Flash On Android Is 'Shockingly Bad' 657
Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel 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 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.'"
Breaking news! (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash on any platform is shockingly bad.
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in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset
Ricer!
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You got that right.
"The Bones episode seemed more like a slideshow when viewed on the Android," read the article. What a coincidence! It looks the same way on my Pentium 4 desktop. My G5 PowerPC Mac has similar slide-like qualities when viewing syfy.com. Flash is one of those programs that suffer from bloat and therefore run slowly on older CPUs.
Not that HTML5 is any better. I tried to run a new "test" movie that Google created with HTML5, and it too ran like a snail.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Interesting)
HTML5 depends on your browser actually. I have a Nokia N800 and I could've told you years ago that Flash on mobile devices sucks badly. HTML5 on the Mobile Firefox platform also sucks somewhat (but not as bad as Flash) but if you get a WebKit browser, it works quite spiffy for an older mobile processor.
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Ditto (Score:3, Informative)
Youtube works great on my N900.
However, other sites do not, like the Daily Show. But of course, sometimes the Daily Show videos don't work on my PC either. Original post has some merit.
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I do not understand why the N900 is not more popular. I'd love to have one, from what I've read, yet typical reviews I've seen pan it. WTF? :-(
Because it only has 3G on T-Mobile, America's worst 3G network.
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Because Nokia cannot market its way out of a paper bag. They actually _downplayed_ the launch of the N900; despite it being the most advanced smartphone a year ago, on a revolutionary platform (Linux with telephony extensions), and a new (for America) business model (buy your own phone, get a lower monthly fee). Not that T-Mobile is any better at marketing either. A new smartphone exclusive to their network, you'd think they might run a spot or two about it.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Informative)
The N900 isn't very popular because Nokia never intended for it to be an iPhone killer. The N900 is a research device - a public prototype. This was even more true of the N8x0 (which almost no one had heard of before the N900). With each release the platform matures and gains more features.
Speaking as an N900 owner, it is a great device that is completely open. The only time I have ever met constraints with it is when I tried to do things one would not normally do with a phone. e.g. RDP/VNC (works fine, but the high res screen is a disadvantage for this) and printing. (Also, the keyboard can be a little fiddly at first.) Most of the builtin features can be easily replaced with better performing and more functional alternatives by installing free apps from a Debian-style repository, including the kernel.
I'd recommend against getting one right now though, since Nokia is close to releasing it's successor [wikipedia.org]. Personally, I won't be upgrading since the N900 is flexible enough to meet all my needs (and can easily be extended to do so).
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Absolutely it is not. Its a dedicated video application. The application was available long before YouTube even offered HTML5.
Hardware acceleration (Score:3, Insightful)
The most CPU power consuming part in watching episodes is the playing of the video it self.
And most modern machines (be it desktop with their graphic card or embed device with their SIMD & GPU units) *DO HAVE* hardware acceleration for most modern formats (that's what they use for video in HTML5. Or *should use* if the demo runs like a snail)
So if watching an episode is like a slideshow on these machines, it's a situation of :
- In the case of the Pentium 4 - no hardware acceleration being available (mov
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Funny)
What browser are you using? I watched the Arcade Fire Chrome experiment [http://www.chromeexperiments.com/] and it was fast and generally rocked. Everything I've seen in HTML5 has been quite awesome so far, actually.
Flash, on the other hand, has always consistently sucked. Wait, scratch that, there is the one thing I know of that is just a great use of Flash. Really, it would convert anyone into a huge Flash believer if they saw it...I don't care who you are or how you're coming at it, once you saw this thing, you'd be forever convinced that Flash needs to be kept alive.
I'd link it here for people to go and check out, but I can't link you directly to the relevant part. It's just a shame that Flash was invented before they decided the web would be based on linking. Shame, that. You really would've liked to see this.
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If there isn't any deep linking, it's the developer's fault. If you are dissing flash for that, then you have to diss anything javascript-based as well.
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And I'd also prefer that a single company not dictate the language of web content, thanks.
So then let users choose what they want to see and publishers will soon follow. That
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There was a brilliant article in Slashdot about the platform not being the problem, but the code/coder.
