Flash Player Performance on Droid 2 Found to Be Hit-or-Miss at Best

[AidenShaw]

1 video file ? Really ? And it will work on IE ? .

...Javascript replaces it with with a Flash player which uses your one video file.

You don't need Flash - for current Windows just use

<a href="my-favorite-porn.mp4">click here</a>​

and it will play. Add a few more tags to embed wmplayer if you don't want it to play in a separate window.

 

[Swift]

It really doesn't matter who confirms it... the drive behind Flash lies with the developers. And all of us former Flash devs (and possibly some current ones) knew this since day one... before it was ever even a slight mention. Don't get me wrong though, I'm very glad someone stepped forward and confirmed the "speculation" on Apple's behalf. I'm simply saying it won't do any good for the same reasons Droid fanboys don't seem to think Apple should be allowed to have fanboys. lol It's absolutely ridiculous. The media may drive the consumer market plenty, but in the end when us devs opt for a more stable, better performing, more efficient, and open alternative, consumer choice won't make a bit of difference.

Well, finally someone admits it. I can understand the chill that comes over Flash developers when they realize what a dead end they're in, and I think, particularly on the ad side, Flash developers have made some serious cash. They've also, along with Google, made individual web pages a pain in the ass to load. How many times do you just wait for the ad server to send the "invididually chosen" commercials, and you can't use the computer because the process of finishing the page means you can twiddle your thumbs. In fact, your speed loading a website is the highest common denominator -- slowest ad keeps the moment you can use the page

I'm saying that the Android market, in the US, is controlled by the relationship between the cell networks and Google already. Now they're adding the phones. Enjoy your free Android OS!

 

[layte]

It's not the fact that it's on MacRumors; it was amazing to see that a committed Google guy saying this won't do. The comments section were a panic, too. "You're using bootleg software!" "I don't have those problems!" (Not clear if they're talking about Flash and FlashLite, in some cases.)

It has long been an article of faith that Jobs was just prejudiced about Flash on the mobile. I think that in a year's time, people will be either dropping the plug-in or installing clicktoflash equivalents.

I see my prediction that my comments about how well the NYT site was handled by my HTC Desire (Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1) were proven correct. Plus "I don't have those problems!" is a known and approved MacRumors defence when faced with somebody have a problem with an Apple device...

 

[baryon]

For people who say that Flash is only used for Ads or Video, you're totally wrong. Maybe you have never watched animations on the web like what you can find on Newgrounds, or games. Who cares about Ads and Video? Video can be played in WMV, QuickTime, AVI, SilverLight, HTML5, and loads of other formats, some horribly bad and some pretty good.

What Flash does not have a competitor in is Games and Animations.
Flash Games that weren't designed for mobile devices cannot be played on small devices because of the touchscreen and the size anyway, so no one cares. Animations are often converted to YouTube videos, so that's okay anyway.

It's still better to view the animations in original Flash quality, but it's no big deal.

There is no need for Flash on mobile devices, and there is need for Flash on desktop computers. That is exactly how the world is today: no flash on small devices, Flash without any problems on computers. There is currently no problem.

 

[Jett0516]

I love flash on my nexus one thanks.

 

[Swift]

But then developers are presented with a choice. Rebuild your app in flash or rebuild your app in HTML 5. Which would they choose given the current climate? Essentially, are the shortcomings of Flash on a mobile device enough to warrant developers migrating to HTML 5?

Yes, I think we'll see that they are. The point is, if you've got animation programmed in Flash, it has a ton of code that screws up with touch. So, you need a separate version from the one for mice. And maybe another one for tablets. And you'll be going without a sizable number of phones -- in fact, without the lion's share of Android phones for an indeterminate time. Hmm, only three and a half years late.

Flash has complex effects that have already been worked out. But if the goal is, write once, read many, forget about it. If you're working on a hand-held with battery power, you don't have the processor or memory bandwidth to squander on stupid blinky ads, and you don't want to wait more than a second or two.

