Why flutter is the future of cross-platform mobile app development?

What are the similarities between Birch Finance, Alibaba, Google Ads, and Reflectly?

They’re all made with Flutter. The Flutter community claims that over 100,000 apps have been downloaded and installed on hundreds of millions of devices.

Why is flutter so popular, and why do experts believe it to be the future of cross-platform mobile app development?

Let’s look at what makes Flutter unique, why it’s the future, and how it can benefit your developers.

What is flutter?

Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit by Google that allows you to develop applications for multiple platforms. From a single codebase, you can develop applications for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, web, and Google Fuchsia. The UI toolkit is written in C, C++, and Dart and helps you create beautiful, natively-compiled applications.

What makes flutter unique?

One essential feature that makes Flutter unique is that it allows you to create apps for multiple platforms using a single codebase. You don’t have to absolve yourself in writing new codes for each platform.

The Flutter framework guarantees uniformity in appearance. Therefore, the user interface is identical on iOS and Android. As a result, when you hire Flutter developers, they won’t have to deal with platform-specific styling issues.

There are other advantages to Flutter as well, such as editor integration, live reload, and quicker time to market. We’ll talk more about these benefits in the later sections.

Why is flutter the future of cross-platform mobile app development?

Experts believe that Flutter is the future of cross-platform mobile app development . Here are some reasons why Flutter is revolutionizing mobile app development.

1. Simple setup with excellent documentation

Since Flutter is a Google offering, it’s fully supported by Google’s Material Design team. Due to this support, Flutter app development becomes a lot easier, even for beginners. The framework comes with exhaustive documentation to help developers start a project. The documentation is in-depth and allows developers to resolve all challenges they can encounter during the project.

2. Least coding required

As previously mentioned, Flutter lets you create cross-platform applications with a single codebase. As a result, the time and effort required to develop an app are significantly reduced. Additionally, it uses the programming language Dart, which focuses on usability and ease of use. A JIT compiler can be used to compile it into the JavaScript code, and its syntax is similar to that of C.

3. Custom UI widgets

One of Flutter’s best features is its widgets. The entire graphical user interface comprises these customizable, built-in UI components. You have access to everything you need to develop the mobile app when you work with Flutter.

Material design widgets for Android and Cupertino for iOS are two widgets that should be the primary focus of Flutter mobile app development. You can use Dart to add gestures, animations, and widgets because Flutter also has its high-performance rendering engine, which you can use to draw widgets.

4. Faster development

The single codebase allows you to build an app in a short time. You can develop a working cross-platform app quickly. Besides, Flutter comes with a hot reload feature that allows you to debug apps. Any changes that you make in the sources are reflected in the running application without the need to recompile the source code or restart. This helps you save a lot of development time.

Flutter has low testing load requirements. Since you can build two different native mobile apps with a single framework, the testing time and effort are substantially reduced.

If you’re a startup, entrepreneur, or business that wants to develop a mobile app quickly, Flutter is the ideal framework for you.

5. Faster time to market

In this hyper-competitive business landscape, the quicker you can get your product to the market, the better chances you have of succeeding. A quicker time-to-market can help you reach your target customers before your competitors, get feedback quickly, and upgrade your product as per the requirements.

Since Flutter app development and testing is less time-consuming and resource-intensive, you can get your app to market in less time. As a result, you can develop a significant edge over your competitors, get more sales, and increase profits for your business.

6. Less development cost

The development cost of a mobile app is an important consideration to keep in mind. A mobile app’s development typically costs around $30,000 on average. Of course, the price can reach $100,000, depending on the requirements.

Smaller businesses and startups have less financial support. Furthermore, development costs are not the only ones. It would help if you also thought about other costs like team building, server costs, marketing, etc.

The development costs of Flutter are significantly reduced. You won’t need developers specializing in one platform because of the single codebase. You can create cross-platform applications by hiring Flutter developers. Even if you don’t have a lot of money, you can get a cross-platform app up and running because the requirements for testing are low.

7. Performance boost

An essential reason why mobile app developers prefer Flutter is performance. To better understand the performance of Flutter, let’s compare it with its closest competitor – React Native.

React Native uses key UI building blocks while running JavaScript in another thread. Therefore, a bridge is needed to establish communication between native modules. This process is both resource and time-consuming.

Contrastingly, Flutter compiles everything. It consolidates the app logic and UI modules into machine code, making the app work faster and boosting its performance. This approach makes Flutter apps are faster than not only apps built using React Native but also native apps built for specific platforms.

Since modern-day customers prioritize speed and usability over anything else, Flutter is likely to be the choice of development for mobile app developers in the future.

8. Firebase integration

An underrated perk of using Flutter than many companies and developers tend to ignore is integration with Firebase. It’s a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform by Google for creating web and mobile applications. Firebase’s services benefit developers, such as databases, analytics, crash reporting, and messaging. Additionally, developers using Flutter can take advantage of Firebase integration because it is simple to integrate with Flutter.