Its possible to make html 5 code which murders the system - just that right now the only people writing in html 5 known what they're doing - til now at least. Once the script-kiddies start eschewing flash for html 5 then people will want html 6 to come out and save us.
This is like blaming html for allowing people to use animated gifs as backgrounds.
Now I've never used flash on android, I've used flash on s
And I'm trying Arcade fire (Score:3, Insightful)
In Firefox. Currently it has completely pegged one of my cores, and has some birds flying around with a very jerky frame rate. Nothing else seems to be happening. So with a little bit of animation it can being FF to its knees. I don't know if it is supposed to be doing anything else, but Flash could do the bird thing easily, without slowing the browser down (other tabs are dog slow currently as FF uses only one core).
Now I know, I know, this was made for Chrome. Even warned me. Guess what? That is NOT a poi
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Well, with Flash on an older machine, you can't post or comment!
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In comparison to Flash, nobody's doing "little games" in Java. And javascript doesn't have the same level of control and portability out of the box compared to flash.
Now, since you brought up the subject of whores, video was used by Jobs as a red herring to get people to focus on video, so he can whore h264, which he owns some patents in.
Flash is pretty much the environment you want to use if you want to write a game that works on pcs and game consoles without having to do any special tricks.
Re:Flash is for more than streaming video (Score:4, Interesting)
Games are even worse than video. I tried playing Curveball on a mobile device, and it wouldn't keep the game still - dragging just moved the game, not the ball. I had to tap at exactly the right spot at exactly the right time.
Then I tried to play a puzzle game, where the spacebar reset the playing field. I didn't think that one through, obviously - it was a no go.
I found a third random game, don't recall the name, but it made a huge distinction between hovering and clicking. No go on a touchscreen.
So let me ask you. If I have a flash game and need to rewrite it anyways to get it to work at all, let alone well, on a mobile device - why wouldn't I just write it for that device, or cross-platform HTML5?
All Steve Jobs has been saying is: Desktop paradigms don't work on a mobile device. That's why Apple made millions on a mobile device with a properly-thought out control scheme, and why they've done it again and again and again.
If they allowed desktop apps natively, or with easy ports, much of the software would be terrible to use. If you don't believe me, have you tried using a VNC client to control your computer from your phone? It's virtually useless, and saved (at best) for emergencies.
I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I'm not a complete idiot either. Jobs, for all his control-freak tendencies, makes a Titanic-sized boatload of sense, and most people agree.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that HTML5 is any better. I tried to run a new "test" movie that Google created with HTML5, and it too ran like a snail.
For video HTML5 is significantly better. For vector and bitmap animations, Flash is probably better in all non-WebKit browsers.
For video, it really, really, really depends on the player being used (HTML5 players are dead simple). For vector and bitmap animations, Flash is leap years better in ALL browsers. Seriously. Compare javascript-driven (or canvas-driven) persistent animation in both. Flash easily takes the cake in terms of resource usage.
Now, in regards to TFA, it's a horrible "review". The Nexus One is not exactly up to par for playing "hi-def" video, period. Furthermore, you have to take into account other hardware factors, such as very limited RAM. Saying Jobs is somehow right in restricting users' choice in the matter is completely off-base and has nothing to do with whether or not I'll be able to watch "hi-def" video on a few select sites. Flash is used for more than video for pete's sake. For every one site that works so-so because of over-use of Flash and bloated Flash applications, which is because of poor development, not necessarily a poor platform, there are a dozen other flash sites that work perfectly fine.
On my Evo, I haven't tried ABC.com or anything like that yet, but for what I HAVE played (Jon Stewart), it seems to be fine. I've played Flash games just fine too (light-bot FTW!). And I know the new iPhones have plenty of power to do the same stuff.
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Bitmap and canvas stuff sucks big time on webkit browsers too, especially Safari.
The implementation is still pretty basic, you can only dream of doing most of the things you can do in Flash, and the performance isn't any better.
It's a good thing to have such capabilities right in the browser in an open standard implementation, but there's still a looong way to go.
