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One (very) lucky Galaxy Nexus owner was surprised today when he found neither hide nor hair of Adobe’s Flash player on his device. And that’s not all — when he jumped onto the Android Market looking to download the Flash player app, it was completely absent.
So what’s the deal? Well, an app like the Flash player will have to updated in the Android Market to support Android 4.0 before it will show up on devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. If you’re thinking, “I’m sure Adobe’s on top of it and will be quick to update, right?” Not so fast.
You may remember a little statement Adobe made a few days ago, announcing that they will no longer be focusing on Flash player for mobile devices, instead, moving onto HTML5. While Adobe did mention that they will continue supporting Flash for mobile with security updates and bug fixes, hopefully they’ll give it one last go and update to support ICS before development completely ceases.
Oh, and the Galaxy Nexus owner also tried pushing the Gingerbread/Froyo version of Flash player to his device but that wasn’t compatible either. What do you guys think? Could this put a major damper on the Galaxy Nexus if Flash is no longer supported on the device?
[Via Reddit]
Galaxy Nexus is not really out yet.
It is for the UK, and soon Canada.
Not really, one store got an early exclusive in the UK..
And somehow that means it’s not really out yet? Pretty sure if it can be purchased, it’s out.
Maybe this is why they delayed the US release of the Nexus.
I find it hard to believe that Google would launch ICS without Flash support…
so what your saying is that this product that isn’t released yet has been released?
It would possibly in the short-term, but for me, my main use for mobile Flash was radio streaming – and my favorite stations all have apps now anyway. And with many developers building pages in HTML5 to be iOS-friendly anyway, there’s not much we should be missing in the long-term. This is where things were going anyway. We’ll just feel a little pain for the next 6 months or so.
Not An issue at all. Flash is awful. glad they are stopping it. hopefully it dies soon.
It must be cool to not think for yourself?
I mean, liking Flash isn’t the issue.
Visiting any site on the web and being able to see ALL of the content on a page is always nice.
Or am I missing something here?
flash support affects everyone, weather you love it or hate it you are going to run into websites that have features only supported in flash. what then? its not like you can just say, oh sorry website, i don’t like flash, ill run this applet in HTML 5 instead! it doesn’t work that way.
until webmasters and web designers start using HTML5 more, i will still require the use of flash, i want the FULL internet experience of TODAY. not just a compatible one for the future (although that is nice too) i still need to get through the CURRENT times too right? and currently, flash is popular and a lot of websites require flash. such as all my school websites where i do my online homework for quantum mechanics. if i suddenly find myself unable to use my tablet to do schoolwork then there goes %50 of the reason i bought the device!
By creating such a demand to install Flash on Android, we are only enabling content owners to continue in their Flash-y ways. Jobs had the right idea by blocking Flash on iOS. If Google had the power over their own OS to do the same, content owners would have changed their videos into HTML5 video due to the extreme demand to make their content available on mobile. (Read up on Mobile First, Progressive Enhancement, and Responsive Web Design).
We’d be in a very HTML5-video oriented world today and all would be swell if only Flash on mobile didn’t exist. It would have hurt for the first year but more progress would have been made by more people to make up for it in the long term.
Forcing anyone to develop on one platform vs. another is just wrong. Web designers should be able to use what ever platform they are most comfortable with. Phone manufacturers should just provide solid hardware with a smooth running OS. Let the web designer choose what they want to build their page with. If there page sucks, well that’s on them. I don’t see why this is such a huge issue. It baffles me.
Notice how I said content owner, not web designer. Web designers, at least the good ones, know to embrace CSS3 and HTML5 and CMS like WordPress. Content owners who are stuck in the pass demand from web designers Flash-based sites and apps because they don’t know any better.
Content owners know the value of mobile traffic. If Flash weren’t available on mobile devices, designers and developers could more easily argue against a Flash-based site and content owners would have to cave and embrace the new tech.
Excessive backwards compatibility is the reason we have so many problems with technology, such as organizations still pushing Access over a more conventional SQL database or mandating IE7 over IE9/10, FF, or Chrome. Flash has been suffering a slow death for the last four years; it’s about time we deliver the killing blow.
