Video: Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad
Many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple’s mobile devices, which rely on HTML5 and native apps for their video and interactivity. But how much of an advantage is it to be able to tune in to Flash-based video on your Android device? To find out, we turned to resident mobile expert Kevin Tofel and his trusty Nexus One to show us what one can expect from Flash on a device running the latest version of Google’s mobile OS.
But first, the setup: Kevin’s demo video was shot while he was connected to his local Wi-Fi network in his home, which features a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, so connectivity shouldn’t be an issue. Furthermore, the Nexus One sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1Ghz processor, so it should have plenty of horsepower for loading video on the device. So with that in mind, how did Flash video actually perform on the Nexus One?
Shockingly bad.
While trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe on the handset, Kevin found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video.
While trying to load an episode of Wipeout on ABC’s mobile site, he received an error message urging him to “try again later.” An attempt at viewing new ABC show Rookie Blue was only slightly more successful, as he was able to load a Toyota ad before the player froze up, but he wasn’t able to actually load up the episode.
Kevin was able to get an episode of Bones running on Fox.com, but the video was choppy despite the Wi-Fi connection and the Nexus One’s mobile processor. In fact, the Bones episode seemed more like a slideshow when viewed on the Android device than an actual video. Not only that, but the sound wasn’t synced with the “video” being displayed. (At least Fox warned viewers that the video being shown was “not optimized for mobile.”)
Surprisingly enough, the best experience might have come not from the site of one of the major broadcasters, but from video startup Metacafe. The first attempt at streaming a video from Metacafe — a clip from the previous night’s Emmys — was unsuccessful because it was hosted by Hulu, and Hulu blocks mobile devices. However, after attempting to watch a video in HD — which also was not optimized for mobile devices and loaded like a slideshow — Kevin was able to get a semi-viewable stream of the trailer for the latest Resident Evil film up and running.
While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset, all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.
Update: A few readers have submitted their own videos showing how Flash works on their Android devices. Check them out here.
Related content on GigaOM Pro: Why Apple Hasn’t Sewn Up the Tablet Market — Yet (subscription required)
Those videos are encoded at a higher-than-mobile quality. It’s not Flash that’s the issue.
Actually it is flash. We’re not talking streaming over 3G here. He was using WiFi with 25 Mbps downstream. Therefore, the only “mobile” part of the equation is less powerful hardware than a desktop computer: processor, memory, etc. Nevertheless, the 1Ghz Snapdragon should be more than sufficient to play the videos without being choppy. That leaves just Flash.
Hardly a scientific experiment? To “claim” Flash is the problem (which it may well be), you need a control.
Have you tested inline playback of HTML5 video? Ideally, you need to test inline playback of Flash video vs HTML5 video via the same vendor’s website.
Without doing that, any claims you make are simply sensationalist.
Why don’t you create a very simple Flash video player and a very simple HTML5 video player, both playing the same H.264 video. Upload the videos to your site, and test?!! We’d all be genuinely interested to see the results.
Perhaps not, but if handset manufacturers, Adobe and Google are promising that Flash on an Android phone gives users access to “all the web,” this is a pretty horrible user experience. Remember, the end user normally won’t know or care if the video is optimized for the mobile web or not — all he’ll care about is whether or not he can watch it. In that respect, this sort of demonstration shows that having Flash is just as bad — if not worse — than seeing Apple’s broken Flash links, if only because this creates the expectation that it’ll work, when in reality it won’t.
To be fair Ryan Lawler, you haven’t been. Feature wise the droid build of Flash Player isn’t up to the desktop standard, but we’ve been watching videos on an HTC desire without a hitch.
True, it’s not as good as the native experience on iPhone/iPad but it’s nowhere near as bad as you make out (make up?).
@Ben: Have you actually watched the video? Are you claiming that somehow the poor performance which Kevin demonstrates above is just “made up”?
That’s a pretty serious accusation, and I’d like to see you back it up.
Oh, dear Ryan, you, like everybody else, failed to read the fine print.
Froyo “supports Flash.” It does NOT actually claim to RUN Flash, at any quality. Google promised you bupkis and delivered 1000%.
And Adobe? I haven’t seen any actual claims from them since they said it was Jobs’s fault that they couldn’t *** put their software *** on the iPhone. That’s very likely true, too.
Caveat emptor. There’s Bull flying all over the place.
Your talking absolute rubbish here -
1/ They have and it’s not a horrible experience as your suggesting, Flash works fine for me and it’s not all just about movies, it’s also about viewing design elements made in Flash on the web!
2/Rubbish! I’d prefer to have Flash that not – if I could have a £1 for everyone who asks me why their iPhone and iPad can’t play Flash like my HTC Desire can I’d be a very rich man. Most people get really frustrated by lack of Flash and would actually prefer to have it rather than not (Fanboys excluded as they believe Steve Jobs’s sale patter), especially on the iPad!
3/ Stop kidding yourself, the main reason Steve Jobs is anti Flash is protecting his App sales – he sees Flash as threatening that, it’s as simple as that!
The Apple’s locked down approach sucks! – you carry on believe Steve Jobs, but leave the rest of us out of it, not everyone preys at the Apple Temple! And FFS stop knocking every other device, OS, app and software that’s not made by Apple, it just shows you as the Apple Fanboy you are really are rather than someone who may actually know what he is talking about!
All your trying to do is brain wash less informed people “the Apple way” is the only way – your wrong, if someone wants a Nokia running Symbian 3 good on them I say, it’s their choice, mine is Android, yours is iPhone – but stop trying to prove yours is the only choice and it’s better than mine, because it’s NOT!!
@ Greg “3/ Stop kidding yourself, the main reason Steve Jobs is anti Flash is protecting his App sales – he sees Flash as threatening that, it’s as simple as that!”
Greg, it’s commonly accepted that Apple makes it money from hardware not software. The proof is in the balance sheet. The purpose of the iTunes and AppsStore is to support hardware sales, which is why they operate near break-even.
So no, it’s not as simple as that or anywhere close for that matter.
I wonder why Greg is turning this into another Apple rant. Does Flash on Android suck, that is the question, and the evidence is pretty strong.
Unfortunately, “all the web” also means all those annoying flash ads that are taking processing cycles away from showing the video. While I applaud Google for the inclusion of Flash in Froyo, it doesn’t help that the experience is ruined by Adobe, and Flash developers who throw crappy code out there on the web.
@Greg: firstly, when contracting “you are”, it’s “you’re”, not “your”, which is used as a possessive.
And as for the other Flash “design elements” on the web? I think I can manage without all the ads.
Have you also considered that Flash hasn’t been designed for touch interfaces. Every time that I have tried using anything more complicated than a video on an Android device, the interaction has been very poor, to say the least. And my experience with video performance hasn’t been all that much better than Kevin’s.
For now, I’ll take the “crippled” HTML5 video on an iPhone over the insanely poor performing Flash video on Android, thanks.
In other words, there may very well be less mobile-Flash-capable Flash content on the web than there is HTML5-ready video, and the rest of Flash is still unaccessible to mobile-Flash — so Adobe, Google, and every Flash supporter are talking out of their BLEEP-BLEEPs.
Oh so you think users will be OK with that? Some Flash works and some doesn’t? Heh. Flash is the problem.
The Flash Player plays back content that it is told to play back. If the content works or doesn’t work, depends on how the content is made not on the Flash Player.
Take the HTML5 showcase on Apple’s website, http://www.apple.com/html5/. Works great in Safari and not in Firefox. So HTML5 is now bad?
Isn’t the point of flash on Android is to have the “full web experience” on a mobile device?
So you are now saying “higher-than-mobile quality” doesn’t work on a mobile device?
I seems to have no problem streaming netflix movies on my iPhone.
Yeah my iphone was showing video encoded that high through h.264 2 years ago, and it wouldn’t stutter while scrolling. Really.
Good Job adobe.
I agree with MrS.
We have been able to watch live streams of TWiT (one of Mediafly’s content partners) on the Nexus One via Flash quite nicely.
The caveat, of course, is that the stream is optimized for mobile.
So the so called “Full Web Experience” is really “optimized for mobile Experience”?
I’m watching the video while posting this message on my Evo4G and I’m not experiencing any slow downswith flash. Never really tested ance or fox but flash on android works great with the dailyshow and colbertnation :)
I’ve been using the Flash 10.1 Final that was leaked a week or two ago. I’ve noticed a marked improvement over the 10.1 Beta that the EVO Froyo update brought. Supposedly its due to hardware acceleration that the Beta didn’t have. I would investigate this before you draw conclusions.
I’ve not experienced any problems since upgrading. Hopefully the final will hit the Marketplace soon so people will stop complaining.
Are you just “using” Flash because after viewing this hard evidence (Exhibit #101 in the impending class-action lawsuit) I would suggest that Flash is totally USELESS without hardware acceleration because it is a CPU whore and has no bidness on any mobile device period end of sentence.
Couple that with the fact that Nexus One and the other HTC phones don’t have very powerful GPU’s.
I think Flash will work reasonably well on the next generation of dual core mobile CPU’s and better GPU’s that are coming out this winter or early next year.
That being said, I still don’t care much for Flash and I wish Youtube and all the other video site would just switch already to HTML5 and WebM.
bizarre way to promote iphone: ‘see it only works a little bit’ ‘your better off with it not working at all’.
would you rather eat a huge, half-cooked thanksgiving dinner, or a small, fully-cooked, single plate of sushi (or whatever you prefer) prepared by a skilled chef?
Bad analogy. A better analogy is would you like a half cooked dinner or would you rather starve?