Having video playback decoupled from a big and complex plugin and sent straight to decoders optimized for the platform is indeed an instant godsen
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Or as Julia Sawalha says in a fake Australian accent on Time Please Gentlemen: It's fucking shocking!
People in Australia don't really say that, do they?
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Funny)
No, a real Australian would find a way to fit "cunt" into the sentence.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Breaking news! (Score:4, Insightful)
But logic went out the door when it was easier just to bash Apple for not having it. But now that other players are having the same problems except in this case its directly effecting their users, perhaps its the last nail, finally.
I for one hate flash for this very reason ( well, that and security reasons ). If it could be cleaned up, great, but as it is implemented now its terrible.
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After all we don't see Apple blocking quicktime despite it being almost as god aweful as flash
Logic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but you're wrong, and so is Apple. No users are directly "effected" unless they choose to be. By your same "logic", any baby that's not ideal for every possible use should be thrown out with the bathwater, and users should be prevented from having anything to do with those terrible things whether they want it or not.
Sure, Flash sucks for some videos - and it's fine for others. A lot of Flash games don't play well on a mobile device - but some do. Flash ads are annoying - but Flash animations like Homestar Runner are awesome, work great, and I can pick and choose when & what Flash I see. If HTML5 was a valid alternative right now, you might have a point, but it isn't, and won't ever be an alternative for all the existing flash sites out there.
The fact that this argument is still on-going shows that there is still much demand for Flash. Apple can choose to exclude those customers if it wants, you can buy into that if you want, but I for one am very very glad that Android is a viable alternative that gives me the choice of HTML5 and Flash.
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The truth of the matter is Flash if fucking everywhere. HTML5 isn't. Therefore, it isn't a viable alternative right now because most sites don't have an HTML5 version yet. In the future, fine, but that's also beyond the point. The point is t
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I'd prefer an HTML5 client, but I have no problems with having Flash on my phone.
Re:Breaking news! (Score:5, Informative)
funny thing is, according to the article they didn't get any video to play properly.
Well guess what, I am currently watching the flash video of the article on my Nexus One. Its playing fullscreen with no problems at all.
I HAD to TURN ON FLASH because otherwise I would NOT have been able to watch it.
I for one am glad I had the option to do so!
There you go
Silly (Score:2, Insightful)
There are other things you can do with flash than just watch videos.
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Flash only sites (Score:2)
What's important varies with the person.
I was very happy to be able to make a reservation at a place that unfortunately has a flash-only web site. My Nexus One phone could do it where in the past I had to wait till I got to a PC to use their site ( or forget to as sometimes happens )
Many of the big video sites have alternatives for non-flash platforms, but there's still a lot of web sites that are sticking with flash only. Some are less likely to change this if they created an iPhone app for access, leavi
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Not really, i use my smart phone when i'm out running errands. I hate going to websites and being blocked with "requires flash" just because they chose to implement their site with crappy flash animation. I think it was well publicized that flash video was going to blow when it came to android, and I guess we're not disappointed. But it may let me order food ahead of time for pickup, check inventory & prices at store X etc. which is most of what I need.
Video is going to be nice, but it's not something I
Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
That this guy could find a few flash demonstrations that don't play nicely with a small device is no surprise to me. With a 10 meg pipe I often see pauses and cache filling delays on my desktop machine.
I have the same phone as this guy, and I find Flash works ok for most things, videos on web pages, ads (the few I happen to click on).
Is it great performance? No. Do I leave it on by default, No.
If they turned the code over to Google I am sure it could be fixed. But as long as programming is in the hands of those bloat-ware bone-heads at Adobe it will suck just as bad as every Adobe product you have ever seen. You really have to wonder what the serve in the cafeteria for EVERY product they make to be so universally terrible.
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Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:4, Funny)
I loaded that in my iPad. Rather than seeing the blue no-Flash cube on that site, I saw a man stretching his anus open to remarkable proportions. It must be that update to iOS 3.1.3 I did the other day.
Choice (Score:4, Insightful)
At least Android users have the choice to install and view Flash content if they choose. iPhone users aren't allowed that choice.
I have Flash installed on my Moto Droid and have found performance quite lacking as well.
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why add support for something that's going to cause a bad user experience?