Flash is HIGHLY useful, and (despite the ravings of mad critics) very stable. It may eventually be replaced, but at this time, HTML5 is just way too slow for prime time. Furthermore, as a private tutor, Flash is incredibly important. I use it in my lessons all the time, and is the principle reason I cannot even consider an iPad.
Mouthing off against Flash has suddenly become cool, and I’m really unclear as to why. Jobs said it was the biggest cause of crashes in Macs, but that sounds like a problem with the Mac system. Windows has never crashed as a result of Flash for me or several of co-workers. Sure, a plug-in for it fails here or there, but not the whole system. And even those Flash plug-in failures are really, really rare.
It’s faster by nature than HTML5, it’s very stable in Windows and my Android, and it’s EVERYWHERE. One day, we’ll have to close the chapter on it, just like we have to close down all old technology. Buy it was a tremendous innovation that keeps on going simply because…(wait for it, Steve-o)…it just plain works.
I don’t know about you but Flash slows the hell out of my computer. It’s just a system hog.
Doesnt slow mine….unless my kids have lots of games open or its running all day.
And I got a dual core E8400, 2GB ram.
I’m with jroc74. Even my 1.8Ghz Pentium IV laptop doesn’t bog down with flash videos. And it definitely doesn’t hurt on my Tegra 2 Tablet when I’m showing Flash Videos to my students.
If I check my resource manager on my laptop while Flash is running…I’ll find that my sqlserver for Outlook is taking up more resources
Lastly, HTML5 is SLOWER natively than Flash. You should check out a video of the Nexus One running Flash versus HTML5. Flash runs about 25fps, while the HTML5 runs at 5fps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s&feature=watch_response_rev
I don’t know about you, but I can’t watch something that’s only 5 fps…
You realize that test is from the android 2.1 days, right? In other words, before Android had a just-in-time compiler for JavaScript. I’m also not sure why you quote the numbers for the canvas-less test, which is a bit unfair — if you were going to do it in HTML5, it seems to me you’d use canvas.
They did a test on a laptop, too, and it was notable slower there, as well. OK, so it’ll get more than 5FPS. Flash is now ever faster, due to things like JIT, Hardware Acceleration, and Flash being up to 10.
HTML5 is simply slower natively than Flash. It may run OK on better laptops, but it’s still pretty laggy on most of the rank-and-file mobile devices. And that includes all of the iOS devices so far. Maybe these next gen Galaxy devices will be OK with their souped up processors and GPUs (and by OK I mean looking like Flash 9 on my Tegra 2), but the rest of the world is still awaiting a better implementation.
What computer are you running? Works fine on every computer we use in this household.
HP DV6t laptop, quad core 2.0Ghz 1st gen mobile i7, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit and a 7200RPM HDD. It’s a consistent resource hog.
What metrics are you using? Or are you perceiving that with pages that have 20 billion flash ads on them? Because you have to remember, every “enriched experience” ad like that is it’s own application. It would be the same with HTML5.
My point exactly. In fact, it’d be worse with HTML5
I only care about getting my hands on Google Nexus at this point.
gutted found this out this afternoon
The article states it isn’t compatible. No flash for ICS unless Adobe makes it so. Yet another reason to be happy I went with the RAZR.
I mean, you could always root the Galaxy Nexus and throw Gingerbread on their but ummmm…. yeah. O_o
you won’t be happy when the RAZR gets updated to ICS
Unless things have changed….you dont have to accept the update when it first comes out. And if you root I think you can stop getting notified for it.
I only use flash for porn… so as a married man.. having porn on my phone/tablet is incredibly important. What the hell do iphone people do for mobile porn? Not sure I want to give up pornhub.
This. Lol so much this. The only time I miss flash on my Android devices is when I need to watch porn.
iPhone users use Skyfire..works very well.
I used skyfire back on my OG Droid before flash came out.. it sucked balls.. no skipping past the boring parts.
LMAO!!!
Skyfire has gotten a lot better. But now you have to pay to use the native video viewer. Still, you can’t forward through the boring parts. But I guess this will leave time to light the candles and grab some incense and all emotional about it.
Photon Browser too, but most porn sites are made for iphone so they don’t need flash.