But having flash means that you can access things like “The Cloud” (a public WiFi system available in Public Houses and Cafes and student unions) in the UK which will simply not function on iPads which do not have any flash capability
I’ve used The Cloud on iPad without any issues.
In fact, The Cloud even advertise it as such, and have an iPhone/iPad app that lets you search for their hotspots:
http://www.thecloud.net/page/8567
I apologise, you are correct. When I first got an iPad I took it down to the local Wethspoons pub and it wouldn’t work with “The Cloud” complaining that it didn’t have Flash. Following your reply, I took it down tonight and it worked fine, all I can presume is that the access point had a problem when I first tried it! However, I can’t watch the test match on Sky Player – no silverlight! That’s a pity.
I have the Clouds, the WiFis, the interWebs and indeed the interNEts on my iPad and it all works gr8. Hell I even have the blue tooth ! What more do you need really, certainly not the obnoxious flash apps that keep clogging the tubes on the net.
As soon as he used the outside network speed to say he has a “fast pipe” I stopped watching.
Well in case you haven’t noticed Kevin is the kind of guy who likes big pipes. If you know what I mean.
It’s not really that great. I get just under his claimed speeds via my low-medium range Telus DSL package. and By sometime next year I’ll be upgraded to VDSL which should blow him out of the water.
that’s funny as soon as i read your comment i thought, i hope they make him wear a helmet when he goes out of the house.
It’s worth noting due to the nature of the test.
I think I have new found respect for Mr. Jobs.
Looks like Steve was right (again). Adobe Engineers ARE lazy to say the least and Flash 10.1 is horrific spaghetti code make no mistake about it fellers. It is time to move away from this proprietary junk and adopt HTML 5 as the future. You all can thank Steve later!
Brigade Commander | Palin Army Division | Tea Party Nation
Reality check: “In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?” (Thoughts on Flash)
See? He’s not 100% right: he actually KNEW how it would perform.
And Pulleeze! Adobe did not say it would ship on A smartphone in 2009; Adobe claimed 100 million smartphones in 2009. From eWeek: “Adobe already is ahead of schedule regarding its plans to get Flash onto smart phones, according to [Adobe CTO] Lynch. He said Adobe set a goal of reaching 100 million Flash-enabled phones by 2010, but the company is on track to meet that goal in 2009.”
So consider losing that Apple fanboism. Jobs is just trying to get rich by taking their 29¢ share of apps. Isn’t it obvious?
Walt. those are some big numbers.
who cares.
Flash is not working well or consistently well enough on mobile devices, period (um, did you see the video above?). Some people say it’s acceptable, some people don’t. Those discrepancies amount to one thing: inconsistent end user experience. so it doesn’t matter that Adobe is ahead of schedule.
“Jobs is just trying to get rich” …
Oh really? Oh I didn’t know that! Him being the CEO of Apple, I thought he was in it for the HTML5 evangelism and the black mock turtlenecks. Do you think Adobe’s shit don’t stink too? Don’t forget, Flash is a 100 percent proprietary plug-in, and it dominates video playback on the web. Of course they want to protect it. Stop playing favorites.
I hate to break it to you walt, but Google is a privately held company, and they don’t care about you. Neither Does adobe.
Also, you need to retire if you think it’s about the 29c. There a hardware company. They haven’t been overly cruel to the jailbreakers (they don’t hide old, jailbreakable firmware on their site for example) and guess what
flash apps are terrible.
Are we seeing an insane influx of flash dev’d apps on the java powered android market place? No.
That’s a Nexus One, THE flagship phone, sold by google to the masses, and it’s been like that since may.
Reality Check: The iPhone came out in 2007, it’s entering fall 2010 and flash in the mobile space still sucks. Monumentally. I’ve never seen my first gen iphone 400mhz lag as hard as the browser in that video. Ever.
btw, android’s vnc clients are unusable for work after 10 min with human thumbs.
First
They’re*
Second, most of their components are Foxcon brand. I don’t see any Apple branded motherboards/GPUs/Ram.
I will agree and disagree with you.
I’m currently running the Flash 10.1 beta that came preinstalled with the Sprint HTC Evo 4G Froyo update, on a stock device.
I definitely have been frustrated by the claims of Flash performance on Android. Even many of the demo sites that are apparently “mobile” optimized offer performance that is simply not compelling — I’ve tried a few games on Kongregate, and the games that require speedy reaction like “Fat Slice Mobile” simply don’t “cut” it. The game just doesn’t register my many actions and I end up losing as a result.
So, many flash games suck on Android. That said, I’ve actually found video to be reasonably sufficient. I haven’t tried too many, but I know I’ve often run into the situation where the rights attached to a particular Youtube video does not permit mobile viewing, so the Youtube app will not work. I know I can fire up my Dolphin HD browser, set the identifier to desktop and watch the Youtube video quite well with the built in flash. For the latest viral or music video of the day, it works well enough for me to “get it.”
Lastly, Flash isn’t just about games or movies, which is the important part left out here.
There are many uses of flash, from basic website layout to audio players that are not nearly as processor intensive, and end up working quite well. (I hate full flash websites as much as the next guy, but I’d slog through one just to get to the information I need rather than go without.) Websites like Playlist.com that use flash audio players allow me to listen to a new song a friend links me to, where prior to Froyo, I simply had to do without.
The bottom line is that, yes, Flash “on the whole” on mobile devices is not ready for prime time (although how Chrisdpratt conclusively determines not a hardware limitation, I’m not sure — a “1 Ghz anything” isn’t really informative as to this).
That said, I think the “option” for flash is the right one, and it works reasonably well enough in the many incarnations and variations that exist out there for users to get a better web experience. Just because it sucks at video and other high processor intensive tasks should not be a condemnation for the whole thing. Being able to play flash audio alone is enough to sell me.
This is hardly if you have used the beta.
Try Flash 10.1 Final!
If you have then my apologies.
If you have NOT then please FIX the title to reflect that its the beta version.
Dude it don’t matter if it Alpha, Beta, Final, Gamma, Zeta or Zulu, it is still Flash and it performance has always sucked big time and long time. Please purchase a clue at the head shop next visit and do us all a favor. Tanks in advance.
You Flash fanbois are a sicko neanderthals, time to get out of your dark cave and experience the glorious sunshine we call HTML 5 . Wake up caveman!
@H T Emell V: You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, thanks for trying.
“Dude it don’t matter if it Alpha, Beta, Final, Gamma, Zeta or Zulu”
This speaks volumes to your lack of knowledge. For someone telling others to buy a clue you should really follow your own advice.
HTML5 is nice, but its not the one-and-all answer to all the things Flash is capable of. I’m not a big fan of Flash either, but saying HTML5 is poised to completely replace it is disingenuous at best.
I just want to confirm another 10.1 Froyo on HTC Evo 4G. Not choppy works great especially when using wifi. After a little buffering I was able to watch a full episode of House from Fox.com There was a warning that the video was not optimized for mobile, but looked flawless. No sync issues, artifacts, or choppiness. Wipeout on ABC.com was slightly choppy, but no where near unwatchable because of it.
Don’t dumb down your own expectations in order to say you’re able to work with Flash. Consider if Flash experience is so necessary that you would lower your own standards in order to say it is a necessary technology in mobile devices.
You know, it’s about time the web moved away from Flash. Its days are numbered.
This experience looks painful. Luckily this just isn’t representative of what you experience 90% of the time. I have been using flash daily on blogs with embeded videos from all kidns of sites without anything like this. Click the video, it loads up in about 2-3 seconds and starts playing, just like on the desktop.
Once you get used to having it, going back to my iPod touch feels pointless and baren, constantly knowing big chunks of content on the web are just invisible to me.
Can you also post a similar video showing the awesome html5 experience on Android? To prove Jobs is right. K thnx
ummm, no, Ocmer. Apple doesn’t have a single thing to do with how well Android plays HTML5. That’s up to the good souls at Google and HTC and whoever.
All Apple has ever claimed about performance was that in April, Apple had asked Adobe to show decent Flash on any single mobile device, but Adobe was unable.
Oh, and that someday, it’d come. I’ll guess that the dual-core, 1.5GHz processors we hear rumored will handle virtually any correct Flash game or vid with aplomb.
These smartphones, of course, will have 10X the nominal CPU power, and probably will have 8X the RAM, of the iPhone/1 that Adobe sorta claimed it could support. I don’t suppose that anybody sees any irony in claiming that Jobs is a fascist because he wouldn’t put Flash onto a machine that, no matter how nifty, was WAAAY too underpowered for Flash, and then turning around and saying that just wait another year and you’ll see!
You’re right Apple does not have anything to do with the performance of HTML5 performance on Android phones. But i still want to see a video of HTML5 experience on Android phones.
That’s odd to see, my flash works surprisingly well on my droid x.
Are you sure that ABC.com doesn’t also use the Move Player Plugin? http://www.movenetworks.com/history.html
OMG!!! Steve Jobs was right? What am I gonna spend the rest of my life bashing now?
This should not be a surprise to anyone. Flash on desktop sucks too. Thats why I block it and will also block it on my Droid X. I don’t want it and don’t miss it.
Of course it does. You use a Mac which is rubbish at handling Flash.
Look, it’s simple – Embedded Flash video in a Firefox browser on my Windows 7 desktop = no problem. Same on my Macbook = LOL!
what are you 45 years old with your LOL?
Keep in mind that this is the best Adobe could do after YEARS of working on mobile flash. I assume that in Microsoft like fashion they hope the hardware will catch up to their crappy software.
I have flash on my Nexus One and I have NO problems with it at all. Steve Jobs is a tool and always will be.
