This week Adobe released version 5 of its Creative Suite software compilation. CEO Shantanu Narayen has naturally hit the interview trail to promote his company's wares, but the biggest news from him is actually a delay of sorts. We'd previously heard that
Android,
WebOS and
BlackBerry versions of Flash 10.1 would be available in the first half of 2010, but Adobe's chief now places delivery to those platforms in the
second half of the year. At least consolation may be found in his teasing of new Flash-enabled tablets -- most likely to be running Android or Chrome OS -- which we're told to expect to see within the same time frame. As to the question of
Apple's holdout from Flash nirvana, Narayen describes it as a business rather than technology decision, which
"hurts consumers" and will ultimately be judged by people voting "for the experience that they want through their wallet." Can't really argue with that. Skip past the break for the full interview.
Update: The blog of Adobe's Lee Brimelow gives us a likely reason for the delay: Flash Player 10.1 for Android has just entered private beta, as has AIR 2.0, with public betas on the way. Devs can sign up to be notified about both
right here.
posted April 18th 2010 6:07AM
Great, now android phones will be THREE times better than any other phones.
@(Unverified), yes, and now their batteries will drain THREE times faster than any other phones.
Android, now with Flash and 2 hour battery life :-)
@deuxani How does an operating system relate to batteries? Android is ONE operating system, an electronic device can use many different types (not to mention sizes) of battery.
Let me guess, you own an iphone? :)
@wilvo Funny, my phone lasts all day. The only people with the battery issues on android are the morons who don't know how to A) Train batteries (B) Shutdown unused battery draining apps (like the 5 widgets updating their worthless twitter account)
@loox42 you seem fun!
@loox42 Uh, it's not the OS you fool.
It's Flash.
Did you forget what the article was about or something??
@loox42
Too little too late.
@loox42
Dear engadget techies: I have a question.
Why would you want flash on your phone? I would want it for streaming video, but any streaming of video, flash or not, would kill battery life.
I don't think I'll want to be playing flash games on a phone. There are better games already for the platform on Android, WinMo, and iPhone OS.
So the only downside of flash on a phone seems to be advertisements working.
What I mean is... I want flash on mobile devices. And as much as I don't care about this particular piece of news because I do not have a smartphone (too poor, student D:), I want my iPod Touch to be able to use flash (will never happen).
@jellotime91 You missed my first comment I think... iphone fanboys already downed my first post because of obvious jealousy and envy
@jellotime91, and how does Flash drain batteries if you don't go to Flash sites? HTML5 will drain the batteries equally if you were watching videos or highly-enriched content on it as well. My N900 battery lasts the same whether I go to Flash sites or not purely because I know what drains the battery and if I don't need to use it - I don't. I could watch an hour of video content in the integrated Media Player and via some site delivering video by Flash Player, and the battery would be almost equally drained (well, Flash will eat a bit more purely because it's not yet optimized to use HW acceleration, but that's about to change with 10.1 - but will eat equally if I was to watch an DivX .avi in the internal Media Player it would eat just the same and just for the same reason).
@jellotime91 Perhaps he means, Android phones still have the same battery life they always have had, which > 2 hours.
Reviews of laptops and phones typically talk about battery life in the following areas:
standby
talk-time
light browsing (1 for wi-fi on 1 for wi-fi off)
multitasking
flash video
hd video
etc. Only 1-2 of these are affected by the use of flash and not every phone will run flash. Saying anything else is hyperbolic and a talking point. Additionally, anyone with an Android handset can avoid the youtubes. I assume that there will be a click-to-flash/flash-block developed, if not already available.
@loox42
Well someone is clueless.
A) Train batteries? You make it sound like training a dog to walk on two feet. Its a damn battery.
B) Yeah, because people have to worry about that.
You know that's your problem, you think every phone out there is ought to be high-end phone for the hardcore geeks, that every phone holder needs to know every single thing about the phone and how it operates, but that is definitely not the case. in fact its quite the opposite.
@loox42
Well i think its kind a shitty if you have to care about widgets or apps draining battery. Takes the smart outta smartphone.
Flash is here to stay for quite sometime. HTML5 will take a long time to convert to.
@incognito
Well spotted, sir. All the hysterical nonsense spouted by people who don't really understand the issues just calls for the biggest facepalm in the world.
