Any user of a current smart phone can tell you that one big gap in the mobile internet experiences on said devices is the lack of Flash support. For years now, Adobe has been stating that they are working on a mobile Flash version to help fill that gap, and even a few companies have taken the initiative of including Flash Lite in their phones, such as the HTC Hero with Sense UI. Flash Lite was a step in the correct direction, but doesn’t quite make that leap required to bridge the gap. However, recently Adobe has been demonstrating and touting the beta version of Flash 10.1. Adobe has stated they will release 10.1 for Android, Windows and RIM smart phones already and are working to do so before the end of the first half of 2010.
The recently announced HTC Desire, which has yet to officially begins sales, has already had it’s pre-release software (ROM) ported onto the Nexus One and it includes the beta of Flash 10.1. As such, tinkerers who have loaded up the Desire ROM onto their Nexus One have been able to take it for a test drive. The results have been promising so far, depending on how you look at it. Interestingly, one of the first demos of Flash 10.1 on the Nexus One comes from Taimur over at Remond Pie, who runs Farmville, a popular farming game available on Facebook, on a Nexus One:
Farmville on Nexus One
This video seems a little clunky and from what I have read the main issues involved with running Flash on a touchscreen mobile device is the touch interface itself. It makes it difficult to differentiate between clicking on something, hovering or even right-clicking. I would imagine with some creative engineering, that could be solved easy enough, but it does make me wonder. The other challenge that people have been questioning is the battery life of a device running Flash. Well, Adobe themselves have answered that call with some testing and demos of video playing via Flash. They numbers indicate over 3 hours of video play via Flash, which doesn’t seem to be that much of a drain as many people expected.
To demonstrate battery performance on the Nexus One here is a recording of a large movie playing on Youtube. It lasts for some 17 minutes with little effect on the battery indicator, and just to ensure fairness I have included the battery usage chart data from the Android OS. Our own tests show that video can be played for well over 3Hours over WIFI from youtube in H.264 (Baseline 1.2).
Flash Video Demo
Battery Performance with Flash Player 10.1 on the Nexus One from Mark Doherty on Vimeo.
I personally don’t miss Flash on my Android, I found that I have always been able to do what I want without it, and couldn’t imagine trying to play a game like Farmville with my phone. However, I can see how mobile optimized Flash games and sites could really benefit from Flash and think that the more options available to the user the better.