Re:Choice (Score:4, Insightful)
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The choice itself is the better choice. I'd MUCH rather have the choice.
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Me, too, to a point. But if iOS user's lack of Flash causes more web developers to embrace non-crappy standards, I'm okay with that.
Re:Choice (Score:4, Informative)
You forgot the Android way of doing things.
3) OPTIONALLY, have flash disabled and enable it on-demand with a single tap. Best of both worlds. You are welcome.
btw, flash on my N1 doesn't eat significantly more battery and sure as hell is not slow most of the time and doesnt heat up more than with regular video playback.
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Want to know why I don't care that I can't load flash content on my iPhone?
Because I can't think of a single site I visit regularly that does not work just fine, and I can think of numerous occasions where Flash has crashed my browser (or I've received the "Flash has barfed!" popup) - usually from an advertisement - on both Windows and Mac OS X. That behavior prompted me to run FlashBlock in my browsers on both Windows & Mac OS, incidentally.
While you don't like having the choice taken away, there are
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It might be more accurate to just say "At least Android users have the choice to install Flash if they choose" and leave the playing content part off.
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Based on most reports, its doesn't sound like Flash is watchable on Android. It might be more accurate to just say "At least Android users have the choice to install Flash if they choose" and leave the playing content part off.
Most reports?
Flash works just fine on my Motorolla Android. Sites I've watched full length movies/videos
PBS
cbs.com (they have all the twilight zone episodes online)
This was even over the cellular network, and not a wi-fi connection. There was some skipping within the first 5s on longer videos(over 20min), and I imagine this is from the buffering going on in the background. After than, it played smooth as silk
This linked article sounds like something that NetworkWorld would publish(garbag
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I don't watch a lot of flash on my Nexus One, but it's a hell of a lot better than not having the choice to do so at all.
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At least Android users have the choice to install and view Flash content if they choose. iPhone users aren't allowed that choice.
Pretty much... flash support isn't just about being able to watch TV on your phone browser. Its about visiting a site like this on your mobile...
http://www.parkplacewhiterock.com/ [parkplacewhiterock.com]
Can someone with a droid report whether this site works fine... or is it also 'shockingly bad'? iphone users don't bother... thanks to Steve you can't actually see most of the site, because the top menu
Or perhaps.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or perhaps.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, it's not up to Android to get it working correctly, it's up to Adobe, and they've had YEARS to get it working on mobile platforms.
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There are other things on the horizon which can (supposedly) do the job and replace Flash altogether. That's where my money will go.
[disclosure: I have an iPhone and iPad. Flash isn't missed.]
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Well, in this single instance, Jobs is right. Flash has got to go. With browsers, we were that close to living in a world of 'best viewed with IE'. We all have Mozilla to thank for that, so now it doesn't really make a difference what browser you use. You know, like how it was meant to be. But there's this last lingering thing....
But anyway, even though he is technically right in this case, it's obviously a self-serving motive. It will happen though, Flash has got to go. 99% of the time I use flash it
Re:Or perhaps.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad." Or perhaps this just means this is the first iteration of the Android OS to attempt Flash compatibility and it obviously needs more time to mature?
Up to you if you want to believe him, but Steve Jobs has said time and time again that the reason there is no Flash on the iPhone is because Adobe has failed to deliver something that performs remotely acceptably. Again, up to you to believe it but the fact that after all the years they had to make a "light mobile friendly" flash version, you can't really claim this is a first gen and forgive it. They supposedly have been working on mobile versions of Flash since before they started whining publicly about Apple not letting them put whatever they had ready out there.
I hate flash as much as the next guy, but with as much content as there is out there that is based on Flash, if Android gets it working properly, it will be a big advantage over the iPhone OS.
There are few things that make me want to run Flash in my iPad/iPhone. TV shows in YouTube are one (right now you get user uploads but not actual tv shows.) Blip.tv is another one I hope eventually adapts to the iOS so I can watch Nostalgia Critic on my iPad.
There are a lot of Flash games out there but all require PC input and will never work on a touch device.
I already got Netflix so that no longer is an issue. Hulu is there too.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything else that makes me miss Flash on my iPad. Ads are missing in many sites but that's not really a negative.
