Features That Make Flutter the Best Framework for Mobile Application Development

Mobile applications are no longer just some apps on smartphones. With the evolution of technology, the same applications can now run on desktops, smart watches, smart TV, wristbands, and many other platforms. Because of this recent revolution, mobile applications have become the cornerstone of the entire cognitive ecosystem.

But, as they say, every coin has two sides. On one side where the reach of mobile applications and their access is increasing, there is also another side that represents the need for apps to cater to smooth navigation amongst all the platforms and devices and have seamless user interfaces for a satisfactory user experience.

Also, with the ever-evolving tech domain, it is important for an organization to keep the innovative drive on and get the true advantage of faster go-to-market initiatives. For that to happen, it is essential that the development of mobile apps is fast, effective, and continuous.

Hence, businesses choose a mobile app development framework that supports dynamic market demands so that the business can explore the true scale of the mobile application and minimize the risk of obsolete technologies.

And as it is said that necessity is the mother of invention, there is a front-end development framework that has been making rounds amongst the developers because of its single codebase for all platforms.

Yes, we are talking about Google’s recent prodigy project, Flutter. It helps developers and enterprises build “Beautiful cross-platform apps in record time.” And with their latest announcement in Google I/O 2022, they have already released Flutter 3.7 for early adopters. Now Flutter’s latest update not only works for mobile applications, but also for the web, desktops, and embedded devices.

Imagine reaching all your target audiences on all the possible screens with interactive and attractive UI in a matter of days and not months. Also save huge costs with development, deployment, and change management.

This fact itself proves that the Flutter framework is here to stay, sustain, and evolve as a platform with growing market demands. Even if we do not take this point into consideration, Flutter is the best framework for mobile applications alone as well.

To back our words, we are stating below a brief overview of Flutter, its current status, best use case, and key features of Flutter app development (It being A TOTALLY OPEN-SOURCE is not even one of the reasons!).

Here we go!

What is Flutter?

Let’s start by understanding what Flutter is.

Flutter is a modern, open-source, and all-purpose development tool from Google for building intuitive cross-platform applications. Sky was the original name when it first emerged in 2015. At that time, Google Flutter could only render at a frame rate of roughly 120 for Android.

After three years, Google pulled off a major coup when it revealed the first stable version of Flutter. By allowing users to work simultaneously with Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, and regular upgrades, it has dramatically increased efficiency and developers’ productivity.

Flutter is the only portable framework with a mobile SDK that offers a responsive style without utilizing a JavaScript bridge. Dart is the Flutter programming language which is very simple to learn and has easy syntax. Thus, in terms of performance. It gives tough competition to its main rival React Native, followed by the Flutter vs. React Native debate in the dev community.

Some Facts and Figures of Flutter Application Development

Here are some quicks stats and numbers about the Flutter framework that will help you get better insights into its popularity:

• According to Flutter Q3 2022 survey, 93% of developers are positively satisfied with this framework, and 53% of them are very satisfied. This has been consistent for the last three quarters.
• Flutter is among the top 4 app development frameworks available today.
• Flutter has been downloaded over 11 billion times and used in around 51,000 app development projects.

• The user base of Flutter reached 2 million only in 2 years since its first release.
• Flutter usage has been consistently increasing over the last few years. It has 150k stars on GitHub, 104k followers on Reddit, and 155k questions asked on Stack Overflow.
• Compared to last year, Flutter app developers are more skilled and professional as a result of extensive documentation and open access to resources.

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What Types of Mobile Apps Can You Build with Flutter?

Every day, there is a new Flutter app in the market. Being a modern and feature-rich SDK, Flutter has helped organizations create a number of cutting-edge applications, including industry giants like BMW, Groupon, Google Ads, Tencent, eBay, The New York Times, Hamilton, and so on.

Here are the most suitable types of mobile applications (with examples) you should create using the Flutter technology stack:

Social Media Apps

One of the greatest benefits of Flutter for mobile app development is that it helps you build intuitive and user-oriented apps for multiple platforms. Hence, social media applications are of the finest use cases of Flutter mobile app development. Some of the most popular social media apps developed in Flutter are Meeve, Pairing, KlasterMe, and N8.

Gaming Apps

Flutter offers 60 and 120 fps for multiple devices along with a range of game engines like Feathers, Quill, SpriteWidget, and Flame. This enables businesses to create high-performance, 2D, 3D, and complex gaming apps in a breeze; for example, Orbit, Kelimelik, Chess Variants, Google I/O Pinball

Machine Learning Apps

Flutter has a standalone library named firebase_ml_vision 0.9.7 that allows you to utilize the functionalities of Firebase ML. You can use this plugin for on-demand ML without Firebase and implement ML-based features in your app.

Desktop Apps

Although Flutter front end development was only possible for mobile apps in the beginning, the framework now provides robust support for desktop app development for macOS, Linux, and Windows. You don’t have to rewrite the codebase as well.

FinTech Apps

With the rise of FinTech app development, Flutter has come out as an ideal framework for such projects due to its speed, flexibility, and high-end security features like a fingerprint scanner, face ID, or touch ID. For instance, Nubank, one of the biggest digital banks in the world, uses Google Flutter as its primary app development tech stack.

Key Features of Flutter App Development

For a better understanding, we are going to talk about the benefits of Flutter cross platform app development from two different perspectives – the technical side and the business side.

Technical Advantages

Hot Reload

Conventionally, mobile developers had to wait a few minutes for a change to the code to reflect on their screen. But, with Flutter development, there is a feature called Hot Reload that allows developers to render a change in sub-seconds.

In the long run, it saves time, money, and effort. While applying the change, the Dart Virtual Machine also makes a widget tree thus only the code that has relevance to the change will get changes while the current state of the application will remain as usual in the virtual server.

