5 ms·

Any iPhone App that I can try to see how the performance is these days? I remember Google Wallet app was horrible performance wise about two years ago

by msoad 2y ago

msoad 2y ago
Just tried Google Classroom on my iPhone Pro and animations are indeed choppy and scrolling feels weird
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
  Without knowing what Flutter version Classroom was using before impeller was released and how active development is on Classroom at google its hard to say if they could easily upgrade to the latest version. Flutter has had a lot of breaking changes leading up to the impeller release so it's hard to say if they actually upgraded to the newest version although yeah it is bad that they haven't done it by now if they didn't and if they did upgrade to impeller and it's still slow that's also bad.
cbracken 2y ago
Wonderous is an app we've pointed people to in the past. I believe the current iOS release on the App Store uses the newer Impeller rendering engine instead of Skia, but I could be wrong. App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wonderous/id1612491897 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wonderous/id1612491897 Code: https://github.com/gskinnerTeam/flutter-wonderous-app https://github.com/gskinnerTeam/flutter-wonderous-app (Disclaimer: I work on Flutter)
- lxgr 2y ago
  This indeed runs much smoother than most Flutter apps I've used in the past! If it was indeed all just due to the slow rendering engine, hopefully this will sift down to other apps. In the end I really don't care what framework a mobile app is developed with, as long as apps don't feel janky and/or out of place as far as platform UI conventions are concerned. In that sense, me not noticing that an app is using Flutter, React Native, maybe even webviews etc. is probably the ideal :) But my experience as a user of apps leveraging technologies like this has often shown that reinventing so many layers of the UI rendering stack inevitably leads to some form of "weirdness". Sometimes that's ok; sometimes the alternative would be even weirder, badly developed and maintained native apps. But I can't say I've ever loved using such an app for, and not despite, not being a native app. The React Native approach just seems like a better level to try platform abstraction at. On the web, I still can't help but find "rendering text and UI elements to a canvas" incredibly weird. I could see that approach working for games, but for things that might as well be regular old web applications, there are just so many things that can go wrong... (Reader mode and password autofill come to mind, for example.)
  - nicoburns 2y ago
    I think that ultimately (and despite what they might claim) Flutter just isn't a web technology (it's not suitable for rendering to web). But that shouldn't necessarily take away from it as a technology for native app development. React Native is a little better at this (and actively on rendering better to the DOM), but it isn't great either.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      I think that might have been true when the DOM was the only game in town. With the introduction of WebGPU support coming to the platform a lot of those arguments begin to fall apart pretty quickly.
  - bartekpacia 2y ago
    > On the web, I still can't help but find "rendering text and UI elements to a canvas" incredibly weird. Flutter's docs explicitly say [0] that it is not a tool for building websites, it's for web apps. If all you want is to render some text onto a canvas, look elsewhere. [0]: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/web/faq#what-scenarios-are-ideal-for-flutter-on-the-web https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/web/faq#what-s...
- zerr 2y ago
  But it still runs a loop like a game engine - 60 FPS? So when compared to native UI, it's like immediate vs retained mode, right?
  - sunnybeetroot 2y ago
    Native iOS also has a loop, it’s literally called the run loop.
lxgr 2y ago
It still was when I last tried it a couple of weeks ago. Not sure if it was ever updated to the new rendering engine.
cageface 2y ago
My music app is written in Flutter and I think the performance is pretty good. In fact I did some prototyping in SwiftUI before settling on Flutter and was having a hard time getting the same scroll performance on image grids in SwiftUI that I got in Flutter without even trying: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/minimoon-music/id6478451132 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/minimoon-music/id6478451132
redparrot 2y ago
Here’s some apps I’ve written in flutter. I’ve been very happy with flutters jank-free-ness. Big props to flutter team. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heythere-local-group-chats/id1549799195 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heythere-local-group-chats/id1... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/treehouse-capture-moments/id6473813917 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/treehouse-capture-moments/id64... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bops-music-with-friends/id6467423885 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bops-music-with-friends/id6467... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/palace-workspace-for-creators/id1598708545 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/palace-workspace-for-creators/...