No problems at all? Right. Post the proof.
What a load of crap.
Denial can be a terrible thing.
The issue is one of H264 encoding settings. Your mobile device’s GPU can only play H264 videos encoded at specific quality levels — for instance, 640×480, Baseline profile, level 3.0. If you try to play a video encoded with the main profile, or at level 3.1 (too many ref frames, etc), the GPU will fail.
What sucks for the user is that instead of saying “this video has not been optimized for your phone, therefore we won’t play it”, flash for android (and for desktops — flash 10.1 on windows/mac tries to use the GPU if it can) will instead fall back to the phone’s underpowered CPU for decoding. This results in truly awful performance, and I think the user experience is worse than saying “yell at the person who encoded this video”.
So yes, the user experience for flash video can be very bad on mobile, but we can’t improve it significantly until we get better GPUs (nvidia tegra2′s GPU wouldn’t break a sweat) or content providers start encoding video for mobile flash users.
Hope this clears things up.
In other words, it’s an encoding issue, not Flash in itself.
So Jobs lied again?
No, actually, it doesn’t. The final video does not show the mobile warning, so it’s encoded correctly. That video is also unwatchable.
Nonsense. The iPhone doesn’t have a problem with H264, and it doesn’t support flash. Many Android phones also support H264 playback but don’t yet have Flash. The codec support of the GPUs remains the same, no matter what the video platform is, but straight H264 looks much better than Flash/Flash-H264.
You should read Ed’s comment again and then read up on H264 profiles.
Granted the average consumer does not understand the difference and shouldn’t. But you cared to make a comment about how H264 (all profiles) isn’t a problem for the iPhone.
I can’t say I’m the expert but reading a technote like http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2224.html#SETTINGSFILES
makes me thinking that you do have to optimize H264 for mobile consumption on the iPhone
is there a better way to tell the user they need to access an appropriately-encoded video stream, and that their application/implementation didn’t pick the right one/the right one wasn’t available? to an average user, this is very bad for the adobe flash experience, regardless of all the apple vs adobe back and forth.
I agree with bed as to the root of the problem, though the solution I’d like to see is better use of the adaptive streaming technology already available to route the user to the right set of videos without them knowing any different. The user needs to stop picking video qualities and let the device make the decision based on conditions it can report back to the network. were partway there, but lots to go…
Which version of Flash are you using? It’s the only thing you haven’t said about what are you using to do the test.
Surprisingly, Resident Evil trailer on my Nexus finishes almost 10 second earliar than in the video. Perhaps because I’m using the final version of Flash 10.1 and you are using a beta version without hardware acceleration?
This is the official final version of Flash Player 10.1, not the beta. Sorry for not specifying that in the video.
Then I don’t understand.
I have a lot better performance than you and I also have a Nexus One with the latest Flash plugin
I’m not sure what was going on with your setup but I get WAY better experience when i watch those videos.
Ok, that is so strange, played the same content on my N1 and had no problems, yes had to buffer, but worked great. I should alos mention that this is not stock rom, and on T-mobile, not WiFi.
Would love to see several devices running the same test.
Try this site to test the flash performance of your device :
http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
I get 25-27 FPS on the N1
Does this surprise anyone?
It’s not the Flash. If the site serves video stream with a codec that is too much for mobile to handle(either too high resolution or inefficient codec), it doesn’t matter whether it’s HTML5 or Flash. It’s a codec issue. Flash is just a container format and is NOT inherently slower than, say, HTML5. Both HTML5 and Flash performs similary when they are serving the same codec/resolution stream.
But it still comes back to the claim of Adobe saying that Flash will deliver the entire web to mobile users since in many instances it won’t. You make a good point that it could be the codec or the stream rate is too much for a mobile device to handle. But then it will still fall into the hands of the site to re-encode for mobile devices and Adobe just can’t say Flash will work just great viewing videos on all mobile devices because that isn’t true. It’s going to be hit and miss and the average user won’t know why.
Everyone thinks it’s a hate war between Apple and Adobe, but it’s users that are going to suffer on both sides. If Adobe can get Flash to work great on all mobile devices on all sites, all well and good. If Apple can force sites to move to HTML5 to work on all iOS devices, all well and good. I just want to see consistency of viewing videos on all sites using hand-held mobile devices no matter how it’s achieved.
Having built Flash on iPods, now iPhone for more than five years by doing a simple conversion to QuickTime, Flash works great and what is the point of a CPU if you don’t use it now and again.
Cheers and Flash is still a great platform.
Tom
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Flash on my EVO works perfect for me. I use it often to stream vids from MSNBC, CNN, FOXNEWS as well as Podcast from the aforementioned sites.I have not visited a site yet that my almighty EVO could not open and utilize its video or flash feed! Sounds like a few are just hating because the iDont, Wont ever do flash!!
WTF, you watch 2 far left news organizations AND a right wing fair and balanced news corp. Your head must be spinning like mad. Perhaps you need to install a liberal filter on your EVO to lessen the pain on your left side.
As for Flash, after watching this Flash is dead to me.
Having built Flash on iPods, now iPhone for more than five years by doing a simple conversion to QuickTime, Flash works great and what is the point of a CPU if you don’t use it now and again.
Cheers and Flash is still a great platform.
Tom
He’s running Wi-Fi and must have one hell of a slow connect speed!
My EVO works just fine — about as well as either of the two netbooks we have here. And, yeah, I’m also usually on Wi-Fi.
I think your EVO is not running Frozen Yogurt. Remember that every version of Android runs differently on every different piece of hardware. Android platform performance and compatibility issues are all over the map and cannot be compared directly when using different phones with different firmware. And that is just the OS i talk about, the Android Apps are insanely inconsistent across the many hardware/OS platforms.
You basic Android phone is like a box of chocolates, you don’t know what your gonna get. And Android tablets may act like a melted box of chocolates at best.
I think you can clearly see the wisdom of the iOS platform now as Apple watches The Google pull its pants back up after being totally exposed of its short comings.
My EVO is running on Froyo and the flash absolutely sucks on it. This is stating the obvious though. But on certain extranet sites that require flash it’s bearable to use. Another one of Android’s shortcomings is VPN support there is none. Unless you homebrew with openvpn not exactly SAS-70. But hey we don’t need to do any stinkin real work when we can play on our Android phone and use all of googles apps. Plus look at all the flash games you can play now. The wisdom of Apple is allowing a platform that can be apart of corporate america and be managed by the man. Hey we can’t all be underpaid independent consultants or write blogs that get picked up by corporate sponsorship to push other corporations agendas/wares for a price.
Aint nothing gonna make the Apple haters angrier than watching once again as Jobs is proven right. Flash is a dinosaur.
Reason still I’d say for some sites to stick with YouTube and use a YouTube channel for content distribution. I’ve been very happy with the stock YouTube app on my Touch Pro 2, and it plays all videos fine.
Kevin, of all the sites you visited, you didn’t punch up one of your own flash videos from jkOnTheRun??? I thought you told me that the Ooyala player worked fine on your N1?
Droid Incredible running 2.2 here.
Saw this video and immediately went to Metacafe. Played SD movie trailers perfectly (though HD video was not really that watchable). Went to FOX’s website and loaded up an episode of House – worked fine. My conclusion here is that Flash video works great with video encoded at a bitrate the phone can handle.
On top of this, to claim that Flash on Android is as bad as it you say isn’t really fair. Flash is more than just video – often times it’s a major part of site design, and in those cases it works quite well. No more broken plugin icons like you see all the time on an iPhone.
My guess is that your problems are due to not using the most up to date version of Flash. It’s a bit disingenuous to not state in the article which version you’re working with here.
As most recent Android models are about to get the Froyo (and the Flash capability), look for the pro-Apple media launch a massive FUD campaign against Android/Flash.
Instead of characterising this as “shockingly bad”, it should be characterised as “PREDICTABLY bad”. Why? Because it isn’t shocking that Flash is horrible on mobile devices. It was PREDICTABLE that it was because after all, desktop computers use a lot of CPU cycles to run flash video, thus it is expected that lesser powered devices such as mobile devices will have a difficult time playing Flash.
It wasn’t shocking.
It was PREDICTABLE.
One guy with one Nexus One on one home network PROVES that Flash will never work for any Nexus One or Android phone?
This is the worst trolling. Ryan Lawler should be embarrassed about the spin he has posted. I certainly hope he doesn’t get paid for such drivel.
Can one “troll” their own blog? I don’t think so. Leaving slanderous, exaggerated comments that disregard the facts – now that’s trolling.
All Ryan is saying here is summed up at the end of his post:
“While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,..”
Pay special attention to the “non-optimized” part. Look it up if you have to. We’ll wait. Got it?
Now compare this statement to yours. See who’s doing the spinning?
ok, now go back and read that summary. basically, Ryan is extrapolating from this simpleton test that just because Kevin can’t watch his fucking shows, that everyone’s experience is going to be the same: “it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch…”
when in fact, just from reading the comments, many people IN PRACTICE are able to watch flash from Android phones. even from the same phone and flash version as Kevin. so aside from this ‘test’ being poorly set up (non-scientific), yes — Ryan’s summary is sensationalist, exaggerated and definitely has some spin to it.
get it? i’ll wait for you. ok good.
@Tommy
“One guy with one Nexus One on one home network PROVES that Flash will never work for any Nexus One or Android phone?”
I suppose you are one of those guys who claimed that you can’t make any phone calls with an iPhone 4 because one guy in one network on one specific location had one dropped call…
I’ve noticed the same thing when trying to view “entire episodes”. Other flash types work very well. The flash above, in this posting, works very well. The flash content from the New York Times also works well.
