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Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Arrives For Android
adeelarshad82 writes "Adobe announced that it has released the final version of Flash Player 10.1 for Google's mobile operating system. The app will be available for download via the Android Market for those users who have Android 2.2 (Froyo) installed on their phones. Devices expected to offer the Android update include the Dell Streak, Google Nexus One, HTC Evo, HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, Droid by Motorola, Motorola Milestone, and Samsung Galaxy S. Flash Player 10.1 was also released to support devices based on Android, BlackBerry, webOS, future versions of Windows Phone, LiMo, MeeGo and Symbian OS, and is expected to be made available via over-the-air downloads and to be pre-installed on smart phones, tablets and other devices in the coming months."
So, I've tried it on my Nexus One. It seems to play videos ok, but that's about it. You can't really interact with the flash because no flash videos are designed for touch input.
On the BBC news video players you can't control playback because the clickable area on the time-line is far too narrow to hit. You also can't drag anything because this just scrolls the website.
Conclusion: Steve Jobs was right; flash doesn't belong on phones and I'm glad he is killing it, even if he is still an annoying control freak.
I have Flash on my Nexus One running FroYo...honestly, its not that bad. Youtube videos run very smoothly for me (much more so than the actual Youtube app, that thing is garbage IMHO). It's only when you see pages with lots of crap (ads) on them that performance becomes an issue. You can set the plug-in to On Demand, but when you select one flash object to load, I've noticed every flash objects loads and then performance suffers.
Your still accepting the company line on Flash?
If it is about the tiny screens of phones then why is there no Flash on the iPad.
No, there are a variety of strategic reasons why Apple doesn't want Flash on their products. For example, Apple wants to force as much materials as possible (games, video, news, etc) into the app store or iTunes. This allows them to take a cut of any revenue and block it if they don't like it.
Flash goes against that strategy. For example, it allows DRM'ed media and lots of cross-platform games to be delivered via the web, independent of Apple.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Flash is as efficient as native code, but then again, neither is JavaScript. Sometimes we need to make trade-offs.