Once somebody brings out a tool to do all that HTML5 can do, it's game over.

 

[pmjoe]

With Apple CEO Steve Jobs' open letter published in late April claiming that Adobe had yet to deliver a Flash Player running well on a mobile platform, [...]

Steve Jobs needed to concern himself with IOS 4 running "well" on his own platforms ... instead he threw a million 3G users under the bus for 2 months and counting.

 

[bkspero]

Lots more to flash

For people who say that Flash is only used for Ads or Video, you're totally wrong. Maybe you have never watched animations on the web like what you can find on Newgrounds, or games. Who cares about Ads and Video? Video can be played in WMV, QuickTime, AVI, SilverLight, HTML5, and loads of other formats, some horribly bad and some pretty good.

What Flash does not have a competitor in is Games and Animations.
Flash Games that weren't designed for mobile devices cannot be played on small devices because of the touchscreen and the size anyway, so no one cares. Animations are often converted to YouTube videos, so that's okay anyway.

It's still better to view the animations in original Flash quality, but it's no big deal.

There is no need for Flash on mobile devices, and there is need for Flash on desktop computers. That is exactly how the world is today: no flash on small devices, Flash without any problems on computers. There is currently no problem.

I look forward to use my Droid X to see menus on restaurant websites. And to see seating charts and seat view images when buying tickets for concerts and sports events. I knew from my Touch that my iPhone 4 wouldn't be capable of doing those things, so one of the other blessings of returning the iP4 for the X will soon be Flash to allow me to do those things.

If it can stream Flash video, then that will be a bonus. But the main thing to me will be able to run simple 15 second Flash displays without having invest several minutes to boot a computer. After all, wasn't that one of the expected benefits of powerful mobile devices? Quick web access?

You're right, that if I am going to steam a movie from Hulu, I will probably prefer to use my computer. But after v1, who knows.

 

[Journojulz]

What Flash does not have a competitor in is Games and Animations....

...apart from apps.

There is no need for Flash on mobile devices....

...apart from games and animation?

Well, at least there are always apps.
(which solved the one instance where i missed flash on the iphone)

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-gb; Dell Streak Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

With Apple CEO Steve Jobs' open letter published in late April claiming that Adobe had yet to deliver a Flash Player running well on a mobile platform, [...]

Steve Jobs needed to concern himself with IOS 4 running "well" on his own platforms ... instead he threw a million 3G users under the bus for 2 months and counting.

Down with iOS4 (on iPhone 3g)! Html5 is the future!!!!!!


Wait, what?

 

[avanpelt]

Oh dear. Do some people owe Mr. Jobs an apology?

I'm still mad over the whole proximity sensor problem with the iPhone 4 that still has not been addressed with a software fix. That problem made it impossible for me to conduct business calls with my iPhone 4. That was unacceptable, so I returned the phone for a refund and purchased a Droid X.

I'd love to receive an apology from Mr. Jobs for his company's lousy QA testing, but that's never gonna happen.

 

[SPUY767]

Odd, I have a 3 ghz dual-core processor Mac and it struggles with 720p Flash videos on YouTube.

Quad core 3.0 xeon mac pro. 720p youtube video:100% CPU usage. Apparently it's not multiple core. 1080p blu ray rips with dts audio: 12%CPU usage.

 

[JoEw]

Web standards will prevail as they always do

HTML5 adoption has sky rocked since apple took a stance on it.


Whats the point of using flash for your site, if you are gonna have to rewrite your site to optimize it for mobile anyway?

 

[res1233]

Android 1.5 in 2008 had multi-touch. It just didn't have pinch & zoom in the default browser configuration in the US. A lot of iPhone defense squad members used to used that against Android until they were shut up by a few well placed Youtube videos.



You're not a Web dev are you ? Using HTML5 for video requires 3 seperate videos and loads of Javascript to detect which one to send. 1 H.264 encode, 1 Theora encode, and 1 Flash app with embedded H.264 video.

