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People are talking about a better developer experience, but hardly anyone is talking about the user experience with apps built with this tech. I don't feel it'

People are talking about a better developer experience, but hardly anyone is talking about the user experience with apps built with this tech. I don't feel it's great, especially on older devices. Take google pay, a showcase flutter app. It's a laggy mess on an iPhone SE 2016, whereas the "old" google pay ran perfectly fine. On top of that, many google apps I use these days will just freeze and stop accepting touch inputs. I have no idea if it's all flutter, or just the weird stuff google does on mobile platforms, but other apps don't suffer from this. I think flutter is good for a resource-scarce team trying to create mobile apps for multiple platforms, but otherwise it creates an inferior end product compared to a native app (let's please not get into the definition of "native", for iOS and Android you know what I mean). For google, who has enormous developer resources, I'm not sure why they would ever use it themselves unless it's for apps they don't care about. https://flutter.dev/showcase/google-pay https://flutter.dev/showcase/google-pay

Bilal_io 4y ago
Is this really Flutter's fault or is it Google's? Google doesn't even support its own devices from 2016, so I doubt they'd optimize their apps for the iPhone SE 2016.
- nexus7556 4y ago
  Its equally bad on Google's flagship Pixel 6 Pro. There are three tabs in the gPay app and its about 2FPS as it animates between the tabs. Scrolling is janky.
- retSava 4y ago
  Keeping the baseline/core running smooth and efficient helps every device and every app, so they don't need to optimize for iphone se 2016 per se.
deleted 4y ago
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OmahaBoy69 4y ago
I'd just like to chip in with my (opposite) experience: I semi-recently developed an app using Flutter and used an iPhone 6, a 6s, and my old Redmi Note 5 as a baseline for performance testing. While I'll admit I wasn't doing anything particularly graphics heavy (at most: sliding modals and some animations), I wasn't able to get things to dip under 60fps on either platform. As for the GPay app, the only performance issue I could notice from testing just now was a dropped frame while quickly scrolling through the "explore" page. Otherwise it works perfectly on my Z Flip 3. On the other hand - have you considered upgrading devices? I always hate whipping out the iPhone 6s (same A9 CPU as your SE) because it runs like hot garbage in most cases... a recurring theme in the iOS space.
- bschwindHN 4y ago
  > I semi-recently developed an app using Flutter and used an iPhone 6, a 6s, and my old Redmi Note 5 as a baseline for performance testing. While I'll admit I wasn't doing anything particularly graphics heavy (at most: sliding modals and some animations), I wasn't able to get things to dip under 60fps on either platform. I think that's great if you're testing for performance on older phones! Many of them are still quite capable devices. I suspect google isn't doing much of this. > As for the GPay app, the only performance issue I could notice from testing just now was a dropped frame while quickly scrolling through the "explore" page. Otherwise it works perfectly on my Z Flip 3. That's a pretty modern phone, right? Have you tried it on your 6 or 6S? > On the other hand - have you considered upgrading devices? I always hate whipping out the iPhone 6s (same A9 CPU as your SE) because it runs like hot garbage in most cases... a recurring theme in the iOS space. I haven't, because I think the OG SE is one of the best phones ever made. And I'm not a phone power user in the sense that I'm gaming on it, or doing lots of graphically intensive things. I just replaced the battery on it after using it for 5 years, and it runs everything I want to do perfectly...with the exception of google pay and some of google's other apps. The issue I have with these basic CRUD apps running with tons of jank is that they're essentially just a UI with some text labels and buttons. For google pay, I want to open it up, navigate a list of people, select one, enter a number, and press "Pay". A computer from the 80s could do this no problem, it's not a graphically or computationally demanding thing. Certainly a computer from 2016 (iPhone SE) is up to the task, and before the google pay transition to flutter, it totally was. Creating this software that runs slower, with no tangible end-user benefits, is simply pushing us towards more e-waste as people upgrade their devices unnecessarily.
kyrra 4y ago
Googler, opinions are my own. Interesting thread from a year ago may interest you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26333973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26333973 (it's a flutter lead talking about Google pay). I'd be interested to know how much the team tests with an iphone that old.
deergomoo 4y ago
I find Google’s iOS apps to be thoroughly mediocre and frustrating to use, whether they’re Flutter or not. They just don’t behave like iOS apps. It’s even worse when you’re in a less common set up, like using an iPad with a keyboard case. I can’t even use the arrow keys to move between search results in the YouTube app. I know most people don’t care, but it’s the endless little details that make me thoroughly dislike cross-platform toolkits.

