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.'"

Comments

Breaking news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash on any platform is shockingly bad.

Re:Breaking news!

[guruevi]

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.

Re:Breaking news!

[amicusNYCL]

No, a real Australian would find a way to fit "cunt" into the sentence.

Re:Breaking news!

[T Murphy]

Am I the only one bothered by the parent failing to use the title "News Flash!"?

Re:Breaking news!

[nurb432]

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.

Re:Breaking news!

[severoon]

Not that HTML5 is any better.

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.

Re:Breaking news!

[Superken7]

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

Re:Breaking news!

[rdnetto]

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. 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).

Re:Breaking news!

[mldi]

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.

Choice

[bloosh]

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.

Or perhaps....

[oraclese]

"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.

Re:Or perhaps....

[topham]

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.

Re:Or perhaps....

[Tharsman]

"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.

"None" is better than inconsistent?

[SanityInAnarchy]

...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?

[Invid72]

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?

[hedwards]

Except that he's not maintaining market share. In recent months he's been losing ground to Android mobiles which don't come with all the restrictions that the various iPhones do. I rooted my Nexus One yesterday, and apart from being informed that doing so would void my warranty, the whole process was painless. And really, I can't blame Google for voiding the warranty, if I'm going to introduce software which they can't protect me against, it's only fair that I'm on my own. And at least they made it crystal clear while I could still turn back.

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.

shockingly bad is an exaggeration

[Superken7]

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

[maccodemonkey]

"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.

My experience as well

[Itchyeyes]

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.

Works fine on my e52

[Colin Smith]

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.
 

Re:Meh

[HappyClown]

Here's how to get the best of both worlds:

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.

Re:Really?

[grub]

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.

Re:Silly

[icebike]

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.

Logic?

[Namarrgon]

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.