6 ms·

Flash for Android running fairly well on the Nexus One

44 points by there 16y ago

c00p3r 16y ago
So I can play Farmville?
- Tichy 16y ago
  This could be big (seriously). There are 80 million farmville players, and I think the game requires you to log in at odd times.
  - cakesy 16y ago
    The problem is, that I have a feeling that farmville players are not the most technically minded.
  - c00p3r 16y ago
    Yeah, there are so many clever tricks. the Tamagochi concept, the farming as out ancient shared past, the possibility to show up, like people do with real houses and consumer goods, and so on. And remember they use facebook as a market, that no one have done before, and no one will repeat the same success. The wow-factor goes to the first. But it cannot run on the ARM-based devices, and that is why flash sucks. Just discard all marketing hype and face the reality.
- FabriceTalbot 16y ago
  Please tell me this was a joke :) However it reminded me of this parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/farmville-nexus-one/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/farmville-nexus-one/ Keep in mind this is using the Flash Lite player, though, not the full 10.1 that will be released in a week or so.
ilike 16y ago
Html5 on iPad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4
- jrockway 16y ago
  But interestingly, the Nexus One performs better.
  - not_an_alien 16y ago
    For some odd reason, the Nexus One browser is a lot more optimized for canvas use. It blows away the iPad and the iPhone in terms of performance.
jtaby 16y ago
Is it just me, or was the scrolling incredibly slow? And the hockey video's playback choppy? It's also interesting that the phone was being charged, considering the battery usage the last time flash was demoed...
- Tichy 16y ago
  I thought it was pretty impressive. It is a freakin mobile phone. As for battery usage, is there a reason to assume that Flash sucks more battery than other applications? Why would it (except being interpreted)? I guess 3d apps in general would draw more power than "flat" business apps.
  - jcl 16y ago
    In any discussion of Flash performance, usually someone posts a report of their CPU fan spinning up each time a web page with Flash is running, or a performance meter getting pegged, or the computer's performance notably degrading. So there's reason to suspect that mobile Flash will suck more battery than a native app. It's possible that Flash's movie clip-based object model encourages a "polling" approach to interaction over an event-driven approach, making it harder for the CPU to sleep.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      I don't want to defend Flash, but most Flash apps contain a loop and animations. So it is logical that they consume more CPU time than a static web site.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  If we have the same video in mind, 'the last time' the video was edited and cut in the middle, giving the impression the battery was depleted halfway through. Here's some battery 'benchmarks' (rather, accelerated videos) when playing video with Flash: http://vimeo.com/9705969 http://vimeo.com/9705969 http://vimeo.com/9724682 http://vimeo.com/9724682
grinich 16y ago
No mention of how it handles hover events...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- litewulf 16y ago
  One imagines there are many flash applications that are not reliant on hover events, in the same manner that there are many HTML webpages that did not.
- ilike 16y ago
  http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-content-mouse-events-and-touch-input/ http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-con... FTA: Flash Player Mouse Events on Touch Screen Devices- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1hiLnIp_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1hiLnIp_g
- est 16y ago
  you've never seen a jQuery hover menu?
- ergo98 16y ago
  Really? Are people still" trotting this out? You know I haven't been able to play a single HTML5 game on my N1. Every single one requires either a physical keyboard or mouse events that I can't simulate.
  - loire280 16y ago
    I agree that it's a red herring in the "future of Flash" argument, but it's still a significant hurdle. The value of any existing Flash content that requires keybaord or mouse hover interactions is diminished almost to the point that you might as well not have it. That's not to say that future Flash content won't be built with touchscreen interfaces in mind.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    Yeah, the feeling of playing a game in a web browser on a mobile device (regardless of whether it's Flash or HTML5 or whatever) is usually poor enough if it's even doable that I wonder whether there'll ever be much mobile gaming through web browsers.
ck2 16y ago
