For a few weeks now Adobe Flash has been available for Android devices running 2.2, and it has been available for a bit longer in beta form. This means plenty of people have had a chance to try it out, but I haven’t seen much in the way of reviews. I tried it myself a couple of times and didn’t notice much, but there’s probably not much I can learn from watching two or three videos. Over at NewTeeVee they have a video demo of Flash on a Nexus One. Those who don’t yet have Froyo might be disappointed.
The key to this test, run by Kevin Tofel of jkOnTheRun, is that he used a Nexus One on a Wi-Fi connection, so there were no device-specific issues that hindered the Flash performance. Even with a 25Mbps FiOS connection and a 1GHz phone processor, Tofel found videos from major media sites to load slowly, if at all, and play choppily, again if at all.
Ryan Lawler comes in with a rough conclusion:
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, all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.
I think that might be a bit far-reaching. This is Flash’s first run on Android, and even then it’s not widely available yet. There is still room to grow and improve. Maybe that won’t happen, but I wouldn’t count out Flash just yet.