Any iPhone App that I can try to see how the performance is these days? I remember Google Wallet app was horrible performance wise about two years ago

by msoad 2y ago

Any iPhone App that I can try to see how the performance is these days? I remember Google Wallet app was horrible performance wise about two years ago

msoad 2y ago

Just tried Google Classroom on my iPhone Pro and animations are indeed choppy and scrolling feels weird

fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
Without knowing what Flutter version Classroom was using before impeller was released and how active development is on Classroom at google its hard to say if they could easily upgrade to the latest version. Flutter has had a lot of breaking changes leading up to the impeller release so it's hard to say if they actually upgraded to the newest version although yeah it is bad that they haven't done it by now if they didn't and if they did upgrade to impeller and it's still slow that's also bad.

cbracken 2y ago

Wonderous is an app we've pointed people to in the past. I believe the current iOS release on the App Store uses the newer Impeller rendering engine instead of Skia, but I could be wrong. App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wonderous/id1612491897 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wonderous/id1612491897 Code: https://github.com/gskinnerTeam/flutter-wonderous-app https://github.com/gskinnerTeam/flutter-wonderous-app (Disclaimer: I work on Flutter)

lxgr 2y ago
This indeed runs much smoother than most Flutter apps I've used in the past! If it was indeed all just due to the slow rendering engine, hopefully this will sift down to other apps. In the end I really don't care what framework a mobile app is developed with, as long as apps don't feel janky and/or out of place as far as platform UI conventions are concerned. In that sense, me not noticing that an app is using Flutter, React Native, maybe even webviews etc. is probably the ideal :) But my experience as a user of apps leveraging technologies like this has often shown that reinventing so many layers of the UI rendering stack inevitably leads to some form of "weirdness". Sometimes that's ok; sometimes the alternative would be even weirder, badly developed and maintained native apps. But I can't say I've ever loved using such an app for, and not despite, not being a native app. The React Native approach just seems like a better level to try platform abstraction at. On the web, I still can't help but find "rendering text and UI elements to a canvas" incredibly weird. I could see that approach working for games, but for things that might as well be regular old web applications, there are just so many things that can go wrong... (Reader mode and password autofill come to mind, for example.)
- nicoburns 2y ago
  I think that ultimately (and despite what they might claim) Flutter just isn't a web technology (it's not suitable for rendering to web). But that shouldn't necessarily take away from it as a technology for native app development. React Native is a little better at this (and actively on rendering better to the DOM), but it isn't great either.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    I think that might have been true when the DOM was the only game in town. With the introduction of WebGPU support coming to the platform a lot of those arguments begin to fall apart pretty quickly.
- bartekpacia 2y ago
  > On the web, I still can't help but find "rendering text and UI elements to a canvas" incredibly weird. Flutter's docs explicitly say [0] that it is not a tool for building websites, it's for web apps. If all you want is to render some text onto a canvas, look elsewhere. [0]: https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/web/faq#what-scenarios-are-ideal-for-flutter-on-the-web https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/web/faq#what-s...
zerr 2y ago
But it still runs a loop like a game engine - 60 FPS? So when compared to native UI, it's like immediate vs retained mode, right?
- sunnybeetroot 2y ago
  Native iOS also has a loop, it’s literally called the run loop.

lxgr 2y ago

It still was when I last tried it a couple of weeks ago. Not sure if it was ever updated to the new rendering engine.

cageface 2y ago

My music app is written in Flutter and I think the performance is pretty good. In fact I did some prototyping in SwiftUI before settling on Flutter and was having a hard time getting the same scroll performance on image grids in SwiftUI that I got in Flutter without even trying: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/minimoon-music/id6478451132 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/minimoon-music/id6478451132

redparrot 2y ago

Here’s some apps I’ve written in flutter. I’ve been very happy with flutters jank-free-ness. Big props to flutter team. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heythere-local-group-chats/id1549799195 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heythere-local-group-chats/id1... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/treehouse-capture-moments/id6473813917 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/treehouse-capture-moments/id64... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bops-music-with-friends/id6467423885 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bops-music-with-friends/id6467... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/palace-workspace-for-creators/id1598708545 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/palace-workspace-for-creators/...