Why I Do NOT Use Flutter for Mobile App Development

This is the most asked question on Development live streams. Now I have recorded the answer to share.

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[kodplanet]

In my company, our Flutter apps are intensely using map display, clustering, map routing, RFID, and Bluetooth operations. We have our own design system, so we initially created a UI repo & storybook. Then started building the apps really very fast for both platforms. For the last 2 years, we did not face any issues related to Flutter that we can not solve technically. Yes, it may be slow in some milliseconds, and not smooth sometimes. But in the end, it is business and the company is making money with a single codebase :)

[bohdanilkiv]

"I do NOT use Flutter, because look at this Notion app, which was written on React Native working slow". Good job, man

[tjiepouw]

i was a iOS dev, and about 2 years ago i learned Flutter, and now i work as a Flutter dev. I never look back.

[mada]

My feedback as a flutter developer

- It is true that native performance is better than flutter but flutter performance can be improved (not easy to do but totally possible) Optimize rendering with lighter widgets, using isolates (flutter way to do multi-threading) and you can also use shader caching, improving performance on web is a lot harder and required web development knowledge.

- The look and feel of flutter apps totally depends on the developer, it can be worse or better than the native apps but the truth to be said in flutter you can have any custom UI you think of with any UX nothing is impossible when it comes to UI UX In flutter I think that's the best thing about it.

- The most annoying thing about flutter is when you want to get features that are not natively supported in flutter (video editing for example), in this case you will need to write code for each platform you targeting (java/kotlin for android, swift/objective c for IOS, javascripte for web...etc) and then write code to handle connections between flutter and the native side, sometimes you may even need to host a native platform component in flutter as a widget.

[koflerkohime]

Flutter is the choice for me: App development is quite new for me - although I have ~15 years of experience in software. I work in the fields of autonomous systems and robots. My daily languages are C, C++, and perhaps a bit of Python. I've done a little bit of "classic" desktop UI development using the Qt framework. But mostly I write "backend" code that runs as middle-ware on embedded industrial systems. I've found Flutter to be very interesting as a framework to get into for developing my own app(s) in my spare time. I would not consider using native frameworks as I would have to learn both Android and iOS. Using Flutter I can keep focusing on the UI and business logic written in Dart while only considering native details when I need to (which I hope to be rare). So Flutter is great too for senior embedded engineers that want (hope) to do app development in their spare time (you weren't talking about that I know).

[json]

Flutter is just fine for most of projects out there. It saves you a lot of time of developing for two differents platforms. And the look and feel well it depends on your designer... after all. If you don't like that design in flutter I hesitate it will Iike you in other frameworks.

[nvrmindthis]

I’m a native android Dev by trade, ventired into flutter development and im truly enjoying it. Flutter can invoke any native iOS and Android feature by using channels, so using new features if needed is really not an issue.. it’s not great for everything but 95% of apps can be written with flutter and your average consumer will not care.. like I said, not ideal for everything, so use the right tool for the job to meet the business requirements 😊

[peterispaukss]

In my case Flutter provides exactly what I need- rapid prototyping on all of the most popular platforms.
I don't need all the newest bells, whistles and visuals the phone has I just need it to run as intended.
I hope the speed will get better in time as Flutter gets more attention.
Paldies Aivar!
Kā vienmēr saturīgi! :)

[rarescruceat]

At the core, I'm a native android dev, but I've decided to work on my own app in flutter (I can't afford to hire an ios dev). I hope to finish the app by the end of this month. After +3 months I am delighted with the progress and the overall dev experience. Initially, I was a little bit frustrated but in about ~1 month, I started to really like it. I'm curious to see the performance of the end product. I think flutter is a good choice for apps built by 1 man team, but I will have a founded answer only when I will publish my app and test it in the real world.

[candk]

"native apps just look better." --That's like saying one blank canvas will produce a better painting than another blank canvas. You can make beautiful apps equally.

[kelvinsmith]

If you want to get ur business fast into the market use flutter then slowly move to native when the time is right

[pneptun]

A view from the domain of business software: 1) speed - you don't need it. Flutter or even react native are fast enough, not worth the extra cost. 2) newest sensors or OS features - you won't need it. If there's a new sensor released now it'll take more time to get high enough userbase for it to matter than it'll take google to release flutter support for it. 3) i forgot what other reasons he gave 😂 but basically - it's totally not worth the cost of keeping two teams. In the realm of business software, that is. Maybe games or some specialized consumer apps are different 🤷‍♂️

[siphiworatsibe]

Great advice, but Flutter is the future, native will ultimately Feezel away, so we might as well start working with it now.

[njengathegeek]

In fact I am going to forget any other programming language and framework and work with flutter only

[haddow]

I would say, that based on your points presented, you video title is misleading. According to your video, you've only made a basic tutorial app in Flutter, which not enough experience to really provide a useful pros and cons list of the language over.
Plus, you spent most of the video explaining why you don't think multiplatform app development is any good in a non small company application.
In reality, you could have swapped out any cross platform app development language and the video would have been exactly the same.
It's true, if all you are going to do is focus on ios devices and most likely only work for larger big budget companies, them yes, I would agree focusing on native would probably be best.
I would go out on a limb to say that those views, while still currently valid, are likely to become dated quickly though.
Seriously, what really new tech has the phone market come out with recently that the app market has needed to jump on? Not much.
In any event, I would kind of expect a video focusing on why you weren't using a specific language like Flutter to actually focus on the languages failings more than how it doesn't fit in with your personal preferences and worldview.

[GabrielM]

Flutter has flutterflow as someone who hates frontend i love how i can just use flutterflow to make a nice ui and add my code later, if theres is something out there that can do the same for android native i would like to try it

[cloudkamp]

This is the problem with being a professional developer, you don't want to feel stupid because you don't know. Flutter is really good but I respect your opinion but honestly you just don't want to feel stupid for not knowing how to do it better.

[mortenovergaard]

For a true non-biased comparison on the various cross-platform mobile frameworks Google for "parallel futures in mobile application development" written by a compiler engineer who actually knows what he is talking about.

IMHO An 8-minute video is simply not giving the true picture of whether to use Flutter or not.

And btw Meta have ditched RN themselves when developing Threads - they are using KMm. RN is only used for quick prototypes.
Source: Meta.

[proudmoroccan]

Flutter framework is improving after each release. I have one problem with the framework, the application size is too big, and I hope they will fix this problem.

[nrg]

As a professional who is stuck using React Native - IT SUCKS ASS