I'm planning on diving into developing Android apps (no iOS at all) and I have experience in React. So let me be that guy and ask what would be better for me; React Native, Flutter or Compose? I'll mostly be developing small apps for my personal use and will also be publishing them on the Play Store. No performance heavy apps atm.
Speaking as an Android developer, If you want to enjoy developing on the platform, stick to native. Use Kotlin, learn coroutines, and develop your app with Jetpack compose.
There's still things that need to use the old view components, but at my company we've been developing a new green field project without needing to reach for them yet. Have not tried switching over our largest app yet though
If you're building a company on a budget and want the majority of Android developers to dread working for you, go with React native. You'll get all the pain points of Android development plus all the pain points of using a second party framework. But you got to use JavaScript instead of Kotlin, even though you'll constantly be reading through Java and Kotlin code to debug any platform issues. If you want even more pain go with Xamarin.
Speaking as a Flutter dev, I would say it depends.
If you want to go all in on Android then do the native Android route. Gives you access to the full Android platform. If the app is for personal use you can see what UI framework works for you, XML files or Jetpack Compose. These days native Android means Kotlin which is a powerful language with another learning curve.
If you want to do cross platform or don't want to deep dive the Android APIs, Flutter is a great way to go. It is based on Dart which is easy to tackle if you have a Javascript background. The learning curve, I think for Flutter is not as steep as native Android.
If I had a preference I am biased towards Native Android but doing Flutter professionally has given me access to iOS development (something I could never do if I only did native Android), there is that.
Download Android Studio, try the sample apps and see which one does it for you.
You should be investing on Jetpack Compose and save the unnecessary troubles in the future. I’m not sure if React can keep up with the Android and iOS SDK updates. Flutter is all good for simple apps but not suitable for complex scenarios.
Since you're not planning on releasing for iOS, save the trouble and just make a native app. It may be a bit more work but at least the UI is consistent with the system and your app size doesn't start at 30 MB.
If it is just simple apps and you have experience in React or web development, maybe look into Ionic as well? I’d imagine that would be the lowest effort solution.
I been enjoying using Flutter for most of my apps. Flutter is very easy to pick up but can be tricky sometimes while trying to optimize the performance. Currently trying to learn swift and swiftUI.
We went with Jetpack Compose for 2 of our greenfield Android apps and are quite happy with it. There are obviously some hiccups, but our teams have been very productive with it. The Google Android DevRel team was pretty active at the DroidCon Berlin and they’re actively promoting Compose.
Jetpack Compose is the UI framework du jour for Android and I hope it sticks around.
