SDKs family, Flutter has successfully dragged many app developers.
According to Tim Sneath, Flutter’s product manager, over 2 million app developers use Flutter actively to build high-quality mobile apps with a native touch.
This blog will review this developer-friendly app development tool and its primary benefits. It will further highlight the key areas where Flutter has an edge over its competitors.
What’s Flutter?
Before the inception of cross-platform app development platforms, developers had to create separate mobile apps for each platform using Swift, Java, Kotlin, or Objective C. This practice was mutually criticized by app developers and business owners, as it would obviously take more time, resources, and budget to build the app.
Software development companies collaboratively built cross-platform development frameworks to deal with this issue, from which Xamarin, React-Native, and Flutter are among the most popular ones.
Although Xamarin and React-Native have been in the industry for a long time, Flutter is gradually stepping up to become the undisputed king of cross-platform mobile app development toolkits.
What Does Flutter Do?
A flutter is a fantastic tool for building mobile apps for IOS and Android from the same codebase. These apps give a truly native feel as they are compiled using their corresponding platform.
Flutter can also help build superfast web applications from the same mobile app codebase. This can help keep the appearance of mobile and web apps uniform.
As Google backs the SDK, it can be seen primarily in Google Assistant’s multiple modules and for the interface of Home Hub. Moreover, Consumer business giants like Alibaba and eBay also prefer Flutter over others, thanks to its intuitive user interface design capabilities.
Apart from building mobile apps with intuitive design and exceptional user interfaces, Flutter is also used for web development. It’s among the most used development framework for website development services in USA. However, its cross-platform development feature eclipses its usage in web development.
Flutter’s Programming Language
The Flutter software development kit uses Dart, Google’s new programming language, intending to displace traditional JavaScript. Programs written in Dart can be launched directly on a server, but on a browser, they must be compiled into JavaScript using the Dart2js tool.
Dart programming language is used to create applications for Google’s upcoming Fuchsia platform. Its structure is reminiscent of popular object-oriented programming languages like Java or C#.
Benefits of Using Flutter
Every software development tool or language has particular merits and demerits. In Flutter’s case, the perks and benefits of this fantastic tool easily outshine its flaws and make it a clear winner over other SDKs. Let’s highlight the six key features of Flutter.
1- Hot Reload
To view changes in the code, iOS and Android developers must first create the code, let it compile, and then wait for the device to load it. However, users can quickly or directly check the effects due to Flutter’s hot reload.
In other words, your development team will be able to work more effectively, make rapid adjustments, and see results with the help of QA engineers and designers. It is the sole reason why Flutter app development takes less time than other platforms.
2- Reusability
The days of writing separate code bases for iOS and Android smartphones are long gone. Because of Flutter’s code reuse capabilities, you can create just one code and deploy it across several platforms, including the web, desktop, Android, and iOS. This allows you to deploy your app considerably quicker, lowers costs, and cuts down production time by half.
3- It’s All Widgets
Flutter’s comprehensive range of widgets allows the development of mobile apps of any size and complexity with ease. Regardless of screen size, widgets are responsive, efficient, and customizable.
Moreover, an extensive selection and Cupertino ready-made widgets are present. It is also simple to deal with animation and motion detection flexibly. As a result, everything flows faster and smoother.
4- Truly Native Feel
Using an internal graphics engine called Skia, the Flutter program renders design. In contrast to most other mobile app frameworks, this software enables fast and intuitive UI development.
Ultimately, a native app and a Flutter application will look the same because Flutter doesn’t depend on interpreters or intermediary code representations.
The development team for Flutter may also easily collaborate with iOS and Android users. It is a fantastic choice for building mobile applications by mobile app development Dallas since it has a relatively rich and distinctive UI.
5- Easy to Use Platform
Flutter offers cutting-edge OS capabilities in the form of ready-to-use plugins that Google supports, such as GPS coordinates, sensor information gathering, authorization handling, Bluetooth, authentication, and other features.
Flutter may create a connection between its Dart programming language and the native code via platform channels if your project depends on an OS-level functionality that is not accessible as a plugin.
With just a little more work on the native side, you can accomplish whatever a native app can do on a Flutter app.
6- Cost-Effectiveness
Flutter helps optimize development costs. Before Flutter and other cross-platform SDKs, people had to build separate apps for Android and iOS users.
This increased the overall cost and development time. In fact, there are still hundreds of companies offering services for mobile app development in Chicago, Houston, Miami, etc., for a single platform.
However, since Google launched Flutter, developers and business owners are quickly shifting to cross-platform development platforms to save the time and resources required to build separate mobile apps for each platform.
The fact that Flutter enables developers to use the same code for iOS and Android with little editing makes all the difference.
Wrapping Up…
Like any other development framework, Flutter has some flaws, or we could say it’s not entirely perfect, but the advantages of this fantastic development kit clearly outshine them. If your target audience is on Android and IOS, and you don’t want to miss out on anyone, you should opt for flutter mobile application development.