I am using Droid Incredible with stock Froyo OTA update.
Don’t be so quick to condemn. There is a problem that has something to do with the flash being presented as a stream (which works well) vs. the content being presented as a an entire episode download. It will get fixed.
Even as it is, the flash feature of Froyo is a tremendous improvement over an iPhone that does absolutely nothing with flash content.
It’s rather ironic that your video review plays fine in flash 10.1 on my nexus one. And as far as I can tell the ooyala player is sending it the full desktop video, not the version it uses for mobile iphone.
Just watched the this video on my HTC Desire. It loaded in 2 seconds and played flawlessly. Despite a notice that the video is not optimized for mobile. Maybe he should configure his N1 to play Flash “on demand ” only, so the ads on these pages don’t get loaded at the same time.
For me, Flash on Android does its job.
Just posted a video “response”, so to speak, to add some balance to this post.
I won’t (and don’t strive to) convince those who are on the Flash-hate bandwagon for whatever reason, but simply add some context for those who might be considering getting a Flash-capable device.
It isn’t a revelation to have it, but every now and then when the little Flash icon appears it’s a nice feature to have on standby.
Appreciate the rational post given all the blather above. I went to watch your video hoping it would show the other side. And I agree you did, sort of. The problem is that you didn’t browse any of the sites Kevin did, which would be the main sites I would be interested in. And the sites you did browse I really don’t care about at the same level. Sure I might be able to book a hotel or browse a restaurant site, but the post is really about video performance, and that’s primarily why I’d want flash on my phone.
Here’s hoping one of the other people posting here that THEIR Android phones can play all these videos flawlessly will go to the same trouble as you and disprove Kevin’s claims. Until then I’m assuming he’s still right.
Hi there, Fanfoot.
I was in no way trying to demonstrate that it could play those sites. In fact I would say unequivocally that it can’t — those videos are encoded with a high complexity profile at a high resolution/bitrate, and are entirely ill suited for mobile devices.
All I was demonstrating was that Flash on mobile has definite merit, though any illusion that it allows access to all possible content is simply ridiculous. Of course that isn’t the case.
Hi there,
first of all, sorry for the bad quality of my video. I wanted to watch the same videos you did, but i am from germany so i can’t watch ABC an FOX. But at least the trailers.
This is a Samsung Galaxy S with a beta 2.2 Firmware, so not the final deal. But just watch it! I’d like to here what you think.
I would definitely say the video quality was satisfactory, not great, but definitely watchable. It appeared to me that there was still some minor frame rate drop-off. There are definitely variables that come into play but I don’t know if such inconsistency would make most users happy. Only time will tell if Adobe can deliver on its promise to have a high-quality viewing experience with Flash on all Android devices that are capable of running Android 2.2 and above. Running into sites that are not optimized for mobile devices will prove to be annoying unless viewing something poorly is better than viewing nothing at all.
IMHO it’s a lot less annoying than the stop/start playback you get on an iPhone that’s for sure! You Tube is classic example of bloody annoying playback on an iPhone! I prefer low quality Flash than stop / start 10 times during a 2 min clip thank you very much!
And Flash is not just about movie playback! There’s a lot of design content that needs Flash to get the full web experience – which is the main reason I want it on my smartphone, and NOT just for movie playback!
The Samsung Galaxy S suffers with a Wi-Fi drop out issue, as you can see in your video from your Wi-Fi signal bouncing around. It drops the Wi-Fi signal so streaming on them is no where near as smooth as it will be on the HTC Desire (I have both Galaxy S and Desire). I’ve tried numerous things to try fix the issue, but it still keeps on dropping the Wi-Fi.
I’d hoped Samsung would had fixed this issue, I guess not in the beta, let’s hope they do in the Alpa version.
Question as your running the beta: is the app lag fixed?
You’re right about the wifi thing. haven’t noticed it til now, but it’s no big problem. i can make a speed test for you if you want to ;-)
I have to say, this 2.2 Froyo beta I have is great. No problems so far. There is nearly no more lag. Well the thing i have noticed is, that if you have a app that starts und than does an animation while it’s loading it doesn’t seem to you like a lag. For example the iphone 4 does this great when it comes to camerea. There’s a animation happening all the time. It’s not faster ready taking a picture than the galaxy but you have “something to watch while you wait”
The next week there will be the official 2.2 release for the galaxy s in europe so we’ll wait and hope they did everything better this time!
Adobe is going about this wrong for mobile devices if it figures it can just use a plug-in for viewing videos without the sites being optimized for mobile devices. I think the cases the author used are probably extremes. Maybe 90% of Flash on the internet won’t have viewing problems, but if the ones you really want to watch videos on are just too processor intensive to have a worthwhile viewing experience. Any videos sites should just be redone either in Flash optimized for mobile or HTML5 so a hand-held mobile device users doesn’t have to go through the frustration of hit or miss viewing.
I see some commenters, as usual, claim to have Flash running perfectly on their particular devices. I honestly don’t think they’re liars, so then there must be any number of factors which can ruin the Flash experience for some users and not others. I still say that if sites just went ahead and recoded all their sites using HTML5, even users of older, less powerful mobile devices would reap the benefit and have a higher consistency of a good viewing experience. I know that Flash is still important to many users, but the majority of current hand-held mobile devices are just not up to the task. I honestly don’t understand the insistence of Flash fanbois saying that Flash should continue to be used at all mobile user’s expense. It just seems plain selfish. To make it fair, then let sites use both Flash and HTML5 and see which tech wins out for most smartphone users.
First, you don’t encode the video in HTML5, the codec for viewing on the mobile devices discussed here which is using the GPU is H264 baseline 3.0 or 3.1 depending on the GPU that’s in the device. Flash can use this encoding format and so can HTML5 if the browser supports it.
How the H264 video bitstream is wrapped makes a video a Flash video or not. That is called the container format.
HTML5 or not, the mobile CPUs are just not powerful enough (yet) to handle H264 decoding smoothly.
So the competition is not between Flash/F4V and HTML5/MP4 containers but between CPU and GPU decoded video.
I wish so called experts would STFU! I don’t really care what you think or what Steve Jobs thinks, I personally want Flash on my phone so I use an Android smartphone, if you don’t want it turn the damn plugin off or buy an iPhone! I don’t really need a comparison to an iPhone and how HTML5 is meant to be better, I’ve been there got the t-shirt and moved on to something better!
But to set the record straight:
Flash is NOT the problem! Movies correctly encoded will stream faster in Flash player than a movie without. I could prove Flash is crap and I could also prove it runs as smooth as silk – it’s easy to prove either way, you just pick a badly encoded site to prove is rubbish or a properly encoded site that doesn’t use Shockwave to prove it’s good!! Personally I’ve never had an issue playing Flash movies on my HTC Desire, they run pretty smooth and load fast and run damn good considering it’s a phone and not a computer, but hey I’m not expecting it to be the same experience my PC give me. On the other hand I’ve had Shockwave players lock up and take forever to load on my PC and Mac, not just my HTC Desire!
ALSO FLASH IS NOT JUST ABOUT MOVIES FFS!! There is a lot of design content that uses Flash and without the plugin you can’t view it!
In contrast I’ve never had one of Apple’s movie yet play from start to finish on my iPhone or the iPad without it stopping at least 10 times waiting for movie to catch up (or my Macbook Pro / PC come to think about it), and that’s meant to be better!?
Get a life beyond Apple will you!
PS: Ironically I watch you non optimised Flash on my HTC Desire last night – it loaded instantly and played fine!
Wow. You’re the one trying to make this about Apple.
Which experts are you referring to, anyway? The authors of the article? The anonymous commenters?
My how you go on and on about your choice of platforms. You like Flash, we get it. But are you actually here defending Flash and your choice? What would be the point of that?
Perhaps you’re offended by the author’s POV and feel compelled to provide a contrary opinion. Fine. You’ve had your say, more than once, now how about you, STFU.
Greg you Flash fanboi you…sucking that Adobe flesh flute constantly. You love it don’t ya.
Watching your video on my HTC Desire as we speak. It started playing instantly, perfect sound, perfect video quality. Don’t know what’s wrong with your phone?
LOL, and it looks like I’m not the only one ;) Wish I could test fox or abc streams.
The point isn’t that SOME videos don’t work. Its that the videos MOST PEOPLE WANT TO WATCH don’t work. And in the US that list is obvious–Hulu, ABC.COM, CBS.COM, FOX.COM, ComedyCentral.com and so forth. If Flash can play the video from those sites then I am interested. If it can’t but can play some random videos from some other sites I only care a tiny little bit. Go to the sites Kevin showed and try them on your phone. If you have a different experience with THOSE SITES then post that experience here.
This guy is as misleading as what all parties to the discusssion is.
The title should read: “Web video on Android is bad, on iPhone is almost not possible”
I know that the Flash experience on Android isnt the greatest when viewing non mobile optimised websites BUT I would choose that as a starting point rather than NOT having the possibility of viewing the full web AT ALL.
I’m not quite sure I follow. You would rather have a limited, frustrating experience than a full, rich experience? I think that is where the whole “Flash vs. HTML5″ debate is actually heading. The simple fact is, just about every smartphone out there right now can view HTML5 content–and view it well with very little usability problems. Sure, 100,000,000 phones shipped with Flash, but it is really usable. The argument Steve Jobs posts is that he feels most users would like to have a full, rich experience–rather than a debilitated choppy experience. In other words, he just wants to ship something that works as expected. Flash isn’t providing that right now. Those that say that it is would have to deliver me hard proof, as I have seen every “Flash Capable” phone out there and I have gotten similar results as this poster did.