Is no-one else impressed by how much computing power is being demonstrated in a handheld device with this? Or do we all just take it for granted today? It's not using any server-side assistance like Opera Mini does, is it? 100% processed on the phone - fantastic.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I'm floored by what is happening on this front, to be frank. The amount of computing power we're carrying in our pockets is simply stunning, we're getting to the point where we might be able to put good speech recognition on a device this size. It's not quite here yet (people claim it is, but in practice if you don't get very close to 100% accuracy typing or pushing buttons is quite fast) but who knows, it might be. And I think when that happens coupled with enough NLP to make a good user interface the days of the touch screen will be over. In fact, we might see 'screenless' computers that you can still interact with.
  - ck2 16y ago
    Doesn't speech recognition require either massive databases or massively-parallel processing (or both?) In most cases the speech would be used when connected to another server anyway, so it would be okay then to rely on remote processing. Unless I am missing a concept here.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      It's funny how natural you take to the remote processing of speech, when I first outlined that as a concept to potential investors about a decade ago I was literally laughed out of the room :) But yes, that's definitely an option, but 'limited domain' speech recognition on mobiles is a fact today, to do better would require a lot of work but I think that it is possible. Don't forget that you'd be about as 'personal' with that computer as possible, nobody else would ever use it, so one dimension of the problem can be collapsed to '1'.
- cakesy 16y ago
  It is amazing, yes. But it hasn't just turned up last week. From calculators, to ediaries, to original Palm with its 25Mhz Dragonball Processor, iPaq with its 200mhz processor, the iPhone with 600mhz processor, and now 1Ghz in this android phone.
FabriceTalbot 16y ago
I agree, Flash is running pretty well on the Nexus One. This is only one of it's great features. I think I've fallen in love a bit with the Android 2.1 platform. It didn't crush once, in about 3 months.
melling 16y ago
The first demo was the most interesting use of Flash. Any demo with video is pointless. The iPad/iPhone are now going to drive sites from Flash video. I'm in the camp where I think together Apple and Google can fix html5 so that Flash isn't necessary. The web is much too important to be built around a plugin, unless Adobe completely open sources their plugin.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  Pointless? If I'm navigating a website that has video or interactive content and I want to see it, and there's no alternate content, how is that pointless?
generalk 16y ago
The only way I'd put Flash Player on my Nexus One is if it had some kind of ClickToFlash-like functionality. One of the best parts of mobile browsing is missing out on horrible Flash banner ads and annoying middle-of-the-screen popups. Yes, mobile Flash video and games might be cool, but it's not worth that downside, IMO.
not_an_alien 16y ago
From the source (http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2010/05/examples-of-flash-content-running-on-android/ http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2010/05/examples-of-flash...): We’ll be releasing a public version of Flash Player 10.1 at Google I/O Expected, but wasn't confirmed until now. Nice. So we all should have it in a week or so and be able to run our own tests.
pragmatic 16y ago
My HTC Incredible runs flash. Like it or not, flash is part of the web. I'm not a huge fan of flash, but it's _everywhere_, despite what Steve Jobs wants you to believe.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  The HTC incredible uses Flash Lite. Flash 10.1 (the one demoed here) is supposed to be much better in terms of performance and battery usage (not to mention it has many more features than FL; FL is around Flash 9 sans some features).
- jsz0 16y ago
  At least for Flash video many sites will serve up HTML5 video instead based on your browser user-agent. So you might see Flash where an iPad or iPhone user would see HTML5 video. Try switching your browser UA to iPad for a few hours. It's interesting to see the difference.
jsz0 16y ago
Looks kind of awkward but not bad for a beta. I'm curious how they are going to handle the small text problem. The first demo is a good example of that. He locks input to the Flash app so presumably to zoom in and out you have to unlock input, zoom in, and relock it to continue using the app. That could get tedious.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
Flash still needs to die or have its runtime open-sourced. I'm glad to see Apple taking a stand on this issue, even if it's for selfish reasons; someone needed to push web developers to put Flash back in its place as a marginal web tech for edge cases, nice to have but not critical. I browse the web with the Flash plugin disabled in Firefox, and it's been great to not have all the excruciating Flash ads. I still run into the occasional Flash video I can't watch while browsing on my iPhone, but they've been getting rare lately. It's well-worth the inconvenience knowing that I'm helping to kill off dependence on Adobe Flash for good by using these iProducts. So great job Adobe, now get off my lawn!