Most people have not converted many media playback sites to HTML5 because, for all purposes, they have to reinvent the wheel. Make a new HTML5 based player that can pause movies and insert ads without the viewer skipping them. Many of these are people that just grabbed a stock flash template and embedded it on their sites to play back their media. That kind of thing will eventually be made in HTML5, very likely as open source. At that point I will see the adoption of HTML5 playback to start taking off big time.
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Who's telling you you're not free to choose? Was there an iPhone that did support Flash, but which they revoked your rights to run Flash on? Was there an iPad that did that? Did they sucker you into buying a device by telling you it would run flash, and then shout "HA HA GOTCHA SUCKER!" after you bought it?
Your choice, when it comes to Flash, is to either buy a device that supports it, or to buy a device that doesn't support it.
When you buy a car, the manufacturer "takes away your choice" to move the car
car analogy (Score:2)
I'll take limp home mode over being stranded 100 miles from civilization, any day of the week.
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Have you used it? Because I have and after doing so I prefer the second of those two options. The problem is that many sites that support HTML5 (which works find on my Droid) default to Flash (which in my experience is every bit as bad as TFA makes it out to be) if they detect it to be installed. I'll take halfway decent HTML5 on a fraction of the sites I visit over what I've experienced with Flash any day.
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I'll take limp home mode over being stranded 100 miles from civilization, any day of the week.
A better car analogy would be having to drive your car in hot weather without air conditioning vs. being able to turn on air conditioning at the cost of your car abruptly slowing to 5 miles an hour. And then having the brakes start pumping themselves.
"None" is better than inconsistent? (Score:5, Insightful)
...really? I'd rather have the option than not, but I guess that's why I don't buy iStuff anymore.
Re:"None" is better than inconsistent? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather not have the option myself. Having Flash available is a disincentive to creating a better HTML5 experience suitable for mobile devices. With Flash available, mobile site developers can just create their sites and call it a day, regardless of how poor the experience is.
Not having the fallback means that you have no alternative but to create suitable code in order to reach mobile users. Since Flash for whatever reason already encourages lazy development, it would be better that the option didn't exist at all.
Jobs' obstinance, coupled with iOS marketshare will lead to a better mobile browsing experience for all of us, at least that's my take.
Re:"None" is better than inconsistent? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things which killed Mac marketshare was the closedness of things. With the IBM compatible computers you could do anything the hardware could handle, with the Macs you were much more limited in what you could do, and if Apple didn't bless a hardware bit, it probably wasn't going to be available at all. Admittedly there were other mistakes, like the high cost and the terrible clones, but the closedness of things definitely hurt them.
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Games can be pretty lackluster, might as well never install one again.
Beer, some taste worse than others so nix that.
Ahh, since sex might end up being bad from time to time, you should probably abstain.
Food, yep, some sucks as well, you should probably not eat anymore.
Ya, you're right, choice sucks when you might get something not 100% perfect. It's always better to ask someone else to spoon feed you what you should like. Makes life so much better!
Meh (Score:2)
I'd say 'predictably bad'.
Seriously, I knew it was going to slow my web pages down by about a zillion times, and so far it's delivered. So much of the web is rendered unusable in the default browser on my phone because of the flash plugin it's comical. Worse yet, there's no way that I know of to disable flash.
But the beauty of Android is that I can just use a different browser. Which I do. (thank you Opera!)
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Open the browser on your phone then select: Menu -> More -> Settings -> Enable Plugins -> On Demand.
That means Flash is disabled by default and a placeholder will be displayed instead, but you just need to touch the green arrow to load and play the flash content if you want to see it. Works a treat, performance is fine, and if you really do want the content it's there with a single press.
Having said that, I find Flash performance to be fairly acceptable for the most part on my Nexus One anyway, and having it on demand like this is much, much, much better than being told you can't have it at all.
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Maybe you should see on-demand Flash in action, rather than make up FUD about russian roulette and browser crashes without any facts to back your statements up.