I highly recommend youjizz.com ;) better than pornhub and doesnt need flash
I’ll uh… have to check that out.
Glad to see our readers coming together to tackle important issues like pr0n. *tear* =’)
This is a serious issue.
highest rated issue on this thread!
Xhamater.com largest site for porn try that instead.
There’s plenty of HTML5 based pr0n sites.
Exactly. I’m freaking out here. FREAKING OUT!
Maybe marry a hot woman so you don’t have to pull it so often in the bathroom
Having a hot wife doesn’t solve this problem. Even Mr. Woods had to go out and find something else. At least this guy is respectable and cheating with his hand and not other women.
When it’s in the mind it is still cheating….
It is clear you are female.
lmao^
+10³°
no flash means ill stick with blackberry until this whole html5 shit takes off (blackberry feeds my addiction just fine). “o we will have to deal with it and we will have a better experience” right, and until then (theres no time frame im assuming) ill have to do without porn just because flash “sucks” . and……. i lost my train of thought……..
It’s chill. Flash sucks. Face it, Adobe. It’s over.
Adobe already faced it. And said it’s over.
Whether or not Flash sucks isn’t the issue. It’s going to suck not having a full web experience while we wait for every site in the internet to move onto HTML5 =/
exactly, as long as we can’t use flash, and there are still websites out there running on flash, im not getting the full experience…
if anything, blame the people who still use flash on there sites, flash is old, and when it first came out it was amazing, so people who keep saying it sucks are just being ignorant. it may not be amazing NOW but for when it was created it was amazing.
we just need to encourage websites to move to HTML5 as that is the NEXT wave.
Exactly….blame website designers, not users who like, want or use Flash.
Its the 64bit OS scenario all over again. Now if you look around damn near all PC’s ship with a 64bit OS from places like Best Buy, Walmart, etc. Leaving it up to the user…..the adoption rate was gonna never take off.
It’s kinda interesting. I imagine there is quite a large amount of overlap of people that a few months ago were criticizing Apple for killing flash, and are now saying that flash sucks anyway.
Google fanboys are just as real as the Apple zombies =)
Anyway, I hope Flash comes to ICS. Whether or not I need it (I don’t currently have it installed on my OG Droid), I would like to have the option. But, I’m certain that there will be a hacked version of Flash supporting ICS soon enough anyway. People will have their toys.
You will soon be called a troll. Wear that with pride for it means you think for yourself.
The Android princesses get their golden thongs stuck up their ass when you point out their hypocrisy
your a troll.
Your mom trolled my Johnson
This is good news for the Skyfire app.
Good point
psh in app purchase was good news for them i didn’t even want it due to the free flash player being better but somehow accidentally purchasing it and getting billed to the carrier gave them my money only to figure out that happened at the end of the month >:/
I would be embarrassed if I was google
“Oh, and the Galaxy Nexus owner also tried pushing the Gingerbread/Froyo version of Flash player to his device but that wasn’t compatible either.”
What about trying the Honycomb version? Surely that’s more likley to be compatible with ICS. ICS is both a table and a phone OS so maybe it make a tablet Flash work for the phone.
Just an idea.
Haha looks like Steve Jobs was right….
Steve Jobs is dead.
And he said Flash wouldn’t work on mobile devices. He was wrong.
If it wasn’t for steve jobs and the iPhone lacking flash he wouldn’t have said that but being that he did say it adobe went re*ard and did away with it stupidly. It wouldn’t be so bad if the alternative was already supported by many websites but no…. adobe is doing it backwards and killing flash and rushing people into HTML5
Steve Jobs was a fascist idiot thief.
anyone that knows steve jobs or knows anything about him hates him.
Steve Jobs wasn’t right. He had his own reasons for excluding flash. The problem wasn’t that flash was not good enough, it was that flash was too good and it would eat into apples profits.
Sounds like Adobe has one last mobile Flash project.
One thing i noticed about using an Ipod touch vs my Android phone is that there are a couple sites where with the Ipod it will default to an HTML5 page and everything works great! but with my android phone it goes for the Flash page and the experience sucks.
