Just how bad is Flash on Android?

by Ian Betteridge on August 31, 2010

Pretty bad. In fact, if you’re thinking video, utterly unusable.

Kevin Tofel of GigaOm and JKOnTheRun is someone who isn’t a dyed in the wool iPhone or Apple fan. In fact, he replaced his iPhone with a Nexus One in January (a process that I’ve recently gone through, more of which anon). And that’s why this video over on NewTeeVee of his experience with Flash video should be required watching for anyone who thinks Flash on mobile is a reality, today.

What does this demonstrate? Simply that the idea that Apple could simply magically put Flash on the iPad (which runs a processor in the same class as the Nexus One) is fantasy. Ignoring the broader reasons for Apple wanting to keep Flash off its platform, it’s clear that Flash is simply too processor-intensive to work properly on mobile-class processors as currently specified.

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http://www.facebook.com/leo.bergman Leo Bergman

I don’t think it’s a sub par experience on the phones that support the Flash Player. It could be that the GPU on Galaxy S is better at handling video, but I have seen several videos with Nexus One displaying Flash video just fine.
It seems like this video demonstration is a deliberate attempt to show Flash from the worst side, and most of it is actually showing problems with certain websites rather than with Flash.
I mean seriously, why do think the video is not loading on ABC? Flash plays video using the same encoding as HTML5…it doesn’t take more bandwidth or make the server deliver data slower.
Do you blame HTML as soon as an HTML site is slow to load?

Do you have a phone with Flash? Or are you basing your opinion on this biased video?
I can record a video of my Galaxy S playing this video about Flash video being useless on Android if that would make it clearer to you how off the mark this video is.
Google for videos with the Nexus One showing Flash content and you will see that the norm is very different from what this video tries to portray it as.

And that Flash should use more CPU or battery is a myth propagated by mindless followers of Jobs. If you look at benchmarks rather than read their opinions you would know that. In fact HTML5 is less efficient than Flash. But of course watching video, displaying animations or using interactive multimedia applications takes more battery than browsing text.
With the Flash player set to show content on demand it does not use more resources than browsing without. But if I want to use some power to see content I can activate it when I like.
http://www.facebook.com/leo.bergman Leo Bergman

Who is not for better technology?
I like a phone that supports Flash, HTML5 and Silverlight since they all have their strengths.
Ideally I would like it based on an open standard, but if you look at HTML it’s fine for the propose it was created for, displaying text. But it just develops too slowly to keep up with more demanding tasks.

Take video codecs as an example. h.264 has become dominant the last few years, but now Google want to use WebM for YouTube since they claim it will reduce the bandwidth needed drastically.
Apple and MS will not include the codec in their browsers, and even if they did release browsers with support it will take many years before you have acceptable reach with WebM. There are still loads of users with IE6 and IE7, so without a plugin we would be stuck with h.264 probably for around a decade.
So the lifespan of a browser is longer than the lifespan of a codec, which of course makes it a useless way of delivering the technology.
Adobe has announced that they will support WebM, and more than 90% will have the updated player in less than a year.

Also both c# and Actionscript are far superior to JS, both when it comes to development and runtimes. HTML5 will be fine for some purposes, but for serious application development it’s retarded.
http://www.technovia.co.uk Ian Betteridge

To dive in on what’s an interesting discussion for a second (thank you, all who’re taking part in the right spirit), I think I should make one thing clear.

I’m not anti-Flash. There, I’ve said it

What I think, though, is that Flash is nearing the end of the road as a technology which dominates online *video*. There are newer, better solutions and they’re gradually going to become the most common methods of viewing video online.

And when you think about it, that makes more sense. Flash is a developer platform that’s capable of much more than just playing video in a window. Using it mainly for that online is overkill.
Anonymous

“Many web apps don’t work well, if at all, on touchscreen devices”

There’s something very wrong with your touchscreen device.
http://www.facebook.com/roymeo Roy Crisman

My 5 year old laptop has a hard time playing Bones episodes, too. Now I can blame Flash?
http://www.facebook.com/leo.bergman Leo Bergman

In what way is HTML5 better according to you?

Performance? Check some benchmarks comparing h.264 encoded video and you will notice that you will not get better performance with HTML5 compared to Flash.

Features? When it comes to features HTML5 is limited. No proper streaming, no proper fullscreen, no content protection and no overlays and captions.

Accessibility? You have fragmentation between browsers with MS, Apple and Mozilla trying to push their agendas by limiting support to different codecs. Browsers are updated slowly, meaning that many times a codec will be replaced by a more modern alternative by the time it’s accessible by enough users to be considered for serious use.

The only advantage of delivering video with HTML5 would be that it’s an open standard, but that is actually a pointless distinction as long as the codecs are not open. Instead of a plugin using proprietary technology you add the proprietary technology to the browser, and nothing is gained in the end.

