Flutter framework – and therefore Flutter mobile development – is taking the world by storm. As of May 2022, Flutter was used to develop and deploy over 500,000 apps, according to Flutter’s official Medium channel. And what’s here not to like? Flutter lets you use a single codebase to create apps for the web, desktop, and mobile devices at the same time. Plus, they come with great design, excellent performance, and most of the native features included as well.
However, building a fully-functional app with Flutter isn’t as easy as it seems. Since the technology is still pretty young, there are a few challenges you will likely come across when you decide to build your new cross-platform applications with Flutter.
So what should you keep in mind when you want to use Flutter for your new desktop or mobile app development project?
What is Flutter?
First version: Flutter 1.0, released on December 4th, 2018 (the first stable version).
Latest version: 3.3.10 (Flutter Framework) and 2.18.6 (Dart language), released on December 15th, 2022.
Flutter is an open-source development framework powered by Dart programming language through which you can create multiple native-like applications with only one codebase. In the beginning, Flutter was mainly used for mobile app development, but now, developers can use it for web, desktop, and wearable development as well. Currently, Flutter supports six platforms: Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web applications.
That means you can use Flutter to build apps that will run on both iOS and Android devices but also design desktop or web apps with it too.
The Flutter framework consists of a software development kit (Flutter SDK) and a widget-based library. The library is one of the major reasons why Flutter is quickly growing in popularity, as it makes development much easier and faster for developers. Widgets work as the “building blocks” of a Flutter app used to create both the visual components of an app (like buttons and text) and to add any functionality to the app (like gestures). Naturally, developers can create their own custom widgets as well.
Another significant advantage of Flutter is that Dart programming language can compile the app code into the native machine code for multiple platforms directly. That way, Flutter can easily communicate with the native platform without needing a JavaScript bridge like other cross-platform frameworks, ensuring the app runs super fast.
Thanks to those unique features, developers can now create cross-platform apps that both look amazing and perform just as well as genuine native apps would.
That’s only a fraction of what Flutter can do, though.
Benefits of Flutter app development
A survey run by the Flutter team found that 55% of developers using Flutter are very satisfied with the framework overall, while 38% are somewhat satisfied. That means that out of the surveyed developers, 93% said they are happy with how Flutter works.
What exactly makes Flutter so popular with developers, though? Let’s look at some of the biggest benefits of this framework.
Hot reload feature makes adding changes much easier
Flutter’s hot reload feature allows developers to add any changes to the code and then immediately check how the application performs after the changes without having to restart the application. That way, developers can easily spot any issues in the code and fix those straight away. That’s a considerable time (and nerves) saver.
Single codebase for multiple platforms
Besides supporting Android, iOS, Windows, and web apps, Flutter 3 now also supports Linux and Mac operating systems as well. So whether you need to build a mobile app that will work smoothly on both iOS and Android or a desktop app for all three main operating systems, you can make those as just one Flutter app rather than two or three separate apps.
Excellent performance
Worse app performance when compared to native applications used to be one of the most significant drawbacks of cross-platform applications. Thanks to Flutter’s own rendering engine, direct code compilation, and hundreds of available Flutter widgets, there’s barely any difference in performance between native and Flutter apps, though.
Beautiful, customizable User Interface
One revolutionary thing about Flutter is how it helps developers quickly build fully customized user interfaces thanks to the ready-made widgets. Inside the framework, you can find widgets for adding gestures, animations, or shortcuts and also a dedicated widget set for android apps or iOS devices. Even better, those widgets can be fully tailored to your needs!
Access to native features
Gestures, Bluetooth, or camera access used to be only available inside native applications. Flutter has all of those functionalities (and much more) included in its widget library, though. iOS Face ID? Fingerprint scanner? Or maybe support for screen readers? With Flutter, you can develop apps with all those features with ease.
Blazing-fast
Flutter is powered by Dart, a language that is optimized for performance on any platform, making Flutter apps load nearly just as fast as native apps. Based on a few online researches, Dart is approximately two times faster than JavaScript, as well as slightly faster than React Native as well.