Flash video, well, just works on 98% of Internet connected devices.

Only people who don't have an actual clue about the current mess behind the video tag would say things like you did.

You sir, are a troll.
<video src="Movie Recording 2.mov" controls="controls"></video>
That is just about as basic as a video tag gets, and it works too, it sure as hell aint that simple to do the same thing in flash.

 

[bkspero]

Are you certain it isn't an OS X problem?

Quad core 3.0 xeon mac pro. 720p youtube video:100% CPU usage. Apparently it's not multiple core. 1080p blu ray rips with dts audio: 12%CPU usage.

I wouldn't be too quick to blame Flash for your cpu usage. It was only a few months ago that certain Mac Pro users were reporting that simply playing an audio file would max out their CPUs. No Flash involved. The problem had been going on for months and months without Apple acknowledging any problem. Then one day Apple issued a fix and cpu usage dropped to normal levels. It was a flaw in OS X.

With that precedent, poor OS X support for Flash could well deserve the lion's share of the blame. Not Flash itself.

As further support in favor of Flash, it runs perfectly with reasonable cpu load on even my fairly old PCs upgraded to Win7, whereas OS X runs Flash like a dog on my relatively new Macs under 10.6. You just don't hear much Flash complaining on the Windows forums because Flash runs so well under Windows. Again the common denominator for the problem is Apple's OS and how it badly it handles Flash. Not an inherent flaw with Flash (if Flash were flawed, it wouldn't run so well under Win7).

I confess that I am not a programmer. And I'm sure that some fanboy can quote chapter and verse from the Book of Steve as to how Flash coding is flawed and deserving of elimination. Just seems fishy, though, that 90% of the world's PCs can run Flash just fine under Win7. Even Mac hardware can run it fine by dual booting into Windows. But when it runs poorly under OS X, the blame is placed on Flash and not on the one OS that causes the problem, OS X. Put the blame where it belongs, on Apple's OS.

 

[keruah]

Just seems fishy, though, that 90% of the world's PCs can run Flash just fine under Win7.

You see, it's the main reason why Adobe don't give a **** about Flash on OS X. They just don't optimize it.

 

[res1233]

I wouldn't be too quick to blame Flash for your cpu usage. It was only a few months ago that certain Mac Pro users were reporting that simply playing an audio file would max out their CPUs. No Flash involved. The problem had been going on for months and months without Apple acknowledging any problem. Then one day Apple issued a fix and cpu usage dropped to normal levels. It was a flaw in OS X.

With that precedent, poor OS X support for Flash could well deserve the lion's share of the blame. Not Flash itself.

As further support in favor of Flash, it runs perfectly with reasonable cpu load on even my fairly old PCs upgraded to Win7, whereas OS X runs Flash like a dog on my relatively new Macs under 10.6. You just don't hear much Flash complaining on the Windows forums because Flash runs so well under Windows. Again the common denominator for the problem is Apple's OS and how it badly it handles Flash. Not an inherent flaw with Flash (if Flash were flawed, it wouldn't run so well under Win7).

I confess that I am not a programmer. And I'm sure that some fanboy can quote chapter and verse from the Book of Steve as to how Flash coding is flawed and deserving of elimination. Just seems fishy, though, that 90% of the world's PCs can run Flash just fine under Win7. Even Mac hardware can run it fine by dual booting into Windows. But when it runs poorly under OS X, the blame is placed on Flash and not on the one OS that causes the problem, OS X. Put the blame where it belongs, on Apple's OS.

You're looking at the problem too plainly. You have to realize that the version for Mac and the version for Windows are not identical, and then you can start to see why there might be differences. The operating system plays a big role, yes, but that role is also a part of why you can't use the same exact version of a plugin for both mac and windows. Different binaries, different APIs, just plain different. At the end of the day, it's up to adobe to do the programming. If they don't do it well, the product sucks. Even if adobe has to use software rendering on most macs because of lack of API support, i for one have never had performance problems with flash, even WITH software rendering…

EDIT: And like you said, you're not a programmer, so you probably don't understand how many differences there are between the same piece of software designed for two different OSes.