A lot of people think that HTML5 will be the future for online video, but they seem to completely miss Google’s investment in WebM and the fact that the only way for them to reach a decent number of users reasonably soon is by using Flash to deliver the codec. Just like Flash enabled sites like YouTube to start with, it’s clear that it’s also a vital part of their future. HTML5 will remain a fallback for crippled devices in the foreseeable future.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=707691936 Greg Gwaltney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=oaYKe3s0ivk
Anonymous

Echoing so many other comments: WHO CARES?
What matters is what works, and the Flash shown in Kevin’s video is laughably bad.
It seems like a world of caveats that people not versed in ffmpeg would have a hard time grasping only because they couldn’t care less.
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Anonymous

The critical resource on mobile devices isn’t GHz or CPU cores, it is battery life. Battery capacity is only improving at something like 10% per year, and CPU performance per watt for mobile class CPUs is moving according to Moore’s law. The current state of the art for mobile phone CPUs is roughly a single 1GHz core. iI don’t see how by the end of the year, dual core 1.5GHz CPUs are going to make these flash performance problems irrelevant.

There is just no way that we are going to get a 3x improvement in performance/watt of mobile phone CPUs in the next 3 months, sorry. You can try to discredit other people by asserting that they are “fanboys” but your other assertions suggest that you yourself aren’t credible.
Anonymous

What do you expect. How many people has Google bought with free android phones? Multiply it by all the people who think it it is awesome that their friend got a free android phone. Android seems like a decent option from my limited first-hand experience with it, but beyond what I can see for myself by using a Nexus One for a few hours, it is really hard for me to trust the opinions anyone voices about it on line.
http://www.facebook.com/robert.reinhardt Robert Reinhardt

Desktop-based sites (i.e. sites not optimized for mobile, period) aren’t using processor-friendly video codecs. Common “video in a desktop browser” codecs are H.264 Main profile and High profile, and these will really play quite horribly on any mobile device. Video needs to be encoded in H.264 Base profile for mobile, and any video that uses this profile should perform quite well with Flash Player or HTML5.
Anonymous

Unfortunately, HTML5 can’t do everything that Flash can do. And right now, Flash does many things better, especially in the mobile realm.
http://techcomments.tumblr.com heikkipekka

You are an engineer talking. Think users.

Why should there be plug-ins used in web? More rich content? Is Flash today needed for that?

Flash was good when there was no easy way of showing a video on web and only high power desktop computers were around.

Now we have mobile devices and alternatives for Flash. No need for confusing plug-ins on web anymore.
http://techcomments.tumblr.com heikkipekka

Was your Flash video on your Galaxy S encoded with H.264 or VP6 or Sorenson Spark?

You say Flash is default because vast majority of machines are able to play it but that’s only because most “machines” are high power desktops or laptops and not limited performance mobile devices. And mobile devices can’t play old Flash flawlessly so that old Flash content has to be re-encoded and that’s no good.
http://techcomments.tumblr.com heikkipekka

Excatly. If Flash on mobile is supposed to give us “full web” on mobile but it doesn’t, why bother with Flash?
http://techcomments.tumblr.com heikkipekka

Advantage of delivering video without Flash is that people might not need to install Flash plug-in anymore on any desktop or laptop so that content providers might stop using Flash to deliver anything and all web content would be available for anyone with PCs and mobile devices for whatever and all would just work.

Flash is not good enough technology to be build up on.
http://techcomments.tumblr.com heikkipekka

Is Flash great technology to provide other web content too?

As a user do you ever suffer from slowdowns when there is a lot of Flash content on a website?
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http://twitter.com/ocube ocube

I think the Apple brigade are missing the point, Flash has always been processor intensive, a Flash site would always be slower than an html site, its all about choice. If I choose to enable flash on my phone its because I want it and Apple should not be making that choice for me. Its a sad thing that the same people who champion the cause of the free internet cannot see beyond their love for their shiny iPhones and before you rile at me, just know I have an iPhone, a macBook and iMac… (and dont have a PC).
http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

(I posted once and it didn’t give a confirmation so I’ll post again.)

Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRS11rTVHAg.

It’s mobile folks. The ABC.com player doesn’t play well on mobile. It is a player problem, as shown in my video. The HD video shouldn’t be expected to play anyway. It is a low-RAM, low-cpu device.
http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

Sorry about the double comment. Disqus required me to validate my email. :-/ My fault.
http://www.technovia.co.uk Ian Betteridge

No problem John – I’ll delete one of the duplicates.
http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

Hey, thanks Ian!

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John C Bland II
http://www.johncblandii.com
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http://twitter.com/pilehave_mp Mikkel P Jensen

Seems a bit harsh to blame Android for you having:
1. shitty internet connectrion
2. used the normal abc.com website, even though you know it sucks on mobile devices.

I can stream our public channels live in H.264 flash on my HTC Desire, full screen. Go take som anti-FUD pills…
http://twitter.com/chris_churn Chris

My god this is grade A FUD.
Flash video on Metacafe on Desire on a suitable connection works perfectly. Same with every other flash video website I have tried so far. No choppiness, no delay. perfect. Obviously, your test conditions were flawed, not Flash.

It’s infuriating knowing people actually believe this stuff.
http://www.technovia.co.uk Ian Betteridge

Perhaps reading a little more closely might have benefitted: there aren’t “my” tests.
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http://www.facebook.com/people/Arturo-Olifante-Vial/100000506776590 Arturo Olifante Vial

“Alright, I’ll try again later [1/2 second gap] Ok, it’s later”
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Pingback: Pretty bad. In fact, if you’re thinking video, utterly unusable. Kevin Tofel of GigaOm and JKOnTheRun is someone who isn’t a dyed in the wool iPhone or Apple fan. In fact, he replaced his iPhone with a Nexus One in January (a process that I’ve recen