Bluntly, what a company that has a minority share in computing and phones wants is fairly incidental. If Apple can find a way round streaming the content people want then fine, that's their call, however all the people squealing that Apple's refusal to use Flash means its demise are so unbelievably deluded it's not real.
Every industry needs competition which is why I welcome HTML 5 coupled with H.264 codecs and Silverlight but if you think either of them is the saviour of streaming video then you're flat out, bat shit insane.
@Techno1q Wow, I love the iphone fanboys who will say any ignorant comment to try to get people to not believe the facts.
First off, yes training a battery. I guess you didn't google that before you started flapping away at the keyboard. Here's a link for you: http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f7/best-way-to-train-g1-battery-15732/ --
Android on my G1 ALWAYS lasts longer than 2 hours, even if I use it constantly to watch youtube... when did you guys get this android battery news? 3 years ago?
You guys fail at trying to prove people wrong.
@loox42 Uh, no buddy. I was the second person to comment on the article. I saw your comment when you posted it.
Ever heard of an Android fanboy? iPhone fanboys are not the only kind.
@MrKnowItAll, a smartphone is as smart as is its owner.
@MarkAnderson This Silverlight thing sucks already, I just ran into a site which said "Microsoft Silverlight" was needed, and the installer was just sh@t. WTF is it anyways? Microsft, again, trying to copy another companies product? sigh
I'm not sure battery conditioning works with Lithium Ion batteries but I'm in consensus with you're other points.
@jellotime91 Call me what you want, I'm not fanboying at all. If I was voting down all my comments (like these iphone fanboys have already done with my first 2 posts) than you could call my a fanboy....
But I am just pointing out the obvious facts... android is better. Prove me otherwise, please with your iphone garbage.... please.. please.
I like the iphone, I believe its a great product.. its just subpar now. Even the new one.
@incognito "HTML5 will drain the batteries equally if you were watching videos or highly-enriched content on it as well."
Given that it is "3 years behind Flash", HTML5 sounds quite promising.
@loox42 And now I have proven the iphone fanboys as the culprits as they have thumbed down my hidden post here even.... sigh, pathetic.
Pathetic ahahah, You guys will never admit you're wrong I bet....
Hmm, it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. Personally, I hope to see the phasing out of flash on the web over the next few years. Certanly, my browsing experience will be much improved and my computer won't stutter whenever I have lots of flash flash apps open. With the advent of HTML5 I really feel that the future of flash only lies in internet gaming, other than that I hope designers primarily opt to use HTML5 and Javascript API's instead.
@Gold Mamba It worked for me... twice. Bring any battery mumbojumbo links you want, my phone now lasts more than twice as long as it did before I trained it. Batteries are no worry for my android phone, these guys claiming crappy batteries are taking news from one phone from early 2009... they just dont know shit and are trying to make their iphone seem adequate.
@loox42 I'm not a fanboy, I voted negative because your just an idiot.
@deuxani
Flash maybe a resource hog but its not not like flash would be running the whole time your phone is on.
You guys may not like flash as a platform but I am truly excited to use flash on my phone, battery issues aside,
@loox42
not a fanboy, but you are an idiot. I did however vote you up, but only because of your avatar. "Water bong so smooth."
@loox42
It's competition. You know, like Android is to Apple?
@loox42
I love how you called me an "iPhone fanboy", without me even mentioning the iPhone or any product for that matter. Inf act I own an Android device, so stop this "fanboy" defense mechanism already, its getting old.
@Miakandogadget Yeah, and tell me how your going to create an interactive piece that plays in any browser with drag and drop funtionality, plays streaming video on command anywhere, any size, has 3D capabilities... Should I go on? Sorry, there is no replacement for what flash can currently deliver. In two or three years, maybe, but who knows what flash will be able to do by then. There's a place for HTML5, but not until it's truely open source and as far as video is concerned, a codec is agreed on. Right now it's too fragmented. We're up to what, four different codecs? Welcome back to 2000.
@incognito
Quote:"a smartphone is as smart as is its owner."
Or maybe smart not always mean clever, but actually smart.
I personally dont want to look all over the internet just to squeeze 20 min more out of the battery. Thats not smart.
@deuxani
1) Flash doesn't drain battery life when it's HW-accelerated
2) With AMOLED and clever CPUs, battery life will no longer be a problem.
3) You'll be able to disable it so relax, iPhoners.
