Brian at PocketNow posted a browser comparison video showing the iPhone, the Nexus One, and the HTC HD2 all viewing the same websites. He installed Froyo on the Nexus One and downloaded the Flash beta which allows him to run almost all Flash content. It’s really long.While I do enjoy a long video of a man playing with Android phones, 11 minutes worth of a man playing with phones (found after the jump) might be a bit tiring. However, the money shot comes at about 1:40 where you see some Flash games playing in the wild.
I think the most interesting part of that part of the video is how close Flash games running on a good processer are to standard, natively written games.
So fine, you say, things look great. Why not run Flash?
Well, hit about 4:30 and you’ll see how choppy Flash looks on a real page. So clearly we’re dealing with two issues here: Flash is good, on aggregate, for some applications while Flash in the “wild,” i.e. Flash appearing on your average web page, is terrible.
Again, if you love Flash, go with God. It’s been a great platform for years. But you’re going to suffer a performance hit on mobile devices. It’s obviously a frustrating situation for all involved – Apple, Adobe, and us – and won’t change for a while.
My problem with this whole argument is that it has become religious. Flash is seen as the martyr at the altar of freedom, which is absolutely untrue. Flash is a platform and Apple’s decision not to run it is understandable from many standpoints and is especially understandable from a business standpoint. But to pull a “Free as in freedom” card in this argument is a cop out and ignores the financial relationships driving these decisions. I assure you that while Adobe [hearts] Apple, they definitely don’t [heart] you or at least they’re not thinking of you in this equation.