In the end, who really cares what works? HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, Java… let’s just all get on a mission to deliver web standards that work no matter what device you choose. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Just use the SkyFire browser and you get all the video you want. Works great. No big deal.
Ah news flash! (sorry couldn’t resist)
Flash is used for more than just video online. Webs also have menus, splash screens, and photo albums run on flash. Which are totally useless on the iPhone.
And “class action lawsuit” guys? Please. So Android can only run SOME flash video – boo hoo. That’s a lot better than NO flash video on the iPhone.
Look I am on my THIRD iPhone and even my latest, greatest iPhone 4 constantly chokes (over wifi) on Steve Jobs approved bits of youTube playing in the Apple YouTube app. I rarely even try anymore. I simply mark the story in my rss feed and watch it later on my desktop.
No Android Flash ain’t perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction and certainly better than the competition.
Im exactly with you there Scott… and just viewed this website from my Nexus without a glitch!
I’ve been actually handed an IPad to use/play with for the last 4 days, so as a good developer Ive been trying/testing most websites that I use on a everyday basis and found that many of them the text input boxes or dropdown menus… to name a few everyday components we experience… were laggy and hard to interact! Its a great piece of tech no questions there… but honestly for the price… its FARRR from the dreamland some will put it!
And lets not mention that most apps work in streched/pixelated mode… as still few good ones are ported to the device.
I think the next version of Android – Gingerbread with start to give the competition a run for its money… Flash with be more integrated with the OS… remember it just left beta stages.
Still I really enjoy like the other day… viewing a property website and being able to use the StreetView embed on the site for the location I was seeing, drag/zoom all working really well… obviously a bit laggy… but better then not having it AT ALL!
This is like blaming C++ for memory leaks, it is just a bad programmer stupid.
The difference here is who is making the decisions. In the case of the iPhone, Steve Jobs dictates exactly what can and can’t be done on his products while Android will say “this is a REALLY BAD IDEA” but will let you do it. If you want to run 40 data intensive apps in the background on Android, you can, you’re just going to pay miserably for it. This is just another example of the dogmatic differences between the two operating systems, with Apple assuming users are dumber than they are and restricting their choices too much. Meanwhile, Android assuming users are smarter than they are, and perhaps give users too few safeguards against trying to run CPU intensive applications (eg flash trying to render a non-mobile formatted video file) and being surprised when the quality is garbage. It’s no surprise that flash works poorly when it’s not formatted for mobile, but it’s easier to include a mobile quality version in a flash player rather than having an entirely different content distribution method for mobile platforms as you would w/o flash.
I’ve tried http://www.tunevision.com – this is a music site that delivers the pandora for music video. The experience is seamless on the android nexus. They seem to have polished this player to deal with the reduced memory available on the phone. All of the videos are optimized for the phone so that they take a lot less power to play using dedicated hardware to play.
Just because you have flash on a phone does not mean that all sites are optimized for flash. What else is running on the phone that you are testing with BTW. So you indict Flash’s performance because the sites you are looking at are not optimized for the phone? You could do better reporting that this.
Here’s the problem with SOME flash sites working, SOME not working and SOME working pretty poorly. It doesn’t matter how optimized for mobile or not the site is. It doesn’t matter how new the plugin is. It doesn’t matter if it’s beta, alpha or final. It doesn’t matter that anyone on a tech blog knows the difference between any of this stuff. A REGULAR PERSON who walks into a store, buys an Android phone, goes to abc.com or fox.com and fails to watch video is going to see an iPhone user using the ABC app and Hulu Plus app and wonder. No, users won’t get smarter, they don’t need to be.
That is a really good point Scott… but for the same coin you also have apps… if not from the same providers yet… very soon… to deliver their media content on the Android.
One example is the “myPlayer” which delivers the BBC iPlayer content… you could go to the site on the mobile if you want… but the app gives you a much more optimised view for your device… still… you could.
The point for video seriously is a bad one… the main idea for Flash on a device is NOT ONLY for video content… like someone mentioned above… menus… interactive sites… other experiences… YOU CAN… as opposed to… IS THERE an app for that?
…and we are surely forgetting about AIR for Android which will allow even more developers to develop native applications for the OS.
Im an active Apple user… I think they are really huge innovators… hell I even bought recently the “magic” trackpad and have been loving it! But I dont like to have my choices dictated… specially being a developer.
…and the math is simple… there WILL be way more devices with Android then iOS available… and companies want to sell… so simple… they WILL target the biggest consumer base… even if the UI experience is not as great as in the iOS at the moment… Android will have the most apps… and as such… the most users too.
…and people talk about the seamless experience… well… how about the iPhone 3G… which is still for sale and doesnt run many apps that are now available? …what do you tell those consumers? …and yes android has the same problem… but then again… doesnt claim that the experience will be the same.
…its always all down to the developer… website… application… optimisation… optimisation… optimisation.
What Scott Lewis said.
And you’ll get some HTML5 pages are too choppy due to the animation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4
Also, great user experience yo got going there.
So if a website / email links to a news bit with video on ABC, you have to:
1) copy the article title
2) close your browser
2.5) Open up the store, download the ABC app if needed.
3) open up ABC app.
4) find said article / paste article title
5) enjoy
6) uninstall ABC app unless you want a million icons littering your home screen for every conceivable service that that you’ll probably never use in the next several weeks, especially if you had to perform step 2.5
While Android users:
1) click on link
2) enjoy at least a passable version of the video. If they don’t like it, they have the option of going to the app, like the iP*.
That’s also not factoring in smaller sites that can’t afford to design dedicated apps, like Homestar Runner and such?
The one thing that non-tech saavy people say repeatedly : if something is running slowly or choppily, the first thing out of their mouths is “I need a faster computer”.
They’ll realize that the device is too slow for the way it’s being presented and look for alternate methods, just like you did with your suggestion.
It is a vicious circle, because if your argument is only Flash allows you the full internet, a mobile version have to play well all content, also legacy content without mobile optimisation.
But when you say, Flash works well with optimised content, that means H.264 codec in a flash container, which will also play without a flash container at all.
So Adobes promises are wrong, because you wont have a nice experience without optimisation and if you have to optimise your content for mobile devices you could jump directly to HTML 5.
Adobe never said everything would work on a mobile device. That was APL with HTML 5 (speaking of which: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4).
Hardware limitations are just that, any idiot can realize this. If you try to play Crysis at 1080p on a Pentium 1, it’s not going to work. On any mobile device, if you try to play back 1080p on any mobile device without hardware support, you’re in for a ride… lol
Even if HTML5 is ready today (it’s not), what about legacy content?
Again, I’d rather have the option to play it a little bit choppily than not at all.
“Maybe I’m just hitting the right site’s…”
Umm, try hitting your own!? This video plays great on my N1.
@peter – Not really the case, since it’s just a matter of adding an additional stream. Most likely the stream is already there, and it just needs to be “locked” to the lowest setting for mobile devices.
This would be a pretty minor change for any website to implement.
Contrast that with switching eveyything to HTML5. Not only would it be extremely expensive, content providers loose all ability to do dynamic bit-rate setting, can’t protect their content, lose support for advanced scrub bar’s…
Not to mention these sites STILL need to have a Flash fallback, since HTML5 is only supported by about 40% of users right now.
So really, what is easier. Change your current system a tiny bit to properly support mobile. Or, throw everything out the window, take major steps backwards in functionality, and still have to development a flash fallback version anyways.
All these sites ABC, Fox etc, could easily add mobile optimized video’s right into their current systems, one programmer and a couple of days work. It’s not a big deal.
Contrast that to switching to HTML5, and you’re looking at full teams, working for months. I mean it’s not even comparable.
HTML5 does not fix the problems of bad video playback on any phone. If the video player is not set up to deal with the limitations of memory on the phone, or if the video is not encoded to take advantage of hardware playback, then the performance and battery consumption will suffer. HTML5 only provides a way of playing video, not controlling it, protecting it, or adding advertising.
So any blogger that talks about bad performance of flash, and thinks HTML5 is the answer, clearly hasn’t done his research, or is just looking for something that will get viewers by jumping on a sensitive issue.
Lack of flash support on the iPad and iPhone is a pain in the ass for general web surfing. Try looking at most restaurant sites. Just because the phone supports flash, doesn’t mean that the website supports phones.
HTML5 does not fix the problems of bad video playback on any phone. If the video player is not set up to deal with the limitations of memory on the phone, or if the video is not encoded to take advantage of hardware playback, then the performance and battery consumption will suffer. HTML5 only provides a way of playing video, not controlling it, protecting it, or adding advertising.
So any blogger that talks about bad performance of flash, and thinks HTML5 is the answer, clearly hasn’t done his research, or is just looking for something that will get viewers by jumping on a sensitive issue.
Lack of flash support on the iPad and iPhone is a pain in the ass for general web surfing. Try looking at most restaurant sites. Just because the phone supports flash, doesn’t mean that the website supports phones.
I tried the same clips on my Droid incredible running the verizon OTA 2.2 Froyo and had no problems. FYI i had a good 3G connection full bars, and wifi turned off.
HTML5 does not fix the problems of bad video playback on any phone. If the video player is not set up to deal with the limitations of memory on the phone, or if the video is not encoded to take advantage of hardware playback, then the performance and battery consumption will suffer. HTML5 only provides a way of playing video, not controlling it, protecting it, or adding advertising.
So any blogger that talks about bad performance of flash, and thinks HTML5 is the answer, clearly hasn’t done his research, or is just looking for something that will get viewers by jumping on a sensitive issue.
