Choosing the right technology and tools is one of the first decisions that has to be made when creating a mobile digital product. The market offers a lot of possibilities: starting with native solutions connected tightly with a given platform, through hybrid technologies (e.g. Flutter), ending on PWA. While using the latter carries significant limitations, hybrid technologies offer increasingly greater possibilities, which may raise questions about the sense of investing in fully native applications. In this article we check the differences, quote facts and bust myths regarding native and hybrid development.
The most common objections against Flutter apps
On the Internet there are a lot of publications regarding the differences in using Flutter and native technologies for mobile app development. Unfortunately a lot of them are outdated and describe problems and challenges of hybrid technologies that have long been solved or are no longer relevant due to other factors. The most popular ones are:
- challenges regarding the integration of platform APIs (e.g. battery, localization),
- larger size of the compiled app on disc,
- worse performance than native applications,
- low accessibility of packages and worse community engagement,
- the Dart language is less developed than Kotlin and Swift.
Let’s look at them closer and think whether they can still be considered in terms of native technologies being superior to Flutter.
Challenges regarding the integration of platform APIs
In the early stages of Flutter’s development, one of the main challenges was integrating with the native APIs of specific platforms. Initially, this could seem complicated because it required direct communication with native code, which increased the amount of work needed. In practice, this problem was solved thanks to a rich ecosystem of ready-made plugins that provide access to most device features — such as the camera, GPS, Bluetooth, push notifications, or file storage. Additionally, the Flutter community and Google’s official support continuously develop and update these plugins, making integration with native platform APIs much simpler and more reliable than ever.
Larger size of the compiled app on disc
One of the most frequently cited drawbacks of applications built with Flutter is larger file size compared to their native counterparts. This is mainly because the compiled package, in addition to the code and assets, also includes the graphics engine responsible for rendering the application. However, it’s worth noting that with each new version of the framework, this difference has been steadily decreasing — the Flutter team consistently optimizes the compilation process and the so-called tree shaking (removing unused assets, etc.) while minimizing dependencies. Moreover, modern mobile devices are equipped with increasingly larger and faster storage, the cost of which continues to decline each year. In practice, this means that the slightly larger app size is becoming less and less of an issue for both users and software developers.
Worse performance than native applications
It is also often claimed that applications built with Flutter have noticeably lower performance than their native counterparts. In practice, however, these differences are marginal or even imperceptible, especially on modern mobile devices. Flutter compiles directly to machine code on mobile platforms, allowing it to achieve animation smoothness and interface responsiveness comparable to native applications. Moreover, in some aspects — such as time to first frame or overall smoothness — Flutter can even outperform native technologies. As a result, performance differences today are mostly theoretical, while the real user experience remains at the highest level.
Low accessibility of packages and worse community engagement
It’s sometimes said that Flutter has a “limited package availability” and “smaller community support” compared to native technologies. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The Flutter ecosystem is growing at an incredible pace — new packages and tools are being created every day, expanding its capabilities on Android, iOS, and other platforms. The Flutter community is one of the most active in the open-source world: developers regularly publish updates, share solutions to common problems, and create extensive documentation. As a result, many popular features that once required native implementations can now be fully achieved using Flutter alone.
The Dart language is less developed than Kotlin and Swift
Although it’s often said that the Dart language is less mature than Kotlin or Swift, in practice these differences have only a marginal impact on most mobile projects. Indeed, Kotlin and Swift offer a number of modern language constructs that Dart may lack, but for the most part, these are simply forms of syntactic sugar — features that make the code more concise but don’t expand the language’s real capabilities. It’s also worth noting that many features once missing in Dart — such as pattern matching — have already been added. Moreover, Dart’s similarity to other fully object-oriented languages (e.g. Java or TypeScript) gives it a lower entry threshold. As a result, beginner programmers can become production-ready more quickly. Ultimately, the differences in “maturity” between these languages do not translate into differences in work efficiency or application quality, and in many cases, Dart proves to be more accessible and practical in everyday use.
Is it worth investing in native applications?
Choosing the right technology to best meet an application’s needs is one of the most important decisions to make in the product development process. At The Code Brothers, we believe that Flutter is the best choice for today’s world. In exchange for slightly more complex native API integrations and a larger application package, we gain the invaluable advantages of multiplatform support and a consistent design across all devices.
Po pracy najchętniej bawię się modelarstwem i chętnie wyskakuję zagrać w piłkę na orliku.
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