 

[louis Fashion]

Jump'n jack flash

Hope it dies quickly so we can move on.

 

[carbonmotion]

android flash is bad for flash hd content, but for regular res. stuff, it works fine... megavideo works, so that means you practically have free awesome videos on your phone all the time. i think with 2.2, android has surpassed ios in some respects (flash, widgets, notification). IP4 has a great camera and you can't beat the ios + itunes combo, but its probably time for apple to step up its game. Here are some changes that apple should consider...

retina display in a 4" screen
widgets
notifications
flash video

flash video will be with us for at least another 5 years, i think apple should support it for the time being

 

[PlipPlop]

I have 2.2 on my Desire. Flash runs very well on it, I watch videos on the bbc iplayer fullscreen fine. Well done Google and Flash for a great product!

 

[lloyd709]

My 2 pence!

I'm a photographer (and part time nerd) and invested a shed lot of time learning flash to build my own website a few years ago. I loved the design freedom of flash but hated the over designed "resource hogging" flash sites out there. I built mine very simply, and I like to think it's great, and guess what, it takes up very little system resource. I've replicated some aspects of it using Javascript only to find the same amount (if not more) system resource being used. So my take on this flash thing killing system resource is it's because of the number of rubbish, totally geeky, flash designers out there completely over designing sites "because they can". They can't do the same thing with anything else, so guess what, the sites not using flash take up less system resource.

My flash web site for anyone interested: www.lloydsturdy.com

 

[Popeye206]

Blah, blah, blah!

Obviously, there is a place for Flash today. No doubt and I have run into situations where I wish it was on the iPhone. But, I don't see it as the end of the world and after finally putting my hands on a fully functional DroidX. I wouldn't trade my iPhone for a Droid... no way, no how. I found some cool thinks on the Google OS and the Droid, but overall the phone felt cheap and the OS clunky and unrefined. Not bad... don't get me wrong. If I was a Verizon die-hard I'd probably own one, but I'd switch to the iPhone as soon as I could.

Again... as for Flash... it won't be an issue in two years. Even our company is quickly moving everything to HTML5.

 

[unicorn025]

why are some iphone folk hating on flash? is it cause you all really want it?

i watch at least 4 episode of ncis on my phone and my batteries arent being drain, my nphews and my sis have iphone 4 and we are always trying to see which browser loads the page faster and guess what my phone always win and that with flash on.

im pretty sure if sj allowed adobe to they can make flash for the iphone, he dosnt cause he will loose money on itunes.

 

[unicorn025]

here is another instance of sj looking out for you.

With all the news of 'jailbreaking' this news kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. Apple applied for a patent back in February of this year named: “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device” while this could be a harmless feature protecting iPhone users from theft Apple has other ideas in mind.

The patent in question specifically mentions that the kill switch will be used for the identification of “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card” so that Apple can take steps to disable phones.

The steps taken in the event of theft or jailbreak appear to be very invasive potentially allowing Apple to take images with the iPhone camera, uploading images without consent, attaching locational information to each image (already operational), voice-printing of the owner, activating the accelerometer to detect movement and even a heartbeat sensor!

While Apple does claim that your information is safe with them and that the use of this feature is somewhat dedicated to the theft of your phone, What is to stop them from activating the features making for some potentially embarrassing privacy violations?

While Apple could explain away many of the changes listed within the patent as protection for the owner, it does appear that the company no longer sees the value of privacy turning the iPhone from a fairly safe device into a snoopers wet dream while subjecting users to more of a potential risk than Apple considers jailbreaking to be.

 

[capn7]

wtf

I doubt most of you have used it yet. And it's better than decent.

Pretty good flash plugin > no flash at all

boom roasted