So, developers can view the effect of the change without the fear of the change affecting any of the components, emulators, and hardware.

Native Performance and Internationalization

Flutter libraries enable you to get access to widgets that support the platform differences of Android, iOS, and Google Fuchsia. Thus, when you use Flutter as a framework for UI development, you can use widgets that can integrate all the platform-based functionalities of the application, such as scrolling, navigation, icons, and fonts.

And for those who are looking for building enterprise applications for their internal organization's ecosystem or an application built especially for a specific region, Flutter mobile app development provides an effective native experience based on the platform i.e., Android or iOS.

It also helps you create standardized and effective UIs based on geographic locations. When you build an application for a specific geographic location, Flutter allows you to build and modify the UIs of the application based on the preferred language, text as well as layout of the targeted location.

Huge Widget Library

The reason why Flutter app developers can build applications faster is because of its impeccable ready-to-use widget collection. Along with a huge collection of widgets, it also has animations that you can select to make your application interactive and engaging.

You can choose a range of widgets based on the platform, the nature of the applications as well as the geographical locations where you want to deploy the application. Moreover, the widgets entered in the Flutter library are not some random additions; they are standardized versions based on the preferences of the users and thus it not only gives you the pace in mobile app development, but it also helps in making your application more acceptable for your target audience.

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Tooling, Language, and Extensions

It's fairly easy to get started using Dart, the Flutter programming language to create cutting-edge applications. Although Google rolled it out in 2011 to take the role of JavaScript, Dart is a very dynamic language in itself. Developers who have worked with JavaScript or other C-like languages will have a little issue learning Dart in just a few days.

And in terms of tools and extensions, a crucial plugin manager (pub) is part of the standard toolchain, and the pub.dev plugin repository has a sizable library of plugins. If developers need access to a platform feature for which no plugin already exists, creating one is not too difficult. You can easily create plugins to take advantage of native platform features.

IDE and Firebase Support

The Flutter framework offers end-to-end support for a number of IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) used to design and develop apps, such as Visual Studio Code, Codemagic, IntelliJ Idea, Android Studio, etc. For a better user experience, you can also use different editor plugins.

Flutter uses Google's Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform for creating online and mobile applications, called Firebase. Messaging, crash reporting, analytics, and database are some of the Firebase services that can be useful to developers. As a result, they can use this Flutter feature to leverage the modern capabilities of Firebase.

Own Rendering Engine

With Flutter app development, you can do a ton of things with your apps that are not possible with other SDKs. It obviously calls for a rather robust structure. The majority of the aforementioned things would actually be impossible without a powerful cross-platform rendering engine.

For rendering itself onto a canvas provided by the platform, Flutter leverages Skia. This rendering engine enables you to launch Flutter UI on almost any platform. To put it another way, you can streamline the development by a large margin since you no longer need to modify the UI in order to transfer it to another platform.

Business Advantages

Integration, Flexibility, and Scalability

Because of its easy-to-access and easy-to-integrate functionalities, the Flutter architecture provides enhanced flexibility, integration, and scalability capabilities. Whether you need to modernize a legacy application to match the current and future market needs or you need to build a quick wireframe to present to the investors, Flutter can be extremely useful for both purposes.

One-Stop Solution

Instead of creating havoc by using different platforms and frameworks for different purposes, Flutter app development provides all-inclusive solutions to develop, deploy, and manage changes. It means that you can build effective UIs, deploy them in the system, and if there are any bugs or changes, you can observe as well as fix them easily from Flutter.

Apart from that, the Google Flutter framework also allows the developers to loop in all the non-technical personnel and let them contribute to and supervise the development.

Robust Support

In order to promote the growth of Flutter, developers, and businesses using this Kit, Google values its creation and continuously works to build a robust support network.

Despite some people's skepticism, the innovative and young Flutter is growing in popularity globally and collaborating with global giants like eBay, Alibaba, BMW, Google, The New York Times, and others. These organizations have tested the benefits of using Flutter and plan to do so in the future.

Despite having a relatively short history, Flutter mobile app development is doing a terrific job in helping its users to dominate the commercial sector and has a wealth of advantages for businesses that utilize it to develop apps.

MVP Development

If you are planning a create an MVP where you only develop a native application to penetrate the market and then expand to the web platform once you have a stable financial and user base, Flutter is the best choice for you.

Because of the single codebase and cross-platform functionality of Flutter, you can easily use the same code to expand your products at any time in the future. This can not only save you time and money, but it can also help you ensure that the user experience is seamless across all the platforms and gain investors’ trust.

Faster Time-to-Market

The Flutter development framework is more responsive than its rivals. When compared to developing the same app individually for Android and iOS, you can often anticipate that a Flutter project will require at least twice as few man-hours.

And the reason is quite straightforward - you can provide the appropriate visuals in your application without writing any platform-specific code. Flutter enables the implementation of any 2D-based UI without requiring communication with a counterpart in a native application.

In addition, Flutter offers a declarative UI construction API, which significantly improves efficiency. When it comes to visual modifications, this is the most noticeable Flutter feature.

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Unlock the Power of Flutter for App Development with RadixwebSo, now that you are well aware of the features and benefits of Flutter mobile app development, the question that truly remains here is, are you ready to add your name to this list?Mobile apps that are reliable, affordable, and can boost performance levels are a necessity for organizations in 202. Developers and enterprises from varied industries are realizing the potential of Flutter and working to make it the ideal app development framework for their companies. The performance of Flutter is on pace with that of the greatest native apps currently available, and customization options are enormous as well.Hence, this is high time for you to make the right noise, with the right speed by collaborating with a partner you can trust, such as Radixweb – a leading Flutter app development company. Get in touch with us to transform your vision and develop a cutting-edge app using Flutter.