Building separate native iOS App and Android App is more expensive in terms of development and maintenance.
For this reason, companies that need to develop an App are increasingly adopting Cross-Platform Apps.
Flutter offers a fast way to create visually appealing Mobile Apps, Desktop Apps, and Web Apps from a single code base.
Having a Single Code Base allows reducing times and costs of realization and maintenance considerably.
Flutter is developed, used, and promoted by Google and is very popular among developers.
Now, let’s analyze the 10 strengths of this software development framework in detail.
Low-cost cross-platform App development.
The ideal cross-platform App should meet two requirements:
- Provide a High-Quality User Experience: smooth animations, UI elements without slowdowns.
- Be affordable from a development and maintenance perspective.
The advantage of Flutter is not only to develop one App instead of two but also to have fewer problems in adapting the App to each of the platforms.
Most frameworks have these features but only in the context of simple applications.
The real problems begin when an App becomes “overrun” with features, and the App inevitably becomes complicated.
Native App performance
A Flutter Code App is compiled to native ARM machine code using Dart’s native compilers.
Thanks to this native code, there will be no misinterpretation at runtime.
So, not relying on any code representation or interpretation, a Flutter App will be hard to distinguish from a Native App.
It works not only on mobile
The Flutter 1.0’s technology appeared for the first time in December 2018.
Since then, Flutter has demonstrated its ability to work not only as a toolkit for Mobile Apps but also for Web and Desktop Apps.
In May 2019, its development team announced a preview version of Hummingbird (Flutter for the Web); later, it changes its name to Flutter Web.
Thanks to all these updates, it is now possible to build iOS, Android, MacOSX, Windows, Linux, and Web Apps from a single code base.
Proprietary rendering engine.
Many Cross-Platform solutions look the same on iOS and Android, representing a UX (User Experience) problem for those who use the App.
For this reason, Flutter provides two libraries, Material Design for Android and Cupertino for iOS, that contain custom widgets for both operating systems.
The use of these two libraries is possible because the framework uses its rendering engine to design the widgets.
The Flutter developer is therefore granted total freedom in creating the user interface regardless of the platform.
Easy to implement logic
Flutter provides advanced OS features such as GPS coordinates, sensor data collection, permission management, Bluetooth, credentials, and other ready-to-use in plug-in features supported by Google.
Suppose the App you plan to develop relies on an operating system-level feature that is not available as a plug-in.
In that case, Flutter can establish communication between its Dart programming language and native code using the platform’s channels.
You can write inside a Flutter App in Java or Kotlin.
Attractive design
Flutter has two powerful advantages:
- An excellent programming language (Dart).
- A fast, high-performance rendering engine (Skia).
That choice was a well-considered solution that saves users from further time-consuming research.
The result is an excellent platform that helps developers of all levels create applications using appropriate design patterns and best practices.
Flutter provides beautiful and customizable widgets that make Flutter Apps look great.
Flutter natively uses Firebase as its back-end.
You can use pretty much all the benefits of Firebase in Flutter App Development, as you would with native development.
In addition, Flutter enables the creation of responsive Apps, and Firebase plug-ins offer responsive flows for working with data; this will allow you to integrate specific solutions into Flutter Apps quickly.
Flutter is based on Dart
In a Flutter development is used the Dart programming language.
Dart is one of Google’s programming languages created in October 2011 and has improved significantly over the past few years.
Dart is strongly typed and allows you to write much more structured code, creating complex applications and hierarchical structures.
The language has a clean and incredibly powerful syntax; this provides the ideal conditions for making a clear architecture and design for any application.
It is also worth mentioning that Dart guarantees consistency of work among programmers, durability, low maintenance, and common standards.
Much more than most other Cross-Platform development frameworks can offer.
Those who have already worked with popular languages like C#, Java, and TypeScript will easily switch to Dart and start using it right away.
A customizable Widget kit
Widgets are the basic building blocks used to construct a user interface of a Flutter application.
Its layering makes it easy to create applications of any complexity.
You can use ready-made widgets from Material-UI or implement specific components based on basic widgets.
With Flutter, you can also work flexibly with animation and gesture processing.
Therefore, you can combine quick work with high-level widgets and still have the ability to add and/or redefine deeper layers.
Hot Reload
The Hot Reload feature helps you experiment quickly and easily, create user interfaces, add features, and fix bugs faster.
It stimulates the development process by providing a developer with a source code record directly inside the working application.
It helps to reflect on the changes made to the code in less than 2-3 seconds and without restoring the application’s state.
Therefore, Hot Reload allows you to monitor the development of the application quickly.
Depending on the complexity and nature of the project, you can save 20%- 50% of the time, which can be spent on the development of other valuable features.
