Flash on Android is shockingly bad

Flash on my N1 hasn't quite lived up to my expectations, but my experience has been better than the reviewer's. I have flash set to 'on demand' to avoid all of the superfluous flash banner/video content fed from ad CDNs. Use firebug or resource tracker on abc.go.com or fox.com to get an idea of how many swfs and javascript files are loaded and queued and you'll understand why performance will be sub par whether playing video via flash or .

That said, in testing mp4s on my site, the same video (480x360 or 640x360 h.264 baseline) served with seems to play with less stuttering and better scaling than when using a flash wrapper.

I just wish I could play more orisinal games on the N1. The games run well, but drag mouse events seem limited to a second or two.

Here's a video response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb9jfdltkUU

It doesn't at all dismiss the observations made by newteevee, but I'm just trying to bring some balance in for people who might be considering a device and contemplating how much Flash really matters: A lot of these sites are picking the absolute worst cases and parading them as the standard, when they're anything but.

Video has been a relatively recent use for Flash, where it pushed out QuickTime (which Steve stills stews over), MediaPlayer, Real Media Player, and others. It's always been an odd purpose for it, given that it's an ultra thin wrapper around a standard stream, so extracting that stream seems to be an obvious choice. Many "flash videos" are simply a h264 video consumed by an SWF, so decoupling that seems like a big advantage.

I don't understand why there's such a polarization regarding Flash vs. HTML5. A well-designed platform should take advantage of the technology that applies best for its intended market -- whether it's using a single technology or multiple technologies working harmoniously together.

As an example, we're working on CRM/Help Desk/CMS platform that uses a Flex/Air management interface in combination with mobile app versions and an HTML5-based customer frontend -- a decision we've made due to the complexities of the project and our intended market.