9. Ideal for MVP

The minimum viable product (MVP) refers to the product with the minimum features and functionality required to understand the needs of the target customers. It also helps get enough validation for continuing the further stages of product development.

As more and more software development companies are adopting an Agile methodology, the importance of MVP continues to increase. For companies that want to get the product faster into the market, showing the MVP to the investors and shareholders is essential. Flutter is ideal for developing an MVP, considering the less time and effort you need to build an app.

10. Own Engine for Rendering:

You can develop user interfaces that are identical across all platforms thanks to the native rendering engine. The property display layer for the platform widget and the synchronization of widget data for the framework typically face additional challenges due to the rendering process.

In this instance, Flutter is making every effort to facilitate this procedure. It uses Skia and only requires a painting canvas for rendering, not a specific user interface component. What a significant benefit of using Flutter!

How does flutter benefit developers?

In the previous section, we discussed why Flutter should be the choice for mobile app developers in the future. But keeping business benefits aside, Flutter is also beneficial for your developers. Here’s why.

• Large community support:

  Flutter has received a lot of support from the community because of Google. In addition, developers who use Flutter report bugs to Google itself. The 25k GitHub shows that Flutter is getting more and more popular. Therefore, hiring Flutter developers will make it simple to resolve these issues.

• Ideal for advanced UI:

  If you want your developers to work on an advanced UI, Flutter can be an excellent choice. The framework uses Skia, an internal graphics engine that renders all parts of the interface. This makes creating visually-appealing UI elements easier for developers.

• Excellent developer experience:

  If you want your developers to make world-changing products for your business, you need to ensure they get an excellent experience. Flutter takes care of that. It comes with cutting-edge IDE support that makes sure all your developers’ problems are immediately resolved.

• Live Reloading:

  Flutter made the most of its advantages by developing a fantastic live hot reload feature. Before, the developer had to write custom code, wait for it to be compiled, and then either download it to the device or use a stimulator to see how plugins changed. But now you can see the changes in real-time, and Flutter makes it easy to make changes without restarting if you make mistakes while writing the code.

• Open-source packages:

  Developing mobile apps at a quick pace can be challenging for your developers. Flutter makes things slightly easier. It comes with numerous free, open-source packages that allow your developers to build apps quickly. Some examples include Flutter Ecommerce, Youtube_player, and Frideos_flutter. Additionally, because it is an entirely open-source platform, developers from all over the world continually contribute to the library, expanding the framework.Moreover, flutter itself is an open-source project, so developers from worldwide continue to add new packages to the library.

• Native features:

  Access to native features is another prominent advantage of Flutter. The exhibition of Flutter applications is indistinct from local applications. With Flutter, developers can access native features using Objective-C, Swift, or Java. Native languages are required to implement camera and geolocation functions. In contrast to most cross-platform frameworks, Flutter does not require intermediate code representations; instead, the applications are integrated directly into the machine code.

• Integration with existing apps:

  Flutter’s onboarding process is simple; you don’t need to write new code to move your app to the framework. For instance, Let’s say you want to run an existing mobile app written in native code on Flutter. Would you request that your developers create brand-new code? You do not need to do that with Flutter.

• There will be no more lengthy tests:

  Testers will only conduct one set of tests if there is identical code for both platforms. Testers save time by developing multiple platforms. Testers will need to put in a little more effort and run automated tests on both platforms if the apps differ.

• Gives developers a fantastic experience:

  Through plugins for IntelliJ/Android Studio and Visual Studio Code, the Flutter framework provides best-in-class IDE support. Furthermore, rather than requiring developers to be experts in Swift, JavaScript, or any other programming language, the Flutter mobile application development process only requires developers to be familiar with the Dart programming language.

  The best feature of Dart is that it supports both ahead-of-time and just-in-time compilation, allowing for hot reloading during app development. Additionally, tools can perform all the heavy lifting for a Flutter app development company because the language is statically typed.

Wrapping up

There are several reasons why experts believe Flutter will be the indisputable king of mobile apps in the near future. A single line of code that quickly generates a vibrant, juicy image of your application and provides users with information. This sounds too good to be true. However, the world has changed so much that the supernatural is commonplace, unlike in the past. The Future of Flutter 2023 slogan ought to be “making dreams come true” and “doing it beautifully and correctly without much difficulty.”The business benefits of Flutter are substantial. Companies can get their products to the market quickly, reduce costs, and target multiple platforms, and hence more customers, at once.

From the developers’ standpoint, Flutter is easier to use and allows faster app development. The growing community ensures that any bugs are promptly addressed.

So, what’s your favorite reason for using Flutter?

Or, if you are looking to build any cross-platform mobile apps using Flutter, the experts at TriState Technology can help.