I've been running Flash on my phone since June, viewing the Flash content I choose to on a daily basis. It's seamless enough that I hardly think about it. I've never had a browser crash from playing Flash content, there's no "roulette" involved. It does in fact "just work" (though I wouldn't go quite so far as to call it brilliant). And as a bonus, i
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This is disappointing as I would always browse in 2.1 with Flash turned off, and now I can't do that in the default browser anymore. I never installed any third-party browsers because I feared more use of the battery from an app that's not as tightly integrated into the OS. Are t
shockingly bad is an exaggeration (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been watching video without any issues from several sites, plus flash is not only video.
Its the OPTION of having flash that makes it so great. If you don't like it, don't use it. But you cannot negate the fact that many users actually enjoy it. Period.
"All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.""
You make it sound as if both were mutually exclusive. Maybe that was what Steve wanted you to believe and you bought into it? Wake up, Android DOES support HTML5 as well as the iphone, while having much better javascript performance - crucial for HTML5 stuff.
I am surprised such a gross simplified statement made it into slashdot. Yeah, I must be new here...
Re:shockingly bad is an exaggeration (Score:5, Insightful)
"Its the OPTION of having flash that makes it so great. If you don't like it, don't use it. But you cannot negate the fact that many users actually enjoy it. Period."
I would say the downside of this is that it allows web developers to be lazy. It's harder to move beyond Flash when Flash is still supported everywhere, even though it's supported very poorly.
It's the same thing that kept IE's stranglehold around for so long, especially when IE was on the Mac, so there wasn't even a cross platform argument.
When Apple decided not to include Flash on iDevices, Flash became no longer a standard, and started a move towards HTML5.
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I would say the downside of this is that it allows web developers to be lazy.
I have a fear of this. I've been watching Hulu and Netflix on my iPhone a lot lately and have been surprised to find it has been easy on the battery. A couple of hours, for example, seemed to only drop it 15%. (non-scientific eyeball estimate.) If Flash takes a good deal more resources to run, will that lead to a dramatic drop in battery life?
My fear is the temptation to use that one format to rule them all will result in a lack of efficiency that really takes the fun out of using your phone to watch the
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H.264 pretty much covers it for smartphones: Symbian, Apple, Blackberry, Android, Palm WebOS, WinMo.
Amongst websites that have a HTML5 alternative to Flash video, it's pretty much H.264 also. Including the most important video site: YouTube.
On the desktop, it's pretty much just Firefox that doesn't support H.264. And there's an easy answer to that.
There is no other serious contender.
My experience as well (Score:5, Informative)
This has been my experience as well with my Droid. I realize that the droid is a bit slower than other Android phones, but I hadn't had any trouble with watching HTML5 video on it, so I expected similar results with Flash. I was wrong. The few times I did get it to play, after let the player buffer for several minutes (on WiFi) it played in the single digit frame rates. I uninstalled it after a few days, as sites that had HTML5 video available still defaulted to Flash if they detected it. Having access to HTML5 video on only a portion of sites is preferable to me to having Flash for Android available on all sites. That should say something about just how bad it is.
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I've watched full episodes of South Park off the official site over WIFI and was pleasantly surprised by the performance.
Exercise for the interested reader: Can you see any problems with judging video playback quality using a source material that's animated at around 3fps?
Works fine on my e52 (Score:5, Funny)
What can I say.
Leave the country, move somewhere with a 21st century mobile infrastructure.
Learn to smoke, casually.
Lose weight.
Wear better clothes.
Talk with an accent.
Use a Nokia.
In short, become European. Life is better.
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"Use a Nokia."
But that's Flash Lite, correct? Not Flash 10.1?
Flash Lite was a mobile dedicated version of Flash that isn't necessarily compatible with all content. Flash 10.1, which is what is being talked about, is an effort by Adobe to bring mobile devices to feature parity with the desktop clients.
... duh? (Score:2, Interesting)
umm (Score:2, Informative)
My HTC NexusOne with flash 10.1 works fine. I haven't found a youtube video that won't play on it.
I haven't tried many flash games, because i haven't had a need to.
Even Strongbad's sbEmail's works fine. i don't notice any issues or lag or anything.
Perhaps he should look at not only his OS, but also his hardware and his connectivity, and also his expectations.
