Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Debuts on Google Android 2.2

by Nicholas Kolakowski

Several content publishers, including Sony and Warner Brothers, have apparently optimized their sites to work with Flash on smartphone screens.

Adobe claims some 4 hours of continuous playback for games using Flash 10.1 on the Nexus One.

With regard to animation and graphics benchmarking, Adobe says that Flash 10.1 runs at more than three times the frame rate as HTML, at the same level of battery consumption.

Flash 10.1 includes support for multitouch gestures, the smartphones accelerometer (for switching between landscape and portrait views) and “smart zooming” that allows content to scale to full-screen size.

On a WiFi network, Flash-supported video on sites such as YouTube experienced slow load times.

Loaded after 3 minutes using WiFi: a YouTube video showing an alleged prototype of the next-generation iPhone 4G.

The HTC homepages Flash-supported animation loaded quickly.

Flash 10.1 needed a couple of seconds to load each “slide” in the HTC animation.

The HTC animation moved smoothly, with a minimum of jerkiness or pixelation.

Flash-enabled video on TNTs homepage.

Flash-enabled video on the Wall Street Journals homepage.

News videos from The Wall Street Journal took some time to load; this one still presented a white screen after 2 minutes.

A full-screen movie trailer (for “The Book of Eli”) supported by Flash 10.1. As with Website animations, this film clip ran smoothly, with no hitches or pixelation.

Adobe claims more than 3 hours of streaming H.264 video playback over a 3G connection, on the Nexus One, provided the hardware acceleration is turned off.