It is difficult for any entrepreneur to adopt a new technology, just because it is new. Unless the technology works in their business favor, they can not take the risk! The technology needs to have the potential that can be leveraged in the best benefit of the business.
The same can be applied for Google as well. Nobody will blindly trust the newcomer Flutter instantly. Flutter is a new open-source cross-platform app development framework backed by Google.
Today, in the app-focused scenario, Flutter needs no introduction. Entrepreneurs vouch for it today and it looks like it will dominate the internet landscape in the coming years. It has revolutionized the way in which applications are built & helped developers in building reliable, sustainable and functional cross-platform applications. Flutter offers impeccable features, assistance & community support that people in no time have started embracing the framework. If you are wondering about why entrepreneurs and developers are so crazy, then we would love to answer this question in a unique way.
Let’s begin with the tagline for Flutter to tell you everything amazing about Google’s cross platform app framework Flutter. The tag line for Flutter is
Build beautiful native apps in record time
Let’s break this tag line in four different parts and discuss them individually!
Build
Flutter is currently focused on building mobile apps for Android and iOS but it’s long term vision sets it apart from the current mobile frameworks. Flutter is a complete SDK for building apps that interact using a screen and not just a framework. It means that flutter contains everything required to create a user interface, including the renderer and things to be rendered.
The fact that flutter is a complete SDK means it can be ported to run on practically any hardware that includes a display.
Flutter renderer uses Skia, a popular open source graphics engine which is easy to use on different devices. While people at Google are focused on mobile apps, various third parties have done ports of Flutter to desktops, TVs and to the Raspberry Pi. Thus, it can be rightly said that Flutter applications are the future!
It is going to be increasingly common to access apps across multiple devices including home assistants, interactive displays in cars, home appliances, wearables and other IoT devices.
Flutter’s architecture has all the right elements to create powerful and beautiful user interfaces for all the devices.
Beautiful
How can you be so sure that the mobile app you are creating will succeed when it is competing against millions of other apps in the Play store?
Even if you manage to convince a user to download your app, there is only 3% chance it will be actively used even 30 days later. A study says that only 0.01% of the total published mobile apps become a success.
An aesthetically appealing design is very important for a mobile application. If you take a look at some of the most popular apps in the last few years, they have their own design appeal. Moreover, beautiful apps win awards which add publicity
In recent times, more and more enterprises want their mobile apps to align with their branding just like for their website and web apps and it requires a high degree of customization.
Designers have great ideas but by the time they are finally implemented, everything is creatively reduced due to the toolkit limitations. Mobile applications developed in Flutter helps you go by your designers’ intuition and implement their vision.
Native Apps
For native apps, the developers have to usually build two separate apps using separate tools and languages. Although there are many advantages of building native apps, it also raises costs significantly, increases the risk and slows time to market.
Whereas with Flutter the developers can consolidate in a single codebase, unify their development teams, reduce risk and speed up time-to-market. All this while retaining the benefits of a native app.
As flutter has its own widgets, you might be thinking that Flutter applications will look or feel distinctly different than apps developed using platform widgets and tools. Platforms change between different OS versions, thus, even a platform native app will look different on various versions of OS. Therefore, it becomes meaningless for Flutter to try and be “pixel perfect”.
Flutter’s widgets adapt to the platform they are running on to provide the exact similar look and feel, including icons, colors, layout, fonts, scrolling behaviour and so on.
To summarize, Flutter not only provides advantages of native apps but also provides additional important benefits of cross platform app development.
In Record Time
Last but not the least, one of the major Flutter app development benefits is it helps you develop better apps faster. The most popular feature of Flutter is its stateful hot reload. The stateful hot reload feature is made possible due to advanced compiler technology and the fact that Flutter is native and based on reactive views.
Many developers have also given feedback that Flutter changes the way they code. They can try new ideas and layouts quickly and make changes requested by the clients right in front of them.
Some Frequently Asked Questions Answered for You!
What is Flutter?
Flutter is Google’s mobile app SDK to craft high quality native experiences on iOS and Android in record time. It is free and open source, works with existing code and is used by developers and organizations around the world.
What does Flutter do?
When it comes to users, Flutter applications make beautiful app UIs come to life. Considering developers, it lowers the bar to entry for developing mobile apps. Mobile applications developed in Flutter speed up the process along with reduction in cost and complexity of app production across iOS and Android. For designers, it helps to maintain the original design vision and that too without compromises.
Flutter is for Whom?
Essentially, flutter is for users who want beautiful apps with pleasing motion and animation, and UIs with the character and an identity of their own.
Apart from the users, other people concerned with Flutter are developers who want a faster way to develop beautiful mobile apps or a way to reach a larger audience with single investment.
Flutter is also for the engineering managers who have to lead mobile development teams. It enables the managers to create a single mobile app development team, consolidating their development investments to render more features faster, provide the same feature set to iOS and Android at the same time at lower maintenance costs.
What kind of apps can be built with Flutter?
Flutter is optimized for 2D mobile apps that can be run on both Android and iOS.
Apps that portray brand-first designs are especially well suited for flutter. Apps that need to look like stock platform apps can also be created using Flutter. Also, you can develop full featured apps including camera, geolocation, storage, network and more.
Who makes Flutter?
It is an open source project with contributions from Google and the community.
Who uses Flutter?
Irrespective of being inside or outside of Google, developers use Flutter to build beautiful native apps for iOS and Android.
What makes Flutter unique?
One of the Flutter app development benefits is that it uses neither WebView nor OEM widgets that ship with the device. Instead, flutter makes use of its own high performance rendering engine to draw widgets.
Moreover, Flutter is different because it only has a thin layer of C/C++ code. It implements most of the system in Dart language, which developers can easily approach read, change, replace or remove.
Conclusion
We hope that you are now pretty much clear about what is all the hype about Flutter and why it has been gaining so much popularity recently. Flutter app development service helps you save on cost, speeds up time-to-market and gives you the creative freedom to implement your ideas in the application without compromising on quality.
Let’s talk about your own mobile application idea!
by Sagar Bagsariya
