Flutter, Angular or React Native? Differences and use cases

Today we will talk about the main differences between Flutter, Angular and React Native

Flutter 

Language: Flutter apps are written in a language called Dart, which is relatively easy to learn and understand and is a language promising to program for cross-platform development. However, it doesn’t have the same popularity as JavaScript. A developer starting with Flutter should first learn Dart. Generally, developers with a C ++ / Java background can relate to Dart better than JavaScript developers.

Test: Flutter is the news when it comes to frameworks. Testing a new framework can be challenging, but Flutter uses Dart, which provides a great unit test framework. Flutter also provides an excellent choice for testing widgets on a headless runtime at unit test speed

Performance – there is no JavaScript bridge in Flutter to initiate interactions with native device components, which dramatically accelerates execution time and speed of development. Flutter’s animation standard has been set at 60 fps, which indicates its high performance. Finally, because Flutter is compiled into native ARM code for both iOS and Android, it never faces performance issues.

User Interface: Flutter incorporates elegant integrated Material Design and Cupertino, such as advanced motion APIs, iOS-style widgets, smooth scrolling and platform awareness. Flutter has its own individual UI components, adaptable widget sets, and material designs along with an engine that helps render them on iOS and Android.

Community Support: Flutter’s community support can be seen in its 98,000 stars on GitHub, 47.6k user subreddit, and on Stack Overflow. While Dart didn’t get much admiration in the Stack Overflow developer survey, early blog posts provided positive feedback on using Flutter. Furthermore, their documentation is very complete and answers all questions asked in an acceptable time frame.

Usage Cases

1. Google Ads (Utility)

The Google Ads app allows users to view campaign statistics on an Android smartphone. The app displays campaign details such as real-time alerts and notifications, allows you to call a Google expert, take action on suggestions to improve your campaign, add / edit / remove keywords, and more.

2. Alibaba (eCommerce)

The Alibaba.com app is a wholesale marketplace for global commerce and incorporates Flutter to power parts of the app. The app allows its users to purchase products from suppliers around the world, all from the convenience of a mobile app.

Angular

Language Angular uses TypeScript, which is a superset of JS created for larger projects. TypeScript is relatively compact compared to JavaScript. This makes it easier to navigate and makes the code refactoring process easier and faster. Angular is a rewrite of AngularJS, a JavaScript framework, which has been enhanced for more intuitive TypeScript usage.

Test: In Angular, testing and debugging a complete project can be done with a single tool, such as Protractor, Jasmine or Karma. Another great tool that debugs your app in development mode is the Augury browser extension.

Performance: AngularJS is recognized for its moderate performance while dealing with complex and dynamic applications. React and Flutter apps are faster than Angular apps of the same size. However, some new versions of Angular are a bit faster than React.

User Interface: Angular has an integrated Material technology stack. It comes with many pre-built material design components. This makes configuring the user interface extremely agile and simple.

Community Support: Angular is constantly and actively supported by Google, which continues to advance the Angular ecosystem. Since 2018 it also provides a framework with LTS (Long-Term Support). According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, the number of developers working with Angular is greater than those working with React and Flutter.

Usage Cases

  1. Gmail

Developed by Google (the company that created Angular and continues to support it) and launched in 2004, Gmail has a subscriber base of over 1.4 billion people and is the most widely used free email service. Gmail currently supports 105 different languages.

  1. YouTube TV

Created with Angular 2 and launched in 2017, YouTube TV is Google’s alternative to AT&T TV Now and Hulu + Live TV, offering affordable basic access to a myriad of live shows. The service is available on Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Roku OS, and Xbox One. It also works with smart TVs from market leaders like LG and Samsung.

The YouTube TV Cloud DVR offering allows you to record as much content as you like, which can be archived for up to nine months, ending the storage limits imposed by most competitors.

React Native

Language: React is based on the ES6 + JavaScript language along with JSX, which is an extension of the JavaScript syntax that makes mirroring JavaScript code written in HTML. Developers find it easy to write code in JavaScript, and in turn, learning React is very easy for any JavaScript developer.

Testing: Developers using React have all JavaScript frameworks available for unit-level testing. However, when it comes to UI and automation testing, conditions aren’t that good. While you may find many third-party libraries available, there isn’t a clear picture.

Performance: Ideally you will need a bridge in React to call Swift, Windows, Android, or Mac APIs. Developers face problems when building hybrid apps, but rarely encounter performance issues for native apps. React offers uninterrupted performance in all typical cases and is highly reliable.

User Interface: React App Development uses third party libraries since it does not have its own library of user interface components. React Native Material Design and Shoutem are two examples of user-accessible UI libraries. React Native is similar to using HTML without a CSS framework. Compared to Flutter, the React Native UI relies more on native components for both iOS and Android. It also provides a more pleasant user experience (UX) when a user logs into the operating system.

Community Support: React was released as open source on GitHub in 2015 and is the most popular framework on Stack Overflow. It’s supported by a huge community, with over 89,000 stars on GitHub, 58.4k users on its subreddit, and great support on Stack Overflow. This is why they have more third party libraries / plugins than Flutter.

Use Cases

1. Facebook Ads Manager

Ads Manager is the first cross-platform React Native app created by Facebook. The Javascript framework perfectly handles the difference in ad formats, date formats, currencies, time zones, etc. It has a clean interface, intuitive UX and simple navigation that guarantees an amazing experience for users. 

2. Bloomberg

The app provides users with global business and financial news. Before the Bloomberg team adopted React Native for mobile app development, they had to spend a lot of time developing and updating individual versions of the iOS and Android apps. Through in-depth tests of the prototype built with React Native, the technology for simultaneous updating of cross-platform apps was adopted.

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