Today, mobile applications are gaining much popularity. There are fortunately so many available programming tools for developers to create applications. Flutter is among these tools and at present has distinguished itself. Flutter is an open source mobile User Interface framework and since it’s open free then naturally it is free.
Released by Google in May 2017, it enables creating a native mobile app with just a single codebase. The demand for Flutter development is gaining more momentum these days. The framework includes a couple of critical parts, namely:
- A software development kit, which is a collection of tools that help develop apps, including tools for compiling code to a native machine code for both Android and iOS.
- Framework, a collection of reusable User Interface elements, such as text inputs, sliders, buttons and so on that could be personalized for your own requirements.
Flutter app development is in demand when it comes to mobile applications. Flutter, as well as the Minimum Viable Product or MVP strategy are becoming more and more a part of discussions pertaining to mobile app development strategies that save time. This article looks into today’s time-tested approaches.
The Necessity of Building an MVP
MVP is the basic most app version, which holds big prominence in the app industry, especially among startups that are willing to have their idea validated in the market. It’s pretty simple what the idea behind the MVP is, which is to develop an application version that shows the app’s one-of-a-kind features and sharing it with a pool of potential users for scaling how they feel with it.
Benefits with the MVP Characteristics
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- Testing the Idea at the very beginning. It’s a fact that for a business owner, his/her idea is the best, one that comes with a guarantee of market success. However, is this belief enough to succeed? The ideal of knowing this is through launching an MVP.
- The benefit of an MVP is that it does not only help get the idea in the market, it also helps in market research, help in gathering feedback and boosting the app for the future. Through this, it helps understand the validity of the idea and also help save costs which goes in building an app that is less-liked.
- Less development cost. The more function added to an application, the bigger the resources would be and thus the higher the cost. With an MVP solution, the cost is less than half to that of a full-fledged development app.
- Saving time and effort. Business organizations adopt an MVP not only due to the perks of low cost of development, but also on the time and effort savings. An MVP allows determining if the efforts are getting the results anticipated or otherwise. In turn, this enables startups to wisely use their potential.
- Reaching out to investors. Getting the interest of investors in an app is not an easy job. What helps is approaching with a functional model instead of a diagrammatic representation. With an MVP, the chances of getting investors hooked to the app idea is greater than giving them an idea.
Why Flutter is Ideal for MVP Development?
The Flutter framework, in time has become popular for improved bug fixes, widgets and features. As an open source framework it complements MVP development whether for startups or established organizations.
- Cost-efficient mobile app development. From the very beginning, cost limitations have been a major hindrance for organizations wanting to join the mobility environment. Native apps development could cost a lot. Flutter development could facilitate budget-friendly MVP in numerous ways. It comes as a solution, which supports mobile app development that matches with Android and iOS with one code base. Moreover, the widgets make it easy for app developers to work on the UI aspect of an app in a seamless manner.
- Flexible and expressive User Interface. Flutter carries what Google is renowned for, and that is flexible UIs for boosting the customer experience. For instance, the framework has built-in widgets for default animations for normal scrolling, material design and rich motion APIs among others.
- Best Native performance. Truly, you have a big budget for mobile apps and thus you could proceed in hiring separate iPhone and Android app developers. However, for those on a budget, most frameworks compromise with performance and so undermines the app’s user experience. Flutter however provides quality performance.
Apps run via a code that’s natively compiled with no intervention from interpreters and therefore could quickly start maintaining a constant 60fps speed. Flutter furthermore provides a native experience to users.
- Supports a lot of IDEs. When hiring Flutter developers, they could opt for several IDEs or Integrated Development Environment. Flutter Lives makes use of a Visual Code that is considerably faster and lightweight, with various features available in IntelliJ and Android Studio, eradicating therefore the need to start again.
- Expedited process of development. App development with Flutter provides fast turnaround time. This is due to the fact that the software development kit comes with a hot reload function, making it possible for developers a real-time review of app changes, making the entire process of development fast and easy.
- Seamless Firebase integration. No need to have a separate backend to develop a simple MVP. Firebase has out-of-the-box support for many services, such as cloud functions, real-time databases, cloud storage, authentication, hosting and more. The Firebase Remote Config basically helps in doing app changes without a long time to wait for the play store to deploy the same.
The support becomes scalable, server-less and unnecessary. Simply, this means that there’s no need to spend a lot of resources and time on backend development. It could be combined directly with a tool to automate development and release processes, such as Fastlane, which facilitates continuous delivery.
- In-built campaigns. After launching of an app, the first main concern for most businesses is marketing. Flutter has a solution to this. It enables promoting an app on various platforms inclusive of Google Search, Gmail, Google Play and YouTube and grows continuously on the Google Display Network.
- Modern framework that’s React inspired. Basically, React is a library of JavaScript. Flutter has a modern framework that’s inspired by React. Therefore, it allows developers to make use of the entire framework or parts of it as per the requirement.
- Active Community. The super-active community of Flutter is active for contributors all the time. The community has various platforms that are inclusive of Github to raise tickets, getting involved in Q&A talks in Stack Overflow, Meetup for next event, YouTube, Slack, Medium and many more platforms.
- Continuous enhancement and growth. The application development setup of Flutter is dynamic. It comprises of UI components and a dedicated widget engine that resembles the native platforms. Widgets also are flexible in terms of customization and are designed in an aesthetic way.
Author Bio:
Olivia Diaz is working at eTatvaSoft, an Enterprise level Web & Mobile Application Development Company. Being a tech geek, she keeps a close watch over the industry focusing on the latest technology news and gadgets. Follow me on Twitter.