Lack of flash support on the iPad and iPhone is a pain in the ass for general web surfing. Try looking at most restaurant sites. Just because the phone supports flash, doesn’t mean that the website supports phones.
Weird… I was just curious because I don’t try to watch shows on my phone but I have an EVO and I just tried this using the 4G connection and it worked fine. Definitely loaded just as well as any video I tried to watch on my old iPhone.
Oh, and I haven’t dropped a call since I switched to the EVO on release day.
I have two coworkers who say Flash runs very good on their new EVO phones.
After loading one of my websites that has Flash (no video in it) on their phone, there was some choppiness calculating the motion tweens of vector text objects. Picture motion tweens moved perfectly. Experiences will improve with better mobile hardware.
Flash and Silverlight are the future. HTML standards will never catch up to the every evolving features of plugins. By the time HTML5 finalizes in 2024, it will be a whole different web game. Get over it and embrace the darkness.
http://www.detailcode.com/news/what-html5-javascript2-and-css3-should-have-been/
Please tell me the URL, i’d like to try it out. :-)
Michael, you can test it from this url: http://www.pursuitofweb.net
On my HTC Legend with Android 2.1 I can play almost all flash content. Of course their are limits like very complexe animation and bad coded video players, but Ive never had trouble with serious flash content.
You just aiming to get as much hits as you can get. Perhaps you should post that in your apple fanboy forum to worship Mr. Job.
I’ve had loads of problems running Flash on my Android phone. And not just Flash video, Flash anything is buggy.
I’d say it’s not ready for prime time.
I was interested in this article. I have an HTC EVO. I went to the same sites that the author is showing and had no problems on them with Flash. So, maybe what the author really needs to do is conduct a real study and try these tests with multiple devices in multiple places? Otherwise, the evidence seems a little flimsy. If you’re going to make big claims like this, shouldn’t you really have more evidence to back them up? I write this as neither a Flash or HTML5 fan–just someone who likes to see things that work.
I tried the same tests on my Nexus One:
abc.go.com was totally unusable. They appear to be using some JavaScript overlays that the Android browser doesn’t like. I couldn’t tell more without breaking out the JavaScript debugger.
fox.com was usable, especially when I turned off WiFi and went to 3G. That’s kind of surprising but I think it’s because if it detects you have a fat pipe it tries to cram higher res video down it, and your little phone CPU can’t handle it. It also works best if you keep the default settings which have Flash used only “on demand”. The web page that contains the video on fox.com actually has more than one video playing at once which is find for a 3GHz desktop but it’s hard for the 1GHz phone CPU to handle multiple streams. On demand means you’ll get a box with a switch in it – flip the switch and that flash animation starts to run.
metacafe.com was ok as long as you avoided hulu videos. Full screen mode worked especially well there.
One note about Android flash and full screen. Double-tapping on the flash square doesn’t make it full screen, it just zooms the web page so the item you tapped on takes up most of the screen. On some sites, like metacafe, there’s a ‘full screen’ button under or beside the video and if you tap that, then it gets into true full screen mode which runs faster. However, there’s a known bug with that in Flash 10.1 that makes it not always work.
Having Flash activated ‘on demand’ gives you the best of both worlds. You can ignore Flash most of the time, but when you find a web site that absolutely has to have Flash then you can turn it on for just the part that needs it.
Wow. Thanks so much. An actual rational human being posting real details of their experiences to move the conversation forward. And help others. And stuff. Nice.
I like how the Flash astroturfers are trying to blame it on the videos not being optimized for mobile. Funny, why does my iPod touch play all H.264 video smoothly then? They aren’t all optimized for mobile either. Give it up; Flash is a steaming pile of antiquated crap.
Flash is dead!
If it’s H.264 video delivered through a HTML5 player then it’s most likely optimised for mobile (unless the website is targeting 10% of desktop users). In which case, Flash would play it just as well.
I very much disagree that you can even come CLOSE to calling the Android 2.2 Flash experience SHOCKINGLY BAD, when in fact it is SHOCKINGLY G O O D when you consider this is the very first availability of a fully integrated flashplayer on a mobile OS (please inform me of any other ones you know of).
I cannot speak from a Nexus One perspective, but with my brand new EVO 4G that came out of the box with Froyo 2.2 and Adobe Flashplayer installed, I have known nothing but a fantastic flash web experience – and that is with ZERO WiFi usage on the device (Sprint 4G only).
On mobile optimized videos the playback is flawless.
On NON-optimized videos the playback is more than acceptable; I have experience no buffering or stuttering, smooth audio, and a descent 10-20 fps steady on every video I have watched.
What more can I say? Maybe this: when I browse the web, I happily cannot make the distinction between where the HTML ends and the FLASH begins – can anyone on an iOS say that?
That is what you call a competititve advantage. Is it perfect? No.
Not yet :)
Nobody cares about Flash; it’s terrible and useless on mobile devices.
After watching Kevin’s Real World test of mobile flash i only have this to say:
FLASH IS DEAD TO ME
Have you tried to download 1080P video to a smartphone and play it?
IT DOES NOT PLAY
because of the screen and processor limitations; it’s like giving a house blender rocks to turn into milkshake.
Whomever wrote this obviously does not understand clearly how the videos or flash technology to stream them over the web works.
This is like saying that your Blue-Rays and all the technology that supports them is bad because when you see them in a 13″ CRT TV from the 1990′s it does not play 1080 and the image looks blurred.
And of course if the website is BLOCKING mobile devices, and all mobile devices identify themselves as mobile with the website you’re accessing in order to custom correct the content to your tiny screen OF COURSE that you are not going to get the video.
I just came here to tell you and all apple fan boys S T F U because ANDROID RULES!
It’s not even meaningful to say that flash that is optimized for mobile works fine. There is less optimized-for-mobile flash on the web then there is HTML5. And the whole point of google, et. al. advertising is that you can see the “whole web”. What’s the point, if they can’t see the whole web either.
In short, you anti-Apple idiots are being played. Stop letting people take advantage of your stupid prejudices.
Believe that as technology advances, these problems will eventually be resolved. No more than a year or two
Since updating to 2.2 on my Incredible I’ve been very pleased with Flash on my phone. I plays without issue and hasn’t been a battery hog. And as an added bonus my iPhone carrying friends have expressed envy when comparing the same web pages since they load on my phone just as fast as on theirs.
I’m a HTC Desire owner and as per the other Desire owners haven’t had an issue with flash video. Sometimes there is a choppy first 1-2 seconds but usually after that quality is perfect for a mobile device.
Flash games are a completely different ball game and anyone who knows Flash will understand why it will be a long time before games like it are playable on a smartphone.
As for those talking about streaming HD content on a smartphone, you deserve everything you get. There isn’t a smartphone out there with native HD resolution so why even bother trying to play it?
I’m not saying flash is perfect on Android, what I am saying is that when your out and about you no longer have to bookmark the link and wait until you can get home to watch the video, you can watch it straight away and from my experience without any issue.
not only does flash on a nexus with froyo work fine, you can even watch hulu without issue if you change the browser to ‘desktop’ in the settings.
I think you were holding it wrong.
F.U.D.
Your video only show that non-every Flash based desktop web site works on Flash 10.1 for Mobile on the Nexus One.
But, guess what, those websites don’t work on any other mobile device.
iOS = apps + HTML5
Android = apps + HTML5 + Flash
With Android, you have the CHOICE and some Flash based websites work very well, some don’t.
Access the site over 3G instead of Wifi. It will work. What is happening is that when you access over WiFi, you are getting the flash video at a bit rate which is intended to be played by desktops and not optimised for the mobile.
Yes, Flash streaming servers supports the ability to degrade the stream quality based on the client device – something you cannot do with HTML5.
Just tried my EVO at ABC.com on Comcast Cable Modem and worked without flaws… What was really nice was that HDMI out was flawless… Modern Family and The Middle are funny as all hell…
I am not in the US so can’t try your sites but on my nexus one I can surf to the BBC iPlayer site, fullscreen the player (not sure why you chose to try and watch video without fullscreening it) and watch it in nice quality, no jerkiness, no out of sync. A previous beta DID have that problem. Are you using an old version. I notice also you have flash switched entirely on, so your mobile CPU has to process every little ad. Just use the click to activate mode where flash doesn’t play until you click on it. You may also have multiple other pages in the background of your browser and not notice it. In short like many other android users here, i’m not sure what your problem is but it isn’t flash on android.
I just now loaded up that very episode of Bones on my HTC EVO and it played without issue. That alone is awesome, and awesome does not make ‘startlingly bad’.
Well, first of all, Flash on android has been out for the better part of a month, depending on what device you have. Sorry that you can’t watch every video on the internet on a .1 release of something. Just because everything from the desktop platform doesn’t translate perfectly to the mobile platform is not a reason to not include the ability to use it. Some > none, especially with the prospect of the platform maturing. “While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,” writes Lawler. “All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.”" How is it difficult to imagine people watching web videos on their handset? Concerning optimized versus non-optimized, this is exactly why Adobe has guidelines to optimize videos for mobile flash player (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/delivering_video_fp10.1.html) and part of the reason this person had an inconsistent experience with trying to watch flash video on their handset. This quote seems to also be saying that if a software company can’t deliver a feature 100% bug-free and perfect on the first version, then don’t try at all. If that were the case, Apple shouldn’t have allowed mobile safari to parse any HTML5 and just stuck with HTML4 – trying to run several chrome experiments (www.chromeexperiments.com) on an iPad when it first came out resulted in failure, while I was able to use them on my desktop computer. This whole thing just sounds like an uneducated half-nerd decided he’d get in on the flame war between apple fanboys and android fanboys just for the hell of it. I have a feeling they don’t know that both flash and html5 aren’t solely video technologies and it’s kinda sad you are getting any press at all.