44 points by there 16y ago

c00p3r 16y ago

So I can play Farmville?

Tichy 16y ago
This could be big (seriously). There are 80 million farmville players, and I think the game requires you to log in at odd times.
- cakesy 16y ago
  The problem is, that I have a feeling that farmville players are not the most technically minded.
- c00p3r 16y ago
  Yeah, there are so many clever tricks. the Tamagochi concept, the farming as out ancient shared past, the possibility to show up, like people do with real houses and consumer goods, and so on. And remember they use facebook as a market, that no one have done before, and no one will repeat the same success. The wow-factor goes to the first. But it cannot run on the ARM-based devices, and that is why flash sucks. Just discard all marketing hype and face the reality.
FabriceTalbot 16y ago
Please tell me this was a joke :) However it reminded me of this parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI
not_an_alien 16y ago
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/farmville-nexus-one/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/farmville-nexus-one/ Keep in mind this is using the Flash Lite player, though, not the full 10.1 that will be released in a week or so.

ilike 16y ago

Html5 on iPad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4

jrockway 16y ago
But interestingly, the Nexus One performs better.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  For some odd reason, the Nexus One browser is a lot more optimized for canvas use. It blows away the iPad and the iPhone in terms of performance.

jtaby 16y ago

Is it just me, or was the scrolling incredibly slow? And the hockey video's playback choppy? It's also interesting that the phone was being charged, considering the battery usage the last time flash was demoed...

Tichy 16y ago
I thought it was pretty impressive. It is a freakin mobile phone. As for battery usage, is there a reason to assume that Flash sucks more battery than other applications? Why would it (except being interpreted)? I guess 3d apps in general would draw more power than "flat" business apps.
- jcl 16y ago
  In any discussion of Flash performance, usually someone posts a report of their CPU fan spinning up each time a web page with Flash is running, or a performance meter getting pegged, or the computer's performance notably degrading. So there's reason to suspect that mobile Flash will suck more battery than a native app. It's possible that Flash's movie clip-based object model encourages a "polling" approach to interaction over an event-driven approach, making it harder for the CPU to sleep.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    I don't want to defend Flash, but most Flash apps contain a loop and animations. So it is logical that they consume more CPU time than a static web site.
not_an_alien 16y ago
If we have the same video in mind, 'the last time' the video was edited and cut in the middle, giving the impression the battery was depleted halfway through. Here's some battery 'benchmarks' (rather, accelerated videos) when playing video with Flash: http://vimeo.com/9705969 http://vimeo.com/9705969 http://vimeo.com/9724682 http://vimeo.com/9724682

grinich 16y ago

No mention of how it handles hover events...

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
litewulf 16y ago
One imagines there are many flash applications that are not reliant on hover events, in the same manner that there are many HTML webpages that did not.
ilike 16y ago
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-content-mouse-events-and-touch-input/ http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-con... FTA: Flash Player Mouse Events on Touch Screen Devices- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1hiLnIp_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1hiLnIp_g
est 16y ago
you've never seen a jQuery hover menu?
ergo98 16y ago
Really? Are people still" trotting this out? You know I haven't been able to play a single HTML5 game on my N1. Every single one requires either a physical keyboard or mouse events that I can't simulate.
- loire280 16y ago
  I agree that it's a red herring in the "future of Flash" argument, but it's still a significant hurdle. The value of any existing Flash content that requires keybaord or mouse hover interactions is diminished almost to the point that you might as well not have it. That's not to say that future Flash content won't be built with touchscreen interfaces in mind.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Yeah, the feeling of playing a game in a web browser on a mobile device (regardless of whether it's Flash or HTML5 or whatever) is usually poor enough if it's even doable that I wonder whether there'll ever be much mobile gaming through web browsers.

ck2 16y ago

Is no-one else impressed by how much computing power is being demonstrated in a handheld device with this? Or do we all just take it for granted today? It's not using any server-side assistance like Opera Mini does, is it? 100% processed on the phone - fantastic.