A phone is not a desktop. And if you don't have a physical keyboard, you're not going to be able to do certain things.
Given all that, I still pr
Works fine on my Nexus One (Score:2)
Flash is fine on my Nexus One. Its not quite the best experience and I'd imagine that really heavy players might not work well (hulu is abysmal, but their player seems to be really chunky), but it works out great when I'm reading a blog or following a twitter link, and someone has embedded a flash video. I know the iPhone does YouTube but there's plenty of other flash video sites, and my phone works on many more.
People also need to clean up their flash players for mobile use. Flash Video isn't the problem,
Another Apple fanboi type article (Score:2, Insightful)
What we have here is a new phone platform that provides a very common and desired feature the IPhone will never have according to their lord and savior Jesus....I mean Steve Jobs.....therefore this uninformed writer feels Steve was right because it doesn't work flawlessly?!?! Wow what if we were to say that about all technology on new platforms?? Totally insightful there buddy!!!
HTC Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
Always worked fine for me. Including several flash games off websites I've wanted to waste a little time on. Maybe this guy needs a better provider if his videos load to slow. Reminds me of all the people who bought new computers in the late 90's early 00's only to complain that it was 'just as slow downloading stuff as the old one'.
Flash on maemo? (Score:2)
Run-on sentence (Score:2)
You know what else is shockingly bad? That run-on sentence in the summary.
For the love of god, there's more to punctuation than just the comma.
Works fine on my evo (Score:2)
I use flash on my Evo to watch zeropunctuation and dailyshow clips with very few problems. And, really, that's all I need it for.
Maybe? Maybe!!??!!??? (Score:2)
There's no maybe about it. Of course, Steve was correct. Chairman Steve is always correct. People who don't believe this should report at the nearest re-education camp (or Apple store, whichever is closer).
Jobs is right (Score:2)
What about non-video? (Score:3, Insightful)
I never thought it'd be any good for most video.
How is it for non-video? Games? Simple non-video animations like StrongBad? Very simple video like the Zero Punctuation stuff?
(Full disclosure: today, I happen to be an iOS user and am content with the lack of Flash right now -- I usually disable it on my desktop too -- but I'm interested in how this all plays out, and willing to be persuaded.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's pretty good for non-video. Depends on exactly what you try to force it to do, of course. But Strongbad is no problem. Dig around youtube and you can find Strongbad playing on the iPad under Frash, or Zero Punctuation playing under Android.
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Meh, it works good enough to watch a bit of youtube. And that's what I am using it for most: my TV guide app. can show previews of the films on TV, which I watch when I'm in the metro. I am the proud owner of a HTC hero, for which HTC was so nice to provide a Android 2.1 update for (though I might hack it to Froyo if it gets less responsive).
Software playback? (Score:2)
Only some of Jobs's reasons for banishing Flash are crap. That software rendering of video in a browser plug-in whose performance is at best mediocre makes for a sub-par experience is not one of them, especially when most of the video wrapped in those Flash containers are already in a format that could otherwise benefit from hardware acceleration.
Counterexample (Score:4, Informative)
Down in the comments for the story, someone has posted this counterexample to youtube. In it, he uses Flash to watch the video complaining about how badly Flash video works on mobile phones on his mobile phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb9jfdltkUU [youtube.com]
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this was over WiFi, bandwidth was not the problem.
Anyone familiar with watching flash video on a non-windows platform should not be surprised by this. The Flash implementation on the mac is so bad that it cant play simple videos while buffering without a stutter, even the video has many minutes worth of advanced buffer. You have to let a video buffer pretty much completely to get even decent performance out of most flash video.
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Since I started using flashblock for everything I have noticed a considerable decrease in the number of browser crashes in firefox, unless I decide to open up a bunch of windows with flash games or videos, but I try not to keep those open after I am done with them.
At least casual flash use for advertising doesn't kill my browser anymore, plus I don't have to deal with the distraction it creates.
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What choice? Google has kill switches to kill apps as we've already seen. Most Android users I know have had to root their device to install many things on their device, an operation whose purpose is similar to jailbreaking an iPhone.
I'm tired of the Google soapbox, their pool is no better than the Apple pool.