BREAKING NEWS: Having Flash+HTML5 in Android is worse than having NO Flash+HTML5.
BTW it runs beautifully on my phone, that must mean iJobs was wrong…….
Uh – did the tester employ proper testing techniques like bandwidth monitoring of the whole pipe? In many cases it is not the consumer end that is the bottleneck. With mobile, the bottleneck is also metered by the carrier as well as the servers. since most carriers do not use a proper distribution infrastructure like Akamai, stuff like this will happen with flash or with other technologies.
FAIL
LearnHowToProperlyTest
See also:
Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right
http://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile-flash-fail-weak-android-player-proves-jobs-right (August 18th, 2010)
Have you tried viewing a heavy HTML/CSS/JS web site on your phone recently? Did you enjoy it?
After a couple of years of sites getting optimized for mobile, and in some cases, separate mobile versions being created, many websites are still unusable on my phone.
So we are surprised that a few flash sites totally suck?
For comparison, here’s the story of a guy who felt that the user experience of the iOS version of his sophisticated and heavy Flash application was “great” (he used Adobe’s converter, before Apple nixed the idea).
http://blog.lovelycharts.com/
Please take the time to read this – it is short. Note that I am in no way associated with this company or product.
So I accept that the experience of N1 owners viewing un-optimized Flash will probably be pretty bad, but with 0.1% of mobile devices supporting Flash there isn’t much reason for sites to optimize for mobile. If enough mobile devices get Flash then enough sites will get optimized and the experience will improve – just like for HTML websites.
wow u really think flash on android is about video? no.. its about flash apps and it brings adobe AIR. brings true cross platform development of apps – and this is why steve jobs doesnt want flash – because apple wont get their cut and developers cant be locked into steves app jail.
Curious to know what the Flash experience of those same sites was like on the desktop, to see if load times were as bad.
Also, why not see what the experience was like with a YouTube video running in the browser? I’d think that more people would connect to that, and as such would be a more accurate reflection of how someone would use mobile Flash Video.
Hey Steve Jobs — high five !
This test is kinda BS, i tested the same sites on my android
and everything went really smoothly …
Even I tried when I updated to A 2.2. But uninstalled it 15 mins later. Didnt find it useful for video watching. For rest, I dont want to overload my browser with external app thread.
I dont believe, Adobe’s Flash pitch will fly for long.
Go HTML5!!!
“all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad”
That MIGHT be true if Flash were used only for video (although even in that case, device-optimized video would still give a Flash capable device an edge). But flash is used all over the web as part of web pages themselves. Anyone who used FlashBlocker or similar add-ons knows just how many web pages have Flash embedded in them as part of their logic. Your conclusion is very flawed. Having a Flash-capable device is still an advantage, even considering the results of your narrow experiment.
Snapdragon sucks !
Graphics insude Snapdragon is shit !
They should try Samsung Humming bird A9 CPU it have a powerfull gpu !
@ Hee Haw the Pigtrotter:
Before nitpicking other people’s english mistakes, you need to look at your own. You start off with a sentence fragment AND run-on (that’s amazing btw, I’ve never seen that before) — it’s remotely close to a proper sentence.
—> @Greg: firstly, when contracting “you are”, it’s “you’re”, not “your”, which is used as a possessive.”
Follow that by a sentence that begins with a conjunction. It’s not looking good for you.
Then you make a point about Flash not being optimized for touch interfaces. So this differs from a theoretical HTML5 page or game that was designed for keyboards?
Software / content need to be a bit more carefully designed if they are to support more than one different type of interface type, regardless of the technology used to implement it.
I’m not saying Flash works flawlessly / perfectly all the time — that’s impossible. Why? It’s the same reason as all HTML5 intensive pages won’t work properly on all computers — CPU/GPU power isn’t there. It’s like asking a Pentium 1 computer to run a modern FPS game.
My 1.6Ghz Atom-based netbook has trouble with HD flash videos. Some players seem to be more efficient than others (Hulu and the networks are the worst offenders.)
I was able to play clips fine on ABC’s site, on my Droid Incredible, but full episodes did get stuck on the loading screen. Who knows what the latter player is checking for.
I just upgraded my Incredible. Flash works fine. Steaming video on flash works fun. But feel free to let Steve Jobs dictate what technology you should be using, Mr. Lawler
It works “fine”, not “fun”.
just go to TED.com. its awesome..works as intended and Youtube..
sure some sites wont work but pick your favorite ones…ted IS NO GO ON iPHONE..
Weighing in late, after reading several argumentative comments.
I love Kevin and the folks at jkontherun, they are among the least biased bloggers in this space, and as such deserve my trust.
I’m not sure what’s going on with Kevin’s tests, but I’ve not had a single issue with Flash content on the web delivered to my Android 2.2 EVO, even from the websites tested. I haven’t experienced a single crash, no untoward load times – nothing which would take away my enjoyment of either the web or Flash content.
Sorry to blow the opponents out of the water as being irrelevant, but you are. Flash on my Android device has improved and increased my web experience.
gigaom’s sensational headline is just wrong (although not surprising).
Well i know what he is doing wrong , when you get a message that this video is not optimised for mobile it means that you are playing at least 720p flash videos. Due to the Flash player on the mobile having a very small buffer you get very poor performance. I checked out media cafe myself and could play all the videos but the HD ones which was coppy as hell.
Anybody else notice how long it took fox.com to load on his phone? I smell bullshit here. Nice try, Ryan Lawler.
So if Bones doesn’t play well on my 5 year old laptop, that’s Flash’s fault? Has nothing to do with the technology in my device?
Filming an unscripted “review” seems to be a great way to make most products look pretty bad. Saying “I don’t know” during a review probably means there’s some homework to be done before your next take.
This is bull. Just viewed multiple flash websites on droid x and droid 2. Flash runs awesome. Sorry this article is complete crap. They need to retitle it flash on nexus…
These new phones are coming out faster and stronger. Apple better accept flash otherwise they are gonna be left in the dust…
Yeah ok, VIDEO is just one test and it could be connection issues; You can have a fast ISP yet if the site you are testing from has performance issues, they arent going to magically disappear. You should have showed a PC loading the same page/video to compare.
And how about testing out something like this instead of just videos:
http://www.ecodazoo.com/
Oh Oh MY EYES! My Eyes!
Seeing IS believing.
And believe me Adobe Flash appears to have some serious serious problems. I had heard a few bad things/rumors about Flash 10.1 in the past but man I never realized it was quite this bad, hopefully my eyes will recover.
Jesus. Sorry dude, bad choices for Flash demo – abc.com ARE YOU KIDDING? You would be better off going to the SOURCE. You know, Adobe.com And even at abc.go.com (the redirect, if you are paying any attention) there is a Link for “mobile”. Perhaps you have heard of such links, since that is what they are there for – MOBILE.
I cant get abc.com to load fast or not be glitchy on a 3.2GHz HP Compaq Desktop with V FIOS. Dude, pulease.
Kevin may i suggest you wipe your phone and reinstall, it looks like your phone has gone wonky.
Kevin may i suggest you wipe your phone and reinstall, it looks like your phone has gone wonky. My N1′s flash play back is smooth. Also you can check if your phone has the final release of flash and not the beta as shipped or factory installed. aAs of today the none beta release of flash for Android was released by Adobe just a week and a half ago. Your N1 is definitely not operating as others are.
Personally I don’t care if Flash can play video, but I still want it available on mobile devices because Flash allows you to create learning materials that provide interactivity without a ton of coding. I am in the eLearning field though, so I have different priorities. I think judging Flash performance on “Flash video” is only one aspect of why having Flash is a good thing for a mobile device.
Seems to me the video works infinitely better than ‘NOT AT ALL’.
I’m able to watch Stewart & Colbert, South Park, Adult Swim, and various other videos on their ‘main’ websites, on my EVO 4G, with or without WiFi. Initially I had to use xScope and dink the ‘useragent’ setting to keep a buggered ‘mobile’ version from popping up, but some sites have apparently caught up and fixed that, since.
The quality isn’t always ‘excellent’, but it’s more watchable than, say, on an iPhone without downloading and installing a ‘special’ app for each and every video streaming web site you visit, assuming they did get around to making an iPhone app of it. Fewer will, now that the ‘real’ web site can be visited with a phone with little or no modification.
I’ve already written a few applets for Flash on Android, and indeed the performance isn’t that great. But as I’ve said, it’s infinitely better than NOTHING AT ALL. So, I can crank out the gratuitous ‘pocket calculator’ or puzzle and just stick it on a website for mobile users, and it just works. Sure, it doesn’t work as well as on my iMac, or as well as a ‘native’ applet, but it WORKS.
I expect both Adobe and Google will improve the code and ‘acceleration’, and as the multi-core CPUs seep into the phones, we’ll see better, more PC-like performance on the apps, but they’ll always lag behind a desktop. It’s a bit unrealistic to expect otherwise.
As for the whining, we’re all ‘early adopters’. We get the bugs as well as the blessings.
I’ve using moto droid since the day it came out, ditching newly purchased iphone 3gs from AT&T since they don’t offer 3g where I live.
