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You didn’t really think the Adobe Flash Player for mobile so heavily advertised in relation to Android devices wouldn’t make its way to the Motorola XOOM, did you? Yes, it is disappointing it won’t be there at launch, but Adobe has just issued a blog post clearing up any misconceptions people may have about its absence. When tablet devices do receive Flash it won’t even be 10.1, but the new 10.2 update. Here is the official line:
Adobe will offer Flash Player 10.2 preinstalled on some tablets and as an OTA download on others within a few weeks of Android 3 (Honeycomb) devices becoming available, the first of which is expected to be the Motorola Xoom.
Sounds like the XOOM will just beat the update to market, but it shouldn’t be without for long. We’ll assume tablets launching later (like the LG G-Slate/Optimus Pad) may have Flash at launch, if it is ready. A few weeks might feel like a long time if you love Flash content on your Android, but patience is a virtue.
[via DroidLife]
Whats the difference anyway?
I don’t know, but hopefully all previous android OS’ (2.2+) will be getting it soon as well, and maybe it will finally be able to run facebook games… :/
What? Adobe is the reason why a deadline was missed?! That’s just crazy.
There must be a lot of changes in Honeycomb for Flash to require a new update. Good thing Google made Honeycomb 3.0 so that they have plenty of numbers to use until Gingerbread finally catches up.
The deadline was missed so the first round of reviews could come out. Flash eats battery like a fat kid eats doughnuts. We can’t have the initial Honeycomb tablets getting bad reviews because Adobe can’t get their crap together and code a decent program.
The importance of Flash is not just to add a feature tick against iPad, but to break up the chokehold that Apple has on app sales. Users and developers need to be able to get the software and content they use from many sources, not just a platform vendor’s store. Flash ubiquity will ensure that rich mobile applications don’t have to go through a choke point, where users, developers, and content providers are all abused.
If it ships in for Honeycomb tablets in the next month and is as solid and delightful as we all expect, things will be just fine, and we’ll finally start undoing Apple’s centralized app distribution.
@mindctrl
Way to be so possitive, you must be an apple lover. I for one don’t care if it sucks the power out of my xoom or droid phone. At least i’ll have the freedom to play flash games and heaven forbids, view a flash website!
is there any hope for armv6 cpus in the new version?? i would like to have one for my LG optimus one..
We’ve heard THAT before.
Come on Adobe, don’t let Steve Jobs die with a smile on his face!!
Flash 10.2 utilizes the gpu to optimize video playback, among other things. One should expect a better overall experience with it including battery life.
Also, it’s amazing that anyone believes that there is anything intrinsic to flash that forces it to be bloated and/or a resource hog. Apps written in actionscript (a close cousin to javascript) are compiled into bytecode – like java or .net apps. The efficiency of the runtime is under perpetual efforts to improve and the hardware where it operates is constantly improving too (quad-core by the end of the year). If one doesn’t like flash, that’s fine. Disable, uninstall or go play with your iphone/ipad. But it is silly to think that the platform is static and that experiences on a somewhat closed platform (osx) is any sort of indicator of experiences elsewhere.
I use flash a lot on my Galaxy tablet and don’t notice a heavy burden on its battery. Actually what I’ve found kills the battery the fastest is reading e-books.
-Brad
They use dog calendars. Ask nexus one and droid one users about how a couple weeks can turn into a couple months for a buggy update.
Disappointing that 10.2 wasn’t ready at release time. But if Adobe comes through in 2 or 3 weeks, won’t be the end of the world. As far as negative comments about Flash on mobile devices,on my Droid X works great, no problems. Battery life on my Droid X holds up just fine using Flash. You can option it so it only runs when needed, gives you a pop up to initiate. No reason to expect 10.2 for Honeycomb to be any different
Brad what is wrong with the galaxy? It can’t handle e-books? And it’s a well established fact flash wastes much more battery than html5. That’s probably why Hulu switched to html5 for mobile devices, as did youtube, netflix, abc, mobitv etc. Flash is just not physically compatible with a touch based mobile device, ie batteries, roll overs are physically impossible.
mindctrl and others who think Flash Player is a battery drain, one blog did a 5 day test on several Android devices to see what the battery drain of Flash Player 10.1 was like:
http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-player-101-for-android.html
Here’s a quote from the report they wrote based on those tests:
“Flash Player 10.1, in our initial tests, has negligible battery drain impact. Wi-Fi based use of Flash
Player 10.1 in the native browser, with no other applications running, appears to use battery power
consistent with that of non-Flash Player 10.1 content.”
Thanks for the objective retelling. Flash was supposed to be “impossible”, then “not desired”… I think the prominence of this story cluster over the past 24 hours indicates how scared some are of the Xoom, and of Android devices in general.
(That “eats battery” charge has been disproved in actual testing… the reliance on this rhetorical angle by pseudonymous commenters is itself suggestive.)
jd/adobe
Everyone should know by now that whenever Apple gives an excuse not to have something, it’s all about Apple control. Apple also said that multitasking was a battery drain until they decided to come up with *their* version of it.
Will adobe 10.1still run YouTube videos when 10.2comes out anyone?
@Matthew Fabb, thanks for the link. That is a good reference.
Steve Jobs has maligned Flash for business reason. It actually showed how much he was afraid of Flash.
trev, Flash Player 10.2 is already out and YouTube at least has some 10.2 demos. 10.1 and older versions of the Flash Player still work on YouTube. I imagine what YouTube is doing is that they have a detection script and serve you different video players depending on which versions of Flash you have. The video files themselves are likely the same, it’s just different video players in different SWFs.
After getting the Droid X, advertised as the first phone with Flash, and then having to wait two months for Froyo (which was incredibly buggy!) so it could have Flash, I won’t fall for this again. At least not from Motorola. Either it comes fully updated out of of the box, or no sale.
@trev I know of no change to YouTube with 10.1. The big video thing 10.2 adds is the ability to use the graphics-processing unit to decompress interactive video, rather than the central processing unit. Nice-to-have, but not must-have.
jd/adobe
Same as several others above. No problems with flash on my G-Tab. This article should be reworked or deleted. It is full of misinformation likely to turn people off to Android.
FYI at the mobile world conference flash showed off versions of flash player for blackberry, web os and widows mobile, but it still is not available on any devices. I’m not talking about the mobile world conference last week, it was the mwc from 2010.
The john thx Matthew