By Uh-oh. Even if you’ve been running flash on your Motorola Droid newly-adorned with Android 2.2, it seems Adobe’s updated requirements for running Flash on an Android device excludes the phone from being ideal. As the chart now states, a phone with a 550MHz-plus Cortex A8 processor and VGA screen resolution is still capable of running the plugin without problems, but it isn’t until you get into WVGA resolutions (read: close to what the Droid houses) that they start requiring a beefier CPU (800MHz Cortex A8, to be precise).
For you rooters, you won’t give a whoop: the Motorola Droid can be overclocked well beyond 800MHz and your flash content will play just as beautifully as it does on any other speedy device today. For those not into that scene (read: a crap ton of people), your fate has yet to be decided. With these new requirements, will Adobe eventually pull support for the phone? Or will this urge Motorola to ramp up the clock speed on devices through a kernel update?
Would you rather Adobe continue to try and truly optimize the platform for mobile or are they justified in excluding certain devices not up to standards? (even if the chipset is technically capable of handling the plugin, clock speed aside.)
[Update]: Adobe’s gone and made it clear that the Motorola Droid is an exception to these requirements as they’ve updated their page of devices being targeted (the Droid Incredible – although on Android 2.2 with full Flash 10.1 – is not listed, by err. It’ll be added soon, says Adobe.)
[via Droid-Life]
First off, i would like for you to enable the DISQUS comment system on this blog, as I HATE typing all this crap in every time.
Second, I hope they do not pull flash from my phone, all Flash content I have seen so far has run smoothly and no problems. This would be a shame on Adobe.
Up the stock clock speed mines been running at 1.3ghz for months now an havnt had any problems
This simply illustrates how bad Flash is. It’s ridiculous that it requires such high hardware requirements.
Still, because it’s so damn pervasive, better to have it than not.
I agree that this may be a bad situation, but still think about it. Every phone coming out now is going to be faster than the previous one, and so on. if flash can run on devices now, it should have no problem in the future
I saw them demo flash on an android device last year at adobe maax. The device was taped up but I’m pretty sure it was a Droid and it worked very well. I guess they have made a lot of changes to the flash player in the last year which must have bumped up the requirements.
1.25ghz Droid. Flawless Flash.
yeah the droid is an old phone. little better than the G1 tho
Personally I enjoy what’s going on, yes phones are advancing but at a nice rate. People will always be left in the dark no matter what form of new things come out if the get a contract, me myself personally have a mytouch slide which I know I’m screwed.
I’m opting out and just going to buy a phone but I’m waiting for that motorola phone with nvdia graphics and 2ghz processer. I hope its possible to play flash games on this it will change the face of android
Raise the clock speed.
That way all the Droid users get a slightly faster device.
I’ve been using Flash for a couple of weeks with not many issues. Some videos say not optimized for mobile but play anyway. Adobe should keep Flash on the Droid and they should work on making it less of a resource hog.
Even wth my Droid overclocked, flash still has issues. Adobe’s not finished optimizing the mobile flash player.
Low end phones can’t support it. It’s simple. why waste time and resources to work on a weak phone? It’s just going to make them look bad when Flash isnt as buttery smooth on that phone as it is on newer phones. All phones aren’t capable of handling Flash. If you want the best features then upgrade your phone
@ Terrence, are you saying the Droid is a week phone? If you are then you’re mistaken my friend. Its still more powerful than most of the new phones coming out.
Adobe has never been good at optimizing anything. Look at how bad Adobe Reader has performed on a few versions they had and its just a READER for crying out loud. I was really hoping they had gotten some talent for the mobile version of flash but alas they apparently have the same bozos doing this as the rest of their overbloated portfolio. I’m very upset that flash was promised almost a year ago for the D1 and now they are proving Jobs right that flash is a battery and resource hog and now saying the original D1 doesn’t have enough to run it. Its actually embarrassing after all the drama surrounding it!!
Use Skyfire folks!
Do you mean use Skyfire with the mobile flash or just say to hell with mobile flash and use Skyfire by itself?
I’ve used Skyfire a while back and thought it was a bit buggy, a hog of resources and battery, and had a large memory footprint. If it’s been tidied up a bit, stabilized, and slimmed down I may have to give it another look.
I agree with MicroNix. It isn’t bad enough that us D1 owners have had to wait 9 months for Flash and now this? Looks like Adobe and Oracle are in the running for 2010’s Limp Dick award.
You also gotta realize that if they updated the kernel for higher clock speed that people would get an update that they didn’t understand and suddenly their battery life would drop. It would cause problems with the regular users so it would definitely not be worth it for Moto to do this. For the rooters and people who care about this, just keep overclocking that bad boy.
I for one am tired of software developers looking to hardware manufacturers to compensate for their poor programming skills. It seems to be a never-ending cycle of “current app runs fine on my hardware” followed by “new version with incremental feature changes requires 3X CPU speed and 5X RAM just to be tolerable”.
