Updates to this story
Apple's Steve Jobs' might have got it all wrong when he targeted HTML 5 as a suitable replacement for Flash on mobile phones.
Web developer Chris Black has been doing some benchmarking and discovered that Flash 10.1 is better than HTML5 technology on mobile phones.
Black has used an iPod Touch device from Apple, and an Android Nexus One, to test which find out whether HTML5 or Flash runs better on mobile devices.
Writing in his bog , Black runs an animation on the iPod Touch which is integrated with HTML 5's Canvas and Java Script technology.
He also runs another version of the same animation on Google's Nexus One.
Black concludes that canvas performance on the new iPod Touch and iPhone 4G is laughable at 22FPS rendering simple animation. At least the Nexus One can muster up a decent 40FPS for basic canvas rendering.
But the "Flash Player 10.1 on the other hand, blows HTML5 out of the water running at 57FPS on the Nexus One. To make matters worse for Jobs' vision HTML5 consumed twice the battery life as Flash for these tests on the Android.
Jobs always claimed that Flash had to be purged from his walled garden of delights because it was responsible for all the crashes in Mac Land.
However if the Flash player is actually much better, then it calls into question Jobs' real motivation. Perhaps Adobe has simply refused to do what it is told.
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http://fatgr.in/jstest.html
Here’s another tweaked version of the canvas demo, this one from Charles Ying, that updates the FPS counter less frequently (to match the Flash version), which performs even better.
http://www.satine.org/research/webkit/hacks/ballbounce/
Why do we want one company with highly proprietary software controlling animation, video playback and graphic interactivity on the web? Why would we not want a web standard for these matters? It's astonishing.
And likewise, with 2X the RAM, if the OS itself used say, 128MB, the Nexus would have 3X the available working RAM for Flash to work within. (Whatever: more than twice what the iPhone4 can access.)
By almost any standard, the Nexus One had a lot of high-powered hardware and managed to be an utter disaster in the marketplace. Google couldn't support it; T-Mo couldn't; Google discontinued it even tho Adobe had announced it would be the first Flash-capable phone. This test was made months after Google yanked it as an embarrassment, but has kept up support.
And if the Swash comment above means what it seems to, the Nexus would run a corrected HTML5 test around 90 FPS (2X the iPhone's), considerably faster than the Flash version's 60.
In other words, this Google propaganda exercise shows that HTML5 beats Flash by around 50%, assuming the user is willing to shell out for a premium-priced, battery-burning monster that can handle the bloatware version at all. On lesser phones — the majority of Android phones and ALL other brands in existence — HTML5 is the winner by default.
Some recommendation for Flash! “Slower, if it runs at all.”
It's good to have a monopoly…
iPhone 4 is a device that came out after Nexus One and has a more powerful processor and has more ram.
So the rest of your comment is garbage.
And Tony.. your "optimized" example is still slower than Flash version.
HTML5 and JS suck compared to Flash.. people need to stop drinking the cool aid. Javascript is incredibly inferior to Flash player and hardware acceleration.
If the simple bouncing ball (1 ball) with no shadows or similar runs like crap in HTML5 how the hell are you going to build anything more complex visually.
In HTML5 you can't.. so while you support simple bouncing balls that still run like crap in HTML5... the world will be developing proper applications in Flash.
HTML 5 is the way forward. Steve Jobs knows this, and looking back, he has a great track record. No one else even HAS a track record next to this guy.
For a real laugh, go back and read 'The Road Ahead' by Bill Gates. He has it ALL WRONG.
Looking at the 'Walt English' post, it looks like Roid fanboys have really gotten desperate. I mean, creating a fake identity to attack the most reasonable, accurate reaction to this FUD piece is a little extreme, isn't it?
And I guess logic would be 'mindblowing' if you were a Flash developer. Like the logic of how you never bothered to learn a real computer language, and yet you still consider yourself a developer!
To compare HTML5, they picked a poorly designed test sample and called that good? They pitted HTML5 running on the Apple hardware versus Flash on the Nexus and actually have the gall to call that a comparison? That's like comparing my washing machine with my Blue Ray player. Zip, zilch, nada.
This isn't journalism, or if it is, the editor should be fired..
How can something be purged from a walled garden when it NEVER existed there in the first place. This guy puts the cart before the horse on so many fronts his credibility as a tech writer is about as worthy as a that of a politician...in Chicago!
The original comparisons were made to an <b>iPod Touch,</b> not the iPhone4 as I said. My bad.
But my argument is untouched by “Mr. English's” claims. If the tests were to compare a Nexus One versus an iPod touch, then those devices' specs are relevant. Wikipedia sez that both the latest and prior gen iPod Touch have 256 MB RAM, while google.com sez the Nexus One has 512MB RAM. The Nexus One has 2X the RAM, as I said, and “Mr. English” denies. Factual clarification is welcome.
As per CPU speed, again google.com says the Nexus one runs a 1.0 GHz Qualcomm chip. Again, the iPod Touch specs page does not document the CPU but Wikipedia guesses 0.6–0.8–1.0 GHz for the different versions that might have been tested. Other sources suggest 0.7–0.8 CPU speeds. Again, NexusOne phones, although killed before the latest iPod Touch was released, apparently have more powerful (and expensive in dollars and battery life) hardware.
These differences obviously account for much of the difference between the two devices tested. Also, as I originally claimed, they are the LIKELY bottleneck for why Adobe has not shown gotten Flash running on ANY phone with less power than the Nexus.
That's not just the iPhone; it includes ALL OTHER smartphone OS/hardware platforms, such as BlackBerries, Palms and Nokias — popular phones that Adobe claims to be “working with” but on which Flash is still pre-vaporware — Adobe has ruled out some phones as not deserving of their software, but after some disastrously wrong claims about their development skills, has not set release schedules.
Maybe 97% of desktops are capable of running Flash, but in the mobile web of today, only a minority of Androids can. Firms such as RIM, HP and Microsoft would be idiots to wait for Flash, because Adobe has not shown itself to be a trustworthy collaborator for smartphones.
The only confirmation I've seen of my guess is that some developers knowledgeable of the two devices claim that Apple has stayed away from the Dalvik approach because it exposes devices to malware exploits. I can't evaluate these claims but I throw them out as a way to understand why the Nexus One performs much better on the HTML5 test while ordinary apps may work more similarly.
"Can anyone explain to me why there are so many relatively rational people working so hard to promote Adobe's view of the world?
Why do we want one company with highly proprietary software controlling animation, video playback and graphic interactivity on the web? Why would we not want a web standard for these matters? It's astonishing."
I'm saying this giving the disclaimer that I've never been in a class that teaches Flash (yet), but it seems from the screenshots that it's easier to do animations, video playback and graphic interactivity in Flash than in HTML5. Remember that though HTML5 standards-wise, can do what Flash does, there isn't a single application that I know of that could use HTML5 to "mimic" the Flash authoring experience. It may be possible to author Flash content without having to extensively use ActionScript (though I could be wrong).
At the same time though, I too believe that HTML5 is the future and Adobe want to "fight" that future.
it is amazing though how many times Nick falls for such kludge though..
10.1 is so buggy that it crashes even Adobe Engineer demos 65% of the time...
I just think flash is better for developer(less work doing same simple things).
Then if I make some big software with cool things, you cant hide source... its just "too" visible for me. I know you can decompile swf too but at least its harder. Sometimes i wanna be able to hide it.
Im not saying that html5 is bad, i just think apple sucks (and sry to say many apple supporting people too who sees only that fruit company is great).
I see them both to have future... (maybe im wrong)