Flutter vs. Ionic – The Right Framework for Your Mobile App

[Mobcoder]

URL: https://channeliser.com/blogs/5284/473/flutter-vs-ionic-the-right-f...

 

This decade has witnessed the biggest technology intervention the world has ever seen. So we can say without any reluctance that technology is influencing every part of daily lives. And mobile apps have secured a substantial portion of this influence and making our lives more easy and delightful. 

 

To make this technology more ubiquitous, smartphones and handy devices for Android and iOS come to the market every month with some more upgraded features. Anyways, it is necessary to increase the reach of applications to the people by making them compatible with multiple devices. For that, to create a native application for android and iOS or a cross-platform application compatible with Android and iOS both.

 

For cross-platform applications, Ionic and Flutter are the two names that are in high demand these days. And each platform has its pros and cons.

 

So now let’s explore every feature in detail and put the comparison in detail:

 

Language

 

Both Flutter and Ionic are open source software development kits used for the development of hybrid mobile applications. But if you choose Ionic, it requires sound knowledge and expertise in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. And if you go with the Flutter, it requires the knowledge of dart which is meant for the server as well as the browser developed by Google. 

 

In the most precise words, we can say that anyone with the basic knowledge of Android and iOS, then they can work with the fluter without any difficulty. Basically, it doesn’t require any sound knowledge of the language. 

 

Dart has some unique features like functions that can be put at top-level, outside of any class in Dart. If we talk about classes in the dart, it has internal interfaces. No external interface makes the language less complex. The warnings appear in dart but it doesn't bring any interruption to the execution of the program. 

 

Fast App Development

 

Flutter has a hot reload feature which allows the quick and easy experiment, build UIs, add features, and fix bugs. The feature of hot reloads works by injecting source code files into the running Dart Virtual Machine (VM).

 

And in the case of Ionic, its rich library of front-end building blocks makes it a tool for developing smart and scalable apps. But it is lagging behind flutter in case of fast app development.

 

Performance

 

Performance has always been a prime concern for any application. Let’s say that the application's UI is awesome and support and compatibility are perfect. But if it is not up to the expectation in terms of performance then all the efforts and work will go in vain.

 

But if you go by the statistics then 60 to 70 percent of users never use those apps again which pains them on performance in the first use. It directly means that if your application lacks the performance indicator then it is likely for you to lose 60 percent of users reach the start of the application launch.

 

If we talk about the Flutter in this respect, its application performance in most cases will be indistinguishable from the native app and even better in complex UI animation scenarios.

 

Unlike other cross-platform frameworks, Flutter doesn’t rely on any intermediate code representations or interpretation. Flutter application is built directly into a machine code, which can effectively, eliminate any performance bugs of the interpretation process. So we can say that the developers can release applications compiled ahead of time with Flutter.

 

Speed

 

Ionic based OS apps load in web views so the speed of the web views performance is limited In terms of animation as well, it runs slower due to web view performance. And it takes a collaborative approach to make it less messy, but this issue has always been there and it cannot be eliminated.

 

On the other hand, Flutter apps compile mode/Debug mode and build the use of a Dart virtual machine to run Dart code to enable stateful hot reload. And because of Dart VM, the speed of the code is fast.

 

Animations

 

In terms of interaction, animations always come at the forefront of the look and feel of the application. Animation lets users be glued with the application and creates a willingness to use the app frequently. 

 

And when Flutter steps in, it allows you to customize the animations which will be displayed on the front end. It also allows developers to implement shared element transitions, shape/color/shadow manipulations, clipping, transformations actions easily. Flutter also has a separate library for animations as well. So in terms of creating perfect animations, Flutter is the perfect option.

 

On the other hand, Ionic doesn’t have a separate library for the animations and applications run on a web view. This factor paves the way for the animation to take too much time to run.

 

Adaptation Risk

 

This unprecedented technology gets updated in some period of time and both flutter and ionic are too young in this industry.

 

In the case of Flutter, it has its own rewritten libraries which makes it more reliable and safe. On the other hand, ionic has kept changing things like support, standards, and libraries which can be completely rewritten at any time.

 

No Java SDK integration

 

In the flutter, there is no need to integrate the java SDK for JavaScript, which is very difficult in the case of ionic. On the other hand, Flutter uses the dart language for programming and it has its SDK.

 

Apart from the other advantages of flutter some other worth mentioning the benefits of using the flutter are:

 

– Documentation in flutter is comprehensive, well-structured, precise and clear

– It has multiple ranges of widgets. From buttons to padding, where every object is a widget.

– It is highly compatible with other programming languages and creates an eye-catching and attractive UI.

– Flutter is portable i.e. it can run on any device with equal efficiency, irrespective of its size.

– Perfect to build a minimal viable product (MVP) and gives access to native features with Hot Reload Feature allows you to check the updates instantly.

– Flutter has Pre-Built Components. Whereas Beauty is subjective but certain factors hold across many individuals' subjective experiences. On the other hand, Ionic has prebuilt Material and Apple components, Flutter has nailed implementation.

 

Conclusion

 

We have explained every feature and put every detail from the end-users perspective. Well, from the discussion, Flutter has emerged a clear winner here. Still, it is a matter of choice and the type of project you have. 

 

But if you want high speed, interactive UI and don’t want to face any risk from the new updates and painless SDK integration, then Flutter can be your ultimate choice of framework. https://mobcoder.com/contact