Flutter vs Native: When to Choose Flutter Over Native

Flutter makes a strong case over native in more than one area.

The ease of development mentioned above comes from using widgets, reusable components that build applications. From buttons to images and even text, everything is a widget. You can mix and match them easily to create any user interface you like.

Flutter benefits from the features “hot reload” and “hot restart”, appreciated by developers for making the development process faster and easier. Hot reload allows you to see any changes in the UI instantly, reducing the waiting time between two changes. This means that a developer and a designer can sit side by side and try different layouts in real time.

Hot restart, on the other hand, destroys the current app state and rebuilds it to default. It allows you to check the business logic changes several times faster than on native platforms.

Flutter is a great choice for UI-heavy applications because it gives you control over every pixel displayed to the user. It enables a consistent user experience across different devices and platforms. You can also make your widgets look exactly as designed. When you don’t have to be concerned about platform abilities, the only limitations are your imagination and time.

Switching between dark and light mode can also be done painlessly. There is no need to create another widget just for the dark theme, you can use an existing one, set its theme to dark, and you’ll have it in dark mode.

Bugs are actually another plus in Flutter. Since the code is shared, bugs are too. It might seem like a problem, but actually this means they occur more frequently and are therefore more noticeable. They can also be fixed with just one change for all platforms.

The write-once-run-anywhere aspect has implications in testing as well. You’re essentially writing one app, so the testing is more thorough because you do it twice.

No technology makes sense without people. It’s people who come up with an idea for an application, it takes people to build it and people to use it.

Sometimes, during the application development process, the idea outgrows its original scope, and the team building the app grows with it. In large teams, communication is key, and if it doesn’t run smoothly, it impacts the project.

When developing the same application for Android and iOS, normally there’d be two separate teams. With Flutter, there is only one, which makes communication better, saves time on syncs between departments, and reduces the estimates for future features, leaving more room for application development. With only one mobile team, you also remove the risk of having different behaviors for the same use case appear on different platforms.