@wilvo Must be an Apple fanboy. While you're right, I'd rather have my 2 hour battery life instead of seeing that ugly blue box on my phone. Get an extra battery and call it a day seriously. Apple. No Flash. Enlosed Battery. FAIL.
@deuxani I see the amount of Apple trolls on this site is saturated :S
@loox42
I think what will eventually happen is Adobe will develop their own OS with Flash integrated as part of the OS. Perhaps they may build their own version of Linux such as FlashLinux or something. I speculate they probably have been researching building an OS for some time and may even have some working pre-alphas.
@deuxani
Don't forget laaaaaagg and lockups.
@HYBRiS
It's funny, I have noticed they come out in full force during the weekends.
@MrKnowItAll, so you are blaming the technology for not being able to read your mind? For example, putting a video to play in the background of a battery powered device while not actually watching it, when it comes to multitasking devices, is as dumb as it gets whether that device is considered smart or not. The device cannot know what you want from it, maybe you want to drain your battery?
If you don't want Flash content, it's simple - disable the plugin. If you don't want even bigger resource hog than Flash - JavaScript within the browsers - disable that as well. In fact, don't connect to the interwebs at all and your battery will last for days. Actually, don't even turn the sceen on as its the single largest resource drain on any given device - learn to do all by touch, with hardware keys of course.
In fact, go get a dumbphone (or an iPhone) and enjoy the illusion of your device being smarter than you - even if you wanted to make it drain the battery you would have to try really hard with all imposed limitations... After all, that's the main highlight of any given dumbphone - the device works in its own, tightly controlled, little sandbox and doesn't give a rats ass for its user needs - it's meant to do just several things in battery efficient ways and nothing else.
@loox42 FYI, I doubt all the people who are down voting you are Apple fanboys, as you so put it. You're just bloody annoying.
@loox42 - I'm not sure what you think you are, but you sound like a an idiot here. "Train" a battery? It's not a dog you know. Maybe "calibrate" it every once in a while, but you don't need to train the damn thing.
@Severian126
I think this guy needs the Vader treatment...
@Outsider. not to mention that some carriers charge by usage or cap usage or simply throttle down unlimited plans that get too greedy (by their definition)
And I love how this guy tries to diss Apple with his business decision comment. First off, he's slightly wrong. It's not a business or tech decision, it's both. Second, the decision to support Flash (or anything else) in a phone or a tablet is also as much a business decision as it is a tech one. Because the issue is always "will this benefit our customers to they will buy, and keep buying, our stuff, at a cost low enough that it won't royally screw with our profit margins"
As for the 'vote with their wallets', I wonder if there are any stats about the effect all these android, chrome, etc opinions have had on the rate of iphone sales.
@McKirf Google is already building Flash into Chrome. Adobe's name is in the pits, even though the do have some excellent software, I don't think they have the extra resources to throw into their own OS, nor would it be smart to compete against: MS, Apple, Linux, Android, & Chromium (OS) when Chrome will allow them to use flash sans plug in on the majority of computers.
@Darkroom For playing h.264 video (Flash can be a wrapper for this content too) there will be relaively no performance hit or likely battery drain compared to html5 with h.264. Because all modern phones have built in hardware acceleration of h.264.
This is also the only test the adobe evangelists have done for the public.
When Flash has to run as a purely software based animal? That's when things get really ugly.
And it does seem like 2000 to me too - where all kinds of content was held behind the locked doors of several company's proprietary plug-ins. Now it's just one company's proprietary plugin but the logic still stands.
The Internet should be open. Kill Flash.
@loox42
Not surprising flash is delayed again. There definitely has to be some resource and usabiility issues.
@Oghowie
It's being delayed because -it's been said over and over again- Snapdragon -however "hip" it is- cannot accelerate flash, unlike Tegra.
My guess is that since flash is coming in 2H 2010, and -coincidentally- since Tegra 2 and Qualcomm Scorpion will show up in smartphones by H2 2010 too, that we will be getting some Tegra 2/Scorpion Androids in 2H 2010.... so I'll skip the Snapdragon craze, thank you very much, and wait for Tegra 2 and Scorpion to hit the consumers market.
@McKirf I could be wrong, but I believe that Sony Ericson developed the GUI for some of their phones using Flash.
@Outsider for me, my school's website and every single link within it is coded using solely flash. On my iPhone and Nexus One, the page simply loads a flash page error. It sucks that my school is too cheap to code a real site, but this is a big reason that I want flash. Also for small streaming of video on random news sites.