Slashdot Mirror
Flash On Android Is 'Shockingly Bad'
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.'"
Flash on any platform is shockingly bad.
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.
"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? 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.
...really? I'd rather have the option than not, but I guess that's why I don't buy iStuff anymore.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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...
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.
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.
Deleted
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.
Interesting.
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.
Trolling is a art,
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
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, if I want to emulate an iPhone, I'm always free to uninstall Flash completely.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.