Bilal_io 4y ago

Is this really Flutter's fault or is it Google's? Google doesn't even support its own devices from 2016, so I doubt they'd optimize their apps for the iPhone SE 2016.

nexus7556 4y ago
Its equally bad on Google's flagship Pixel 6 Pro. There are three tabs in the gPay app and its about 2FPS as it animates between the tabs. Scrolling is janky.
retSava 4y ago
Keeping the baseline/core running smooth and efficient helps every device and every app, so they don't need to optimize for iphone se 2016 per se.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

OmahaBoy69 4y ago

I'd just like to chip in with my (opposite) experience: I semi-recently developed an app using Flutter and used an iPhone 6, a 6s, and my old Redmi Note 5 as a baseline for performance testing. While I'll admit I wasn't doing anything particularly graphics heavy (at most: sliding modals and some animations), I wasn't able to get things to dip under 60fps on either platform. As for the GPay app, the only performance issue I could notice from testing just now was a dropped frame while quickly scrolling through the "explore" page. Otherwise it works perfectly on my Z Flip 3. On the other hand - have you considered upgrading devices? I always hate whipping out the iPhone 6s (same A9 CPU as your SE) because it runs like hot garbage in most cases... a recurring theme in the iOS space.

bschwindHN 4y ago
> I semi-recently developed an app using Flutter and used an iPhone 6, a 6s, and my old Redmi Note 5 as a baseline for performance testing. While I'll admit I wasn't doing anything particularly graphics heavy (at most: sliding modals and some animations), I wasn't able to get things to dip under 60fps on either platform. I think that's great if you're testing for performance on older phones! Many of them are still quite capable devices. I suspect google isn't doing much of this. > As for the GPay app, the only performance issue I could notice from testing just now was a dropped frame while quickly scrolling through the "explore" page. Otherwise it works perfectly on my Z Flip 3. That's a pretty modern phone, right? Have you tried it on your 6 or 6S? > On the other hand - have you considered upgrading devices? I always hate whipping out the iPhone 6s (same A9 CPU as your SE) because it runs like hot garbage in most cases... a recurring theme in the iOS space. I haven't, because I think the OG SE is one of the best phones ever made. And I'm not a phone power user in the sense that I'm gaming on it, or doing lots of graphically intensive things. I just replaced the battery on it after using it for 5 years, and it runs everything I want to do perfectly...with the exception of google pay and some of google's other apps. The issue I have with these basic CRUD apps running with tons of jank is that they're essentially just a UI with some text labels and buttons. For google pay, I want to open it up, navigate a list of people, select one, enter a number, and press "Pay". A computer from the 80s could do this no problem, it's not a graphically or computationally demanding thing. Certainly a computer from 2016 (iPhone SE) is up to the task, and before the google pay transition to flutter, it totally was. Creating this software that runs slower, with no tangible end-user benefits, is simply pushing us towards more e-waste as people upgrade their devices unnecessarily.

kyrra 4y ago

Googler, opinions are my own. Interesting thread from a year ago may interest you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26333973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26333973 (it's a flutter lead talking about Google pay). I'd be interested to know how much the team tests with an iphone that old.

deergomoo 4y ago

I find Google’s iOS apps to be thoroughly mediocre and frustrating to use, whether they’re Flutter or not. They just don’t behave like iOS apps. It’s even worse when you’re in a less common set up, like using an iPad with a keyboard case. I can’t even use the arrow keys to move between search results in the YouTube app. I know most people don’t care, but it’s the endless little details that make me thoroughly dislike cross-platform toolkits.