Common Challenges in Flutter Mobile Development
Flutter is evolving at a rapid pace, and in a few places, it is already outperforming other cross-platform frameworks. However, since it’s still pretty new, it has some visible weaknesses you should consider when deciding what cross-platform framework to use for your project.
Limited resources
There are many guides and tutorials available on Google’s website related to Flutter, and the community centered around Flutter and Dart continuously adds new resources as well. However, since Flutter technology is so young, the amount of materials you can find on Flutter development is still pretty small when compared to other, much older technologies.
So it might happen that you won’t find online a widget for a specific feature you need or a guide for dealing with an issue you are dealing with during the development stage.
App size
A significant drawback of Flutter apps is that they are unfortunately on the heavier side, as they need to store the widgets and runtime data inside them. After looking through the Github or StackOverflow threads, you can see that huge file size is actually one of the most common issues developers working on Flutter have.
You might also encounter trouble encouraging people to download your app due to its large file size. The bigger the application size, the more time it will need to download and the more device space it will take – so there’s a risk that your potential app users might not even decide to download it after seeing the size. The weight also makes Flutter not suitable for designing Instant apps – the ready apps are simply too big for loading instantly.
Not all platform-specific features are available
Currently, you can find around 24,000 Flutter third-party libraries online – and the number of packages is quickly growing as the Flutter community regularly keeps adding new ones. It might be difficult for you to find widgets for some very specific or less popular operating system features though. In that case, you will either need to make the Flutter widget from scratch or wait until someone creates and publishes a package with this feature.
When it comes to the newest features, you also need to remember that all new features will be first added to native SDKs – Android Studio and iOS SDK. To have those supported inside Flutter (and all other cross-platform toolkits), you might need to wait a while
Finding Dart developers can be a challenge
Dart programming language is often mentioned as Flutter’s biggest asset but also its main weakness. The language is robust, clean, and efficient but since it’s still in the development stage, it’s rarely used outside of Flutter.
That’s unfortunately why finding a developer who is familiar with Dart programming language to hire might be quite hard. Looking at the Stack Overflow survey for 2022, only 6% of surveyed developers said they are using Dart, compared to 65% who said they are using JavaScript. On Tiobe Index, Dart is ranked pretty low as well, at 38th place.
The main problem is that there aren’t many resources available yet, and the community around it is still relatively small, so learning how to use Dart or solving development issues on your own can be pretty tricky. But as Flutter app development grows, so will the demand for flutter developers, so finding talented developers familiar with Dart and Flutter in the future should be easier.
How our team at INVO can help you with Flutter development?
Does Flutter sounds like something that could be useful for your new development project, but you don’t have anyone in your in-house team that knows how to use Flutter to its full potential? Then, how about our Flutter team will lend you a hand? We have been testing and designing apps using Flutter ever since Google released it. Now, we have over 30 apps made with this technology in our portfolio – with an app made for the Maczfit brand being one of them.
We have quite a large Flutter team as well, made out of over 20+ talented Flutter developers. Whether it’s about designing app architecture, ensuring that the app is as secure as it can be, or building apps from the ground up – we know our stuff.
So if you’re looking for a team of experts in building Flutter applications – contact us, and let’s get your new Flutter project started!
Conclusion
Flutter has come a long way since it was first released in 2018. Now, this framework allows developers to build apps for any mobile device or desktop operating system that don’t look any different from true native apps.
You basically get all the benefits of having a cross-platform application without having to worry about lags or missing functionality. But, of course, every rose has its thorns, and Flutter isn’t without weaknesses.
If you partner with an app development company that knows Flutter and Dart well, then you can count on them to find a way around those drawbacks. In case you aren’t yet sure whether Flutter will be a good solution for your future application, how about booking a quick chat with us at INVO? If you need help making the right decision or building an outstanding app that you can be proud of, we’re always happy to help.