Personally i hate flash and would like to even see it gone on the desktop. Maybe it is better under windows but on a Mac i would much rather everything just default to the HTML5 page it gives iOS devices
you could always try configuring your browser to use the ipad user-agent.
it’s ios so it should give html5-only pages, and the ipad user-agent also gives bigger pages usually(compared to ipod/iphone)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5
i think that one should work.
Apk anyone?
That’s what he just said. Didn’t work either.
redtube support flash haha.
Yeah, the Galaxy Nexus is out – Phones4u stores all over the UK are selling it now. Anyway, I think it sucks that Flash isn’t supported. Even if it’s not a great way of putting video content on a site, the fact is that so many places still use it. I personally use my phone mainly for web browsing and reading news, and not being able to view embedded videos will seriously compromise the experience. I’m sure we won’t have to worry about this forever as HTML5 becomes the standard (which we’ve been promised for years!), but in the meantime, am I going to have to grab my laptop every time I want to watch an online video? I sure hope not, as this was one of the main reasons I chose Android over the competition.
So that means flash player will definitely be gone after ice cream sandwich.
I don’t care about Flash as much as I care about how ONE person got his Galaxy Nexus today, so early, and before a release date is even set. Unless this guy is Steve Woz, he shouldn’t be any more special than a paying customer that should get one.
Its out in england right now.
It’s not just the Galaxy but any ICS device will not support flash. That’s terrible and makes me want to keep my outdated phone?
How about contacting Google for their explanation…no flash really sux. Galaxy Nexus was not on my shopping list anyway with no microSD and crap Omap chip onboard. Galaxy Note or Galaxy S II ftw
anyone tried installing the apk from a honeycom device see it that works? Id assume ICS to be more similar to HC then to Froyo and Gingerbread.
Why Ethan?
If Adobe doesn’t make an update to support flash on ics I’m sure developers on sites like xda will make something work it might be a few months tho…
Shouldn’t be a problem. Didn’t Adobe release the code to the Open Source community so that Flash could live on? We’ll probably see something interesting from one of the many talented devs out there.
pull flash apk from a xoom or gtab. earlier will never work due to architecture changes
Having flash on mobile has never been useful in any way, shape, or form. When it was first made available I installed it on my phone, then uninstalled it less than 5 minutes later when it became clear that it made most of the web unusable.
Good riddance.
On my Droid 1 it was OK, it was better on my Droid X1, its real nice on my RAZR.
Sometimes….its the phone. I know ppl like to pull the fragmentation card…but you ever wonder why some phones didnt get updated to Froyo at all? Maybe cuz it couldnt handle Flash good had something to do with it.
The LG Ally came out months AFTER the Droid 1 and at one time the Ally wasnt supposed to get Froyo cuz the hardware couldn’t handle Flash as good as the Droid 1.
@wesley. Omap chip huh? Hmmmm…. What is that exactly?
any info on tethering, anybody?
Wifi and bluetooth tether are present on my UK nexus
thank you.
How about a mobile site phandroid? You all need to step up and create one soon….you’re a site based on a mobile OS but no mobile site. What gives? I hate using the app versions of websites, rather just go to a set bookmark.
This is very disappointing, I need a full web experience…..I was planning to buy the Galaxy but If this turns out to be the case with Galaxy/ICS I guess I’ll just hang on to Gingerbread for a very long time on my Galaxy S and maybe just get a Galaxy SII. Hopefully Google/XDA can come up with a solution to this fast or its a no go.
I watch a lot of Flash-based videos on my Toshiba Thrive. Example, the Daily Show, Colbert Report stream from the Comedy Network in Canada. There’s no HTML5 version and I’m not sure if they will switch because of the lack of DRM. I can easily plug my Thrive into my tv and watch on a full screen.
If there is no Flash on Ice Cream Sandwich, this is a big enough of an issue for me that I would simply avoid upgrading and stay on Honeycomb.
Remember when nintendo came out with the gamecube and it had awesome graphics and great gameplay, and some nerds were all, “but it won’t have cartridges anymore!”. Yea ya’ll are doing it again. We don’t want cartridges we want newer better faster tech. Not old slow we have it and you don’t tech
Looks like its time for Google to try and by Adobe mobiles operations… If there is such a thing. Most likely Adobe is trying to cut costs to reduce the amount of heat they are getting from investors. They will most certainly continue development but not for free. This feels like an attempt to squeeze cash from oem’s. Regardless someone will step up and take care of this B.S.
