Flutter 2 Vs Flutter 1: An Amazing Battle With Facts

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When you see around, the first thing you see is people looking into their phones playing games or scrolling through their social media. You must have wondered how these apps are made? These apps are built with different coding languages, and one of those languages is Flutter.

Flutter is open-source software that is used in making UI. Google created this language. Flutter has been used in making the UI of various software like Android, iOS, Linux, etc. There are numerous differences between Flutter1 and Flutter2; we have tried to explain those differences in this article.

History Of Flutter

Now let’s go back in time and have a look at the history of Flutter. When Flutter was first launched, it was named sky, and it used to run on devices with Android as an operating system. Flutter is a new open-source UI software development kit. It was first launched in 2015 at the dart developer summit. On December 4, 2018, Flutter1 was launched. Flutter 1.12 was released on December 11, 2019, at the interactive flutter event.

Flutter was released recently on March 3, 2021, during the Flutter engagement event held online due to the pandemic. Flutter’s foundation library was written in Dart. This foundation library provides basic coding components like class and functions.

Why Was Flutter Needed?

To learn about the need to create Flutter, you need to know that apps are typically divided into two categories. For an app to work, the code was written separately for the two categories. This increased the time taken and also doubled the efforts. To solve this problem, Flutter was created as it can be run on both. The categories due to which all the mess was created are:

• Android apps: these are the apps that can be seen on android phones or devices. The languages used in the creation of these apps are Java and Kotlin. The extension for these apps is .apk.
• iOS apps: these are the apps that you see in your iPhones or other Apple devices. The language used in developing apps for Apple devices is swift, and the extension of these apps is .ipa.

The developers who make apps for both Android and iOS had to put in too much work. They had to write code for Android and iOS phone users separately. Here are some problems faced by mobile app developers and companies are:

• Cross-Platform: the company developers had to reconfigure and redesign the same content for both Android and iOS. This is because their functioning is very different, and so the developers had to work separately on the two.
• Time constraint: There is always a deadline in the professional world, and the developer has to complete the program within the given deadline. The program must be completed within the deadline so that it can be released in the market. The developers who work on both iOS and Android have a tough time meeting the deadline due to the big difference between the two as it is time-consuming also.
• Employees: If a company wants to release its app for Android and iOS, it needs developers for both Android and iOS. This is the reason behind the increase in the number of employees.
• Cost of development: when a company develops an app for Android and iOS, it needs more employees, which increases the cost of development.

After the launch of Flutter in 2017, app development companies started to hire flutter developers. This solved many problems, like reducing the cost of development and the number of employees needed to make one app. Flutter is a powerful programming language, and it is used in developing apps for Android and iOS.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Flutter

Here are some advantages of using Flutter:

• Cross-platform: Flutter app development companies do not need to worry about redoing all the work to make their app compatible with Android and iOS. Their developers make the program on Flutter, and Flutter can run on both Android and iOS.
• Fewer developers are needed: the companies need fewer developers to work on a single project and divert the workforce on other projects.
• Time constraint: Flutter is used in making apps for both Android and iOS so the developers can meet their deadline as the work they have to do is significantly reduced.
• Development cost: with fewer developers working on a single project, the money spent on the project is also reduced.
• Modern design: flutter framework is the latest in the market. This modern design attracts new customers.

Some disadvantages of Flutter are:

• The first disadvantage is that app made with flutter work slow on old devices. This is because of the code interpreter. The design of code interpreters in old devices is according to native code. The processor of the device plays a huge role in the speed of apps made using Flutter. The better the processor, the better the app works.
• The feel of apps made in native code and Flutter is very different. This is because the apps in the native language are explicitly made for the device, but with Flutter, the design and working changes a bit as compared to the native language.

Despite these disadvantages, many companies have switched to flutter. This is because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Flutter 2 Vs Flutter 1

The latest version of Flutter was released on March 3, 2021, and several people want to know the difference between the two. So here are the differences between flutter2 and flutter1.

• In flutter 1, web support was offered in the beta version. This led the developers to make different code for different browsers and websites, whereas in flutter 2, web support offers a similar experience for both mobile and websites. In flutter 2 same code can be used in both Android and iOS. This is because of the framework flexibility of Flutter, portability of Dart, and power of the web platform.
• The apps made with flutter1 often suffered from the crash, which was caused due to the null error. Hence, the quality of apps made with flutter 1 was poor, whereas, with flutter 2, the null was introduced by Google in Dart. As a result, the app crash due to a null error was removed. Due to this update, the system started to identify the nullable and non-nullable types. This helped the developers to identify the mistakes in the early phase of development.
• In flutter 1, the context menu was not present. This caused great trouble for the developers. In flutter2, an inbuilt context menu was introduced by Google. This context menu offers features like pivot points and text selection. It also introduces high-precision pointing devices, which proved to be helpful for developers.
• In flutter 1, there was no desktop support. In flutter 2, this problem was solved, and Google provided a beta version in which developers can find desktop support.
• In Flutter 1, loading ads was difficult. In Flutter 2, this problem was taken care of, and Google launched Google mobile ads SDK for Flutter.
• There was a problem with searching libraries in iOS. Developers used to have a tough time looking for them as they had to search for the library manually. In Flutter 2 Google improved based on the feedback provided by the developers, and a search bar was provided to make the process of searching for library easily.
• In flutter 1, widgets for autocomplete and scaffolding messenger were not present, whereas, in Flutter 2, Google provided these two widgets to the developers.
• In Flutter1, the developers had to write code individually for mobile operating systems, i.e. Android and iOS, which was not convenient and took a lot of time. In Flutter2, Google improved on this and made the code reusable for both Android and iOS.

CONCLUSION

If you read all the information thoroughly, you must have a deep understanding of Flutter, like how does it work? Who created it? Why we need it? And so on. Based on all this knowledge, I think it is safe to say that Flutter2 is better than Flutter 1. The new features in flutter 2 are too good. Making apps compatible with both Android and iOS is the best and most needed feature.

If you want to have your application, there are many domestic and offshore flutter app development companies. You must make sure that your website or app is developed using Flutter as it will save your money, and in addition to that, your app would be available on both Android and iOS.