If you want to stay up to date, you will need to develop an app for your product or service. And once you decide to develop an app, the main question arises? Should it be an Android or iOS? Or both? Can I get developed for both at the same time and yet cost lesser? Before answering these, let’s dive into the history of mobile operating systems.
There were times when we were limited in operating systems.
The progress never ceased to advance. There were mobile OSs like Symbian, Tizen, and even Windows Mobile. Developing apps for each of them required different coding skills.
This process did not change when Android and iOS started to dominate the mobile operating systems market. Anything other than Android and iOS were being terminated, raising the most important question for most developers.
Despite having different APIs, libraries, and SDKs, was there a way to build the app with a single codebase and use it for multiple mobile operating systems a nd other operating systems? Since there were mobile apps with different resolutions, sizes, and other aspects, it was not an easy task to develop a framework that would work as “one size fits all.”
The case was that if you fix the front-end, you may end up breaking back-end or vice versa. Most would say the framework known as React Native was the closest thing to fix this.
However, the game changed in 2017 with and that it started its development in 2014.
The giant company we all know, Google, unveiled their, we can say without exaggeration, hidden “weapon.” Think of this “weapon” as something you dreamt for a long time.
It is a “weapon” that kills your search for a different developer for different mobile OSs. At first, Flutter was intended to use in the development of mobile apps.
Then, after some time, it is being developed to use on the other platforms, web, and desktop. You may ask why anyone would choose Flutter? What are its advantages?
Even though some may argue that the Flutter is in its infancy, in our modern days where technology increases logarithmically, it hard to say that two years is a short period. Here, let’s list some of the benefits of using Flutter.
- Less time to code. You can search on YouTube and find videos that show the comparison of compiling apps via Flutter and other frameworks. Time used to code is staggering in some cases;
- Less difference between the intended and actual designs;
- Faster than other frameworks, like React Native;
- Potentially “one size fits all”;
- Overcoming challenges brought by cross-platform approaches;
- Using the Dart language makes it possible to code once for both frontend and backend.
- Since Flutter is developed by Google, it has built-in support for Material design. This empowers your user interface;
- Being an open-source. That leaves the door for the developers to implement unlimited applications. The limit is the imagination of the developer.
- Easy integration with different platforms;
- Themes according to your OS;
- The building process is powered by code magic;
- Great support from the developers and community that believes in Flutter.
Considering all this, we, professionals from Bekey, use flutter for our different projects.
Its scalability and ability to solve cross-platform related problems make it viable to choose for our projects. Despite being in a development stage, flutter offers a lot, and the flutter development team of the Bekey expects that after some time, this framework will offer a lot more.