For anyone who likes to watch live sports on the go (like myself), this is a major fucking downer. Emphasis on the Major Fucking Downer. I was really looking forward to watching some live sports via 4G on my GN.
When Adobe needed us we stuck by them even when apple didnt. Now the goings hard they want to bow out. Good bye flash and good ridence. Loyalty is something none of these companies understand.
The software industry is full of vipors who dont even stand by their last line of code much less their last product statement. Adobe bow out, open source flash and watch it grow. You as a company have no right to do this now. Devices have been built on the presumption that flash will be there and Adobe the back stabber has now killed them dead, well done I hope adobe finishes quickly.
Flash is integral to the mobile web experience we all know this. Lets get this right no business model is going to work in this climate. Open source is really the only way there will always be profit margins thats not bad but should any company be able to bow out because its getting tight.
As much as I respect google and what I know of their ethos, it would not be good for you and me if they owned the mobile web industry (AKA MICROSOFT). Adobe is important, integral and in many ways independent its products have lead they way for many years they’ve bean through this many times as far as I can see but to drop the product that is you’re brand name is madness. The shareholders have never used a computer much less the web as for android. Google do what they do best, but they shouldnt own it all.
This screenshot from GSM Galaxy Nexus shows flash player settings. Don’t see why LTE version would not have it.
http://mobilesyrup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screenshot_2011-11-18-10-04-29.png
Well Google really needs to get on this. Being able to offer a full web browsing experience vs iPhones limited browsing capabilities is a selling point for some people. Hell, the reason I went with Android device over an iPhone was largely for the full web experience. When it’s time to get my next phone I will likely go with an iPhone if I’m going to have a gimped browsing experience either way.
Say what you will about Flash. It may suck. It may be a resource hog. It may steal tiny bits of your soul while you sleep but the bottom line is a good deal of sites rely on it for streaming content and other such things. HTML 5 may very well be superior for performing the same things that Flash offers but that superiority amounts to nil when there are very few sites that rely on it when compared to Flash.
Note the RIM has already come forward and says they will continue to port later versions of Flash Player for the PlayBook. Perhaps it’s time Google steps up to the plate and continues to get Flash working on Android. Perhaps later down the road, Google can phase it out, but I don’t think that time is yet. More so on tablets than on phones.
I told you.
– Steve Jobs
Sent from my iPhone
HTML5 sucks. Its as simple as that. It is on the level where flash was a decade ago.
It is in fact even worse, because there is no good and easy software available for development. HTML5 is just not an option at this time. And it might never be.People are shouting html5 this, html5 that and they don’t know what they are talking about.
The fact is that flash is here, its working a whole lot better than anything else. And billions of web pages rely on it. If a device that is used to display web pages doesn’t support flash, that device is faulty.
dont give a stuff about people suddenly saying “flash is rubbish cant wait for it to die” just because apple tell them so. I also dont care whether my phone uses flash or html, all i do care about is that no matter what site i go on if i want to see a video on there i want it to play. At the moment on my galaxy s2 and desire hd this happens. I dont want flash to die out until the entire web works on html5. To stop videos playing through non compatibility is taking a 2 year step backwards.
sad… without flash then all those flash based games and flash based apps won’t work anymore. I can’t run my Asterisk Switchboard anymore on my android (that’s VOIP switchboard freeware that comes with the Asterisk VOIP software). And what will happen to Kaltura? That online video editor?
p.s. Nerds actually use flash for something more than porn :)
On the iPad there’s an official NBC app with all the recent full episodes free, a daily show app, a colbert app, there’s an ABC app with free shows too, and the CBS/TBS websites, all these have free HTML5 shows, Vimeo and Youtube have almost all their stuff in html5. For 8 bucks (less than one movie ticket) 10K plus videos, many good quality shows. Clearly the quality is better, HTML5 is about 10 times more efficient, it’s not designed for a touch display (roll-over feature), the battery lasts much longer, Adobe dumped Flash, Google invested in HTML5, why don’t you android fans just admit flash sucks? Do you still have a VHS too? How about those black and white silent movie projectors?