jacquesm 16y ago
I'm floored by what is happening on this front, to be frank. The amount of computing power we're carrying in our pockets is simply stunning, we're getting to the point where we might be able to put good speech recognition on a device this size. It's not quite here yet (people claim it is, but in practice if you don't get very close to 100% accuracy typing or pushing buttons is quite fast) but who knows, it might be. And I think when that happens coupled with enough NLP to make a good user interface the days of the touch screen will be over. In fact, we might see 'screenless' computers that you can still interact with.
- ck2 16y ago
  Doesn't speech recognition require either massive databases or massively-parallel processing (or both?) In most cases the speech would be used when connected to another server anyway, so it would be okay then to rely on remote processing. Unless I am missing a concept here.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    It's funny how natural you take to the remote processing of speech, when I first outlined that as a concept to potential investors about a decade ago I was literally laughed out of the room :) But yes, that's definitely an option, but 'limited domain' speech recognition on mobiles is a fact today, to do better would require a lot of work but I think that it is possible. Don't forget that you'd be about as 'personal' with that computer as possible, nobody else would ever use it, so one dimension of the problem can be collapsed to '1'.
cakesy 16y ago
It is amazing, yes. But it hasn't just turned up last week. From calculators, to ediaries, to original Palm with its 25Mhz Dragonball Processor, iPaq with its 200mhz processor, the iPhone with 600mhz processor, and now 1Ghz in this android phone.

FabriceTalbot 16y ago

I agree, Flash is running pretty well on the Nexus One. This is only one of it's great features. I think I've fallen in love a bit with the Android 2.1 platform. It didn't crush once, in about 3 months.

melling 16y ago

The first demo was the most interesting use of Flash. Any demo with video is pointless. The iPad/iPhone are now going to drive sites from Flash video. I'm in the camp where I think together Apple and Google can fix html5 so that Flash isn't necessary. The web is much too important to be built around a plugin, unless Adobe completely open sources their plugin.

not_an_alien 16y ago
Pointless? If I'm navigating a website that has video or interactive content and I want to see it, and there's no alternate content, how is that pointless?

generalk 16y ago

The only way I'd put Flash Player on my Nexus One is if it had some kind of ClickToFlash-like functionality. One of the best parts of mobile browsing is missing out on horrible Flash banner ads and annoying middle-of-the-screen popups. Yes, mobile Flash video and games might be cool, but it's not worth that downside, IMO.

not_an_alien 16y ago

From the source (http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2010/05/examples-of-flash-content-running-on-android/ http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2010/05/examples-of-flash...): We’ll be releasing a public version of Flash Player 10.1 at Google I/O Expected, but wasn't confirmed until now. Nice. So we all should have it in a week or so and be able to run our own tests.

pragmatic 16y ago

My HTC Incredible runs flash. Like it or not, flash is part of the web. I'm not a huge fan of flash, but it's _everywhere_, despite what Steve Jobs wants you to believe.

not_an_alien 16y ago
The HTC incredible uses Flash Lite. Flash 10.1 (the one demoed here) is supposed to be much better in terms of performance and battery usage (not to mention it has many more features than FL; FL is around Flash 9 sans some features).
jsz0 16y ago
At least for Flash video many sites will serve up HTML5 video instead based on your browser user-agent. So you might see Flash where an iPad or iPhone user would see HTML5 video. Try switching your browser UA to iPad for a few hours. It's interesting to see the difference.

jsz0 16y ago

Looks kind of awkward but not bad for a beta. I'm curious how they are going to handle the small text problem. The first demo is a good example of that. He locks input to the Flash app so presumably to zoom in and out you have to unlock input, zoom in, and relock it to continue using the app. That could get tedious.

WiseWeasel 16y ago

Flash still needs to die or have its runtime open-sourced. I'm glad to see Apple taking a stand on this issue, even if it's for selfish reasons; someone needed to push web developers to put Flash back in its place as a marginal web tech for edge cases, nice to have but not critical. I browse the web with the Flash plugin disabled in Firefox, and it's been great to not have all the excruciating Flash ads. I still run into the occasional Flash video I can't watch while browsing on my iPhone, but they've been getting rare lately. It's well-worth the inconvenience knowing that I'm helping to kill off dependence on Adobe Flash for good by using these iProducts. So great job Adobe, now get off my lawn!