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Flutter vs React Native vs Xamarin in 2021: Pros, Cons, Examples

Frameworks speed up the development, but there are too many of them today. Our developers shared their thoughts on the most popular ones to help you pick the one that fits your needs best.

August 10, 2021
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Back in the early days of mobile app development, it was a very challenging field – a coder had to write in a language corresponding to a specific operating system. As a result, developers often ended up developing in languages they were not familiar with. That is until frameworks entered the app development market.


A mobile app development framework allows a developer to create an app using the language they are comfortable with, and then the framework renders the code so that it can function across multiple platforms.



Despite the ease of iOS and Android cross-platform development, some software engineers are still held back from using frameworks for app development due to not knowing which frameworks to choose.

If you haven’t made your mind up yet, here’s the ranking of the top frameworks for mobile application development.


1. Flutter

Flutter is a framework dedicated to iOS and Android cross-platform app development. Developed by Google, it quickly gained popularity. Big brands like Alibaba or Google itself are actively using Flutter to develop their tools. Why has the framework become such a popular choice? Let’s break down its pros and cons.

Pros:

Cons:

Although Google developers work on addressing this issue, if it’s crucially important for you to build an instant/small-sized app, Flutter won’t be the best choice for you.

You’ll need to use Codemagic or Bitrise to take advantage of the continuous integration approach. Those are great but still will require effort to be set up and mastered.

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As for EGO Creative Innovations, you can check out our case studies on Pocket Geek Auto (a car maintenance app) and Zutobi (a driving tests platform), the projects where we extensively used Flutter.

Apps built with Flutter

Google Ads

The Google Ads app allows users to monitor their campaigns via Android. It showcases all the campaign details, sends real-time notifications, allows users to call a Google expert, and offers smart suggestions on how to improve a campaign.

Alibaba

Alibaba’s app is a mobile marketplace for wholesale trade. It incorporates Flutter to increase the speed and the performance of the app on different devices. It’s amazing how Flutter handles such a high-traffic app – millions of shoppers and sellers visit Alibaba on a daily basis.

Cryptograph

Cryptograph is a finance app that provides users with the latest data on over 1,600 cryptocurrencies. It presents exchange rate charts, allows coin tracking, bookmarking currencies as favorites, and more. The interface of Cryptograph is lightweight and easy-to-use thanks to Flutter.

2. React Native

React Native is a technology stack for iOS and Android cross-platform development created by a team of Facebook engineers that had previously developed ReactJS. It combines native development with JS interface development.

Unlike most other frameworks, React Native doesn’t use WebView to wrap code. The framework gives developers access to native mobile controllers to ensure apps look as native as possible.

Let’s explore the pros and cons of React Native.

Pros:

Cons:

Apps developed using React Native

Tesla iOS & Android

While the car companion app might not seem to be technically challenging, the Tesla team says they selected React Native because they always use what’s best out there. And since the mobile app is an essential part of the whole Tesla experience allowing you to control things like the charging process, climate, and locks, we’re talking about extremely high level of trust here.

Facebook iOS and Ad Manager

The company initially created the hybrid mobile app development framework in order to help establish iOS support for the Facebook app. After seeing the improvement of the performance (mainly the speed), the development team used the framework to develop the Ad Manager app as well.

Walmart

Another famous company that built an app using React Native is Walmart. The framework allowed the retailer to improve performance, create an interface that’s close to that of a native app, and ensure smooth animations.

3. Xamarin

Thanks to its high code reusability and the option to create shared interfaces, Xamarin is often considered one of the best frameworks for hybrid app development services. One of its main advantages is that Xamarin offers high code reusability – up to 90%. However, it’s not the framework’s only benefit.

Xamarin in a golden cup

Pros:

Cons:

Despite having quite a large development team, the mobile application framework is sometimes delayed in its updates and can be incompatible with the latest versions of iOS and Android. However, these update delays normally don’t take long – the engineers on Xamarin’s team try to be as quick as possible about issuing new updates.

Notable projects done by EGO Creative Innovations with Xamarin: Centralreach (a mobile app for an EHR and practice management platform) and Reemaq (an app for car repair management).

Apps developed with Xamarin

Being one of the most customizable and flexible frameworks for development, it’s no surprise that Xamarin is used by so many top corporations for app development.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The organization most known for its annual Oscars ceremony streamlined its IT operations by moving to the cloud with the Azure Clour Platform and then leveraged Xamarin to deliver a streaming app for its members to multiple platforms at once. Native C# code was used to build the tvOS app and Xamarin.Forms – for Android and iOS apps.

Fox Sports

A Xamarin-backed app for Fox Sports created by Microsoft allows fans to keep up to date on stats from the latest game. With the use of Xamarin Visual Tools, developers managed to create a personalized experience and analyze thousands of data sources in a matter of seconds. Thanks to Xamarin Test Tools, the app was tested on thousands of types of devices, which led to its high-level mobile performance.

UPS

UPS used Xamarin to write a new version of its mobile app. Thanks to a shared codebase framework, the team was able to communicate faster and feel the differences in the efficiency of development. Moreover, it wasn’t too challenging to hire developers for the job seeing that C++ is a common programming language actively taught at most colleges.

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Conclusion

The introduction of frameworks has certainly made mobile app development faster and more comfortable. However, there are many choices of frameworks on the market, and settling with just one might seem challenging.

In the experience of our app development team, Xamarin proves to be the most agile and customizable framework for hybrid apps. The framework is just rich enough to write an entire app from scratch, it’s easy to share between team members, and your company can reuse entire chunks of code.

Xamarin vs React Native vs Flutter: general comparison
Xamarin vs React Native vs Flutter: general comparison

If you would love someone to handle mobile app development for you, look no further than EGO. We’re an experienced app development team with dozens of creative solutions for startups and SMEs. At EGO Creative Innovations, we’ll choose the best technology stack for mobile app development and make sure the result meets all the goals for your business.

To see some of the iOS and Android apps we have done, take a look at the Works page. If you want us to talk about your project and give your future app the attention it deserves, get in touch with us via the Contact Us page.

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