As for Flash, I haven’t installed it on my Droid, and don’t intend to. Most flash content I’ve ever seen is just that: flash – no substance. With a small screen and finite battery life, I wand the opposite: substance – no flash.
That said, even the most efficiently coded apps will have hardware requirements for providing reasonable performance, and some devices that might otherwise seem adequate won’t meet those requirements. With this in mind, I would still point the finger at Adobe for sloppy programming long before calling the Droid inadequate.
They should have a overclock app to download. I can watch the flash without overclock and still watch it smoothly but I think its the battery life they are talking about. My droid runs hot now with flash on. On average 96 degree at most now. With heat means wasted battery. I get like 5 hours of battery now which I can care less not like I am ever away from home a long time.The points is, is that the droid is working harder without overclock, with the 550 MHz to use the flash.
FUCK This…give me HSPA+!!
Damn you Adobe, I may root just to enjoy the full flavor of Froyo! :)
STFU Mensahwatts, you’ve been saying that in every thread.
@MicroNix – How does this prove Jobs right, no-one ever debated that Flash would eat resources and battery, basically the same thing as one leads to the other. The simple fact has been that people should have to choice to to this, or have a diluted internet experience, not have that decision dictated fro on high. This is something i thought we had all already agreed on.
More interesting is what this means in relation to the Sales of Goods Act, (or what ever it’s US equivalent is), in the UK the milestone was advertised as flash ready, therefore if the requirements remain as they are, and Motorola doesn’t do anything to rectify the situation, Motorola could again be looking at having to accept all returns of the device for a full cash refund, and they do seem to be worried about this, as it was a major factor in their eventual decision to release a Froyo upgrade.
About the only benefit I’ve gotten out of mobile flash has been menus. It seems like every local restaurant uses flash only websites. Otherwise I could easily live without flash.
@ mundo that is a buttpickle using my name
comment 20-stop useing my name-who are you that fake of a person that you have to use someones name you dont even know?…awaow!
lol that is to weird man-ether you-know me and are being a weird O (which would be very strange) or your just a wierd ass buttpickle who-for some WEIRD reason copied my name
Yeah, and hopefully they increase the RAM requirements… hell, I hope Google increases the RAM requirements for Android in general. The Droid “does” flash, but it doesn’t do it well… overclocked, underclocked, or stock… flash kicks the crap out of the Droid.
So much so I’m contemplating just uninstalling it…
Works fine on my Droid. I’m rooted but only clocked it up to 800 and it seems fine. The only issue I have is the heat it produces. If you start streaming something using flash your time is limited. It will fry if you do it repeatedly.
90% of you guys posting don’t even know what you are talking about. The Droid1 is better than X and D2 for the simple fact I have the choice what I want on my phone. Verizon doesn’t want you to be able to control your phone because then it becomes outdated before its time so you have to upgrade by their timeline. I had my last phone for 4years with no problems. As for Adobe, they are just covering their butts so when people scomplain that Flash works like Poo on their Droid1 that the blame should go on Motorola and Verizon for not pushing another update. They would rather send out OTA’s with security patches to keep a few hackers out than send out a real”FROYO” With at least a stock 800mhz kernal. These are the same ass clowns that told me my Droid1 would have Flash 9months ago when I bought it
@Mensawatts
LOLOL dude you guys crack me up. ROFL.
Flash not only sucks it blows. Websites are still bogged down and slow. you don’t get the full websites and it still makes my phone crash.
My advice to you all is to delete it and just get over it period.
If they update the phone are they (motorola) going to gaurantee that our phones will still have the same lifetime as 550Mhz and is this going to be a forced update or are we going to be able to opt-out.
@Brian – include yourself in that 90%. The X and D2 have long since been rooted and custom rom’d… so your argument holds no water. And upgrades have literally nothing to do with anything… it’s simply not packing enough heat, so to speak. It’s a cool novelty and all, but if I learned anything from Google yesterday, it’s that HTML5 takes less horsepower than Flash… so bring on some more 5…
@TF, My point is Motorola/Verizon doesn’t want us fooling with the OS. Android is open source but the devices are not. The DX and D2 both shipped with some version of Motoblur (weather they call it that or not!) and a locked bootloader meant to keep people out. The original Droid shipped with Vanilla Android OS. Once Motorola/Verizon got wise to the security flaws in the system that were giving us the ability to do what we pleased with our Droids they have spent too much time trying to patch the holes to keep us out instead of using their resources to optimize our current devices. Its all about the money and it is not in the interest of these companies to stretch the life of a device when technology changes so quickly and there is money to be made. As for the DX and D2 being rooted you are correct but it is much harder to do now and you are very limited on what you can do even after you root. DROID1, THE ORIGINAL,ROOTED, OC’d, and still better than next generation of Droid!