As for device I can say Droid is nothing comparing to iphone as in operating, infact I’m writing this on my Droid right now its really choppy and word don’t sync up for second or so with what I type. I’m pretty disspointed with the device it self, grows hot surfing on broswer for 10 minutes. adobe flash is just another fail product on droid, it could have just been my device since I’ve seen some video on youtube showing it runs smoothly. I found this article after frustrating attempt on metacafe, I would have ads open on new tabs by attempting toplay and full screen the video. To point out the test on this article is done under wifi enviroment, the flash is horrible under 3g network. For average user would prefer using their computers under wifi to watch a video, not their phone.
Ps. Its pretty frustrating experience writing this on droid.
This is the second time in recent memory that I’ve read the statement “maybe Steve Jobs was right about Flash on mobile devices” (or some version thereof) since Flash was released on Froyo. Did everyone really think Steve was just making up his facts when he shot down Adobe? I mean he may exaggerate from time to time, but he’s not going to straight up lie about technology just to be a jerk. The guy has been in tech since the mid 70s, he ushered in the era of home computing, he pulled the mouse and desktop GUI away from the clutches of Xerox and put it on everyone’s computer everywhere – and that means you Windows and Linux users out there too. I’m not saying the guy’s always 100% right, not by a long shot, but when he said Flash wasn’t ready for the phone market, did everyone honestly believe that he was just being difficult? Apple does really care about the end product, they don’t generally put dying or half-assed technology into their machines. Of course he was right about Flash. Hell he explained it once already in a letter that apparently nobody read but everybody commented upon. Cut the guy some slack, for crying out loud. He knows tech.
Flash is Windows 98 technology. Full stop, new paragraph.
As we move to a post-Windows world (or, in the case of mobile, to a what’s-Windows? world), it’s time to leave Flash behind like all the other legacy trash: keyloggers, trojans that aren’t condoms, botnets… it’s all old shtuff, and none of it was EVER a benefit to the user (usee?).
It’s hard to follow all of the commentary but it looks a bit like partisan finger-pointing that leaves out the IP network as a contributing culprit. (My apologies if I missed something.)
Too often folks presume that the network is cool when it just ain’t.
Just tested it on the Droid X, looks really good on my end!
Whole lot of bi-directional fanboyism here… which is problematic.
I’ll conclude it for those who have the intellect to read further:
1) Apple’s non-flash approach is absolutely unacceptable. Period. Rhetoric aside, it is backwards, stupid, and not user friendly. It stinks of protectionism for their buying and selling of apps, laziness, and babying the userbase “OMG that application might run slowly in your browser and your iPhone experience will be tainted forever”. Screw this. We are adults here.
2) Android’s methodology of including support is noble in effort, but only so-so in application. It is neither great, nor terrible, merely somewhat functional. However, it makes NO assumption about the end-user and his or her ability to remain ignorant, and paints no picture. This is forward thinking and worthy of applause, even if it means your 720p, 4000 kb/sec encoded, non-mobile optimized video embedded on a non-mobile optimized site might appear choppy on some android devices… at least when we all have 2 ghz processors (and we will), that site will function on Android and not on IOS.
So, in the end, yes, this sounds like an Android fanboy rant, but really it isn’t. Respecting the userbase does not make a good product alone, and iPhone’s pioneering efforts into the mobile market are worth more than applause, they are worth billions of dollars… which they have now received…
However, egos and deals have become involved, and the mindset that created and supported that market is now dead, and now people want the more open market, with full support to run our devices choppy if we so choose.
Can Apple meet the demands of the new Open-Source genre of mobile users? Or will they continue to lord over application development and allow Android even more market share?
This topic is completely stupid. Of course flash sucks on droid. Its still new. I’ve been using flash on my droid for while now and it works pretty good. Sure it doesnt work as well as it does on a desktop, but for a mobile device its more then respectable considering how resource heavy flash is. Adobe has been updating flash frequently which shows they have a the initiative to deliver the best flash experience possible for android.
I find it bizarre that this misleading article still hasn’t been updated. The videos used were not encoded in low profile – thus they don’t work at all on Apple devices, and they don’t work well on Android devices. In both cases the reason is the same; because they can’t be hardware accelerated.
Does the author seriously believe this post doesn’t need an edit? Like: “By the way, it turns out that low profile videos play the same on Flash and on iPhones. It’s only videos that don’t work on iPhone that play slowly on Flash.” Does he honestly think “shockingly bad”, on its own, is an accurate description?
Sorry, this article is very misleading and has nothing to do with the real worls . I do use Flash Player on Android ( HTC Desire , Froyo ) and My experience is not at all.
All Most All Videos work fine (except from some HD or bad encoded Videos9
Check any Video on Vimeo. Any video on Youtube. Or in inline Blogs
like any Video on Golem.de or Spiegel.de.
The experice is very good and I use it every day.
Also most other sites, even 3D Sites like ecodazoo.com run very smooth on Android Flash ..so Flash is not the issue.
And yes it would run very fine on Ipad, if Apple would allow it
So I cannot agreee at
You guys are all turds. I just watched the demo posted in the article from my mobile browser on my droid x. Have fun complaining about nothing. Next time try using different hardware. On your so called tech blog.
This article is inaccurate. Nothing worse than biased, inexperienced, non-qualified “opinions”. Flash works fine.
Droid have taken over the market for a reason. Its simple, logic.
A dedicated Flash Procesor would help ease the problem, like a GPU or Physix procesor, ussually using a high powered CPU would compromise battery life.
I have a Multimedia gps device that plays .flv files (flash) I had to compress the file to 300Kbps/sec and 400×240 and it played flawlessly, websites should adapt to this format.
I really hope Intel would make a next generation ATOM procesors with very little power requirements to mobile devices.
Open source devices and garage like tech companies are the real inovators here, Apple only hijacks the exsiting technology and pimps the hell out of it wile taking all the credit.
Funny, I got a very simular error from this site on Firefox on a 20Mbit Optic connection (love workplaces sometimes!)… So are you saying that my machine et al is bad or that the site I am viewing is swamped?
Flash works great on Android! For one thing, the SnapDragon CPU in the Nexus One has the worst GPU by a long shot of all current high end Android devices. All Moto Droid’s and Samsung Galaxy S devices have much better GPU’s – 2x or more faster. The snapdragon is the worst of current high end cpu’s. It just happened to be the first 1GHz widely available GPU. Also, yeah, if you trying to play back 1080p content you’re going to have a hard time. If you have a good gpu (not the snapdraggon) then you’ll probaly be able to play 720p and lower content. I’ve found flash video on most web pages to work great. I don’t think I’ve tried watching a full tv episode or movie on my Droid X.
Steve Jobs was definitely wrong. Droid Does.
Flash uses cpu. Even the 1.6 atoms in netbooks work hard running it. Once the cpu power in these mobile devices have enough umph we will have “the complete web experience” with Flash. I see it as a hardware race. Adobe bet on CPU to win and eventually,(in another 18 months or so:) I bet Android and Adobe will be the hot setup on PDA’s. Especially those with bigger screens like e-readers
I am currently on an iPhone but would really like to see the Droid platform push our pastor (Steve Jobs) to preach better sermons. His ideological rantings about Flash and Java are technically weak and easily recognized by his own congregation as being primarily personal and almost entirely void of edifying content. We do not need anything so ecumenical (forgive the faith-based metaphors) as Flash and Java on every mobile device but we are long overdue for some decent dialogue and good competition.
It seems to this writer that grading Flash solely by its ability to play video is similar to grading the Microsoft CLR on its ability to play sound or judging a Java VM using only its 3D vector rending abilities. The publishing of competitions based on video rendering ad infinitum is like comparing cars based on their seat covers. Flash, while touting great abilities in the area of video delivery (whether or not it is delivered is another matter), facilities numerous other things:
1) web services
2) rich user interfaces
3) wide variety of plugins
4) game engines
I am not a Adobe adherent. Neither am I an Apple sycophant. The improvement of Flash on Droid is inevitable. And the improvement of Droid is good for all customers; competition among these giants provides feature upgrades that would not happen without their contention. The insecurity of people who have chosen to identify themselves with technology is sad. I am not the phone and am not bothered by the improvement of technologies that Jobs has lambasted.
Stop parroting Steve and quit trying to advance his vitriolic views. The rancor is unbecoming the whole iPhone community. If Flash on Droid is bad… do not get one. If it gets to be pretty good be willing to consider the fact that while Flash may have been bad, with the ire of so many Adobe lovers stoked by the aspersions, your comments are making it better.
Roderick L. Barnes, Sr.
Note: Alas, this frail response was written without the help of the now indispensable HTML5. Had I done so it would have been in 3D with reading help for the thinking impaired.
hey.. the people who are saying the videos just works fine… check again that your videos are actually playing in a flash container… vimeo, youtube, and most of the mobile optimized sites play the h.264 videos on the ‘device’s native video player’.. optimizing flash for mobile is really dumb.. some one has to sit and recode the flash container again.. the videos in the internet is mostly h.264 that doesn’t need an ugly flash container… just link it to the native video api, and it will just work…
website Videos for smartphone are different servers.. when you invest an online video you have to be smart which format should you priorities … so nowadays there were lots of iphone user than androids who visit and watch those video websites. So maybe websites focus on html5 by investing a high bandwidth while the flash format for android are less invest which they dont mind on low bandwidth…
flash seems to be nice, anyhow we need to keep in mind that you are using a mobile not a desktop.
I didn’t see any announcement from google that 100% of flash support has been delivered to android devices.
iphone is better for good in one direction and android is good in more than one direction.
I believe android is coming to the users, where iphone is dragging people into their world.
If you were shocked that it worked so bad then you A) are a noob and B) totally misunderstood why Apple did not include a Flash plugin on their iOS.