Here’s a great video showing Flash Player 10.1 running on the Google Nexus One. The performance looks to be pretty impressive across the range of sites shown. I was actually blown away by how good The Eco Zoo ran on the handset as it showcases 3D content, something Flash isn’t particularly renowned for. The demonstration also visits a few video heavy sites showing Flash Player 10.1 also alerting viewers whenever video content that wasn’t web optimised had been selected. The video would still play but the user was effectively warned that it may impact battery.
All the sites on show seemed to perform reasonably well but of course, as is always the case with such videos, everything is carefully hand picked. It’ll be interesting to see how many sites actually run when Android 2.2 is released. It’s becoming clear that if you want Flash on mobile you’ll be looking at devices with CPUs around the 600 MHz – 1 GHz mark.
I had been wondering why Nokia’s upcoming flagship devices such as the N8 only support Flash Lite 4. Upon checking the N8’s spec it became apparent that its CPU was clocking in at 680 MHz. Too slow for Flash Player 10.1 or is it going to arrive a little later on these devices? I have seen 10.1 running on the N900 (see video above) so it would be surprising if it didn’t appear on the S60 devices. Either way I’m delighted to see the full Flash experience on mobile and nearing release. Flash Player 10.1 could very well give me the reason to move from Symbian to Android.