The Flash crowd has always been protective of their creation, but it looks like there is a new kid on the mobile block, and boy can he perform ! Flash was created back for web pages of a different era. Now that mobile is becoming the reigning internet king, HTML5 is taking over.
New tests have confirmed that Flash is a thing of the past, as compared to HTML5. What in the world is HTML5 ? It is a temporary name for the code that has always been the language of the web. The new standard, “5″, is created to handle the sea change that is ocurring in the internet, namely the mobile revolution. Flash is simply trying to keep up with the mobile developements. They are not doing as well as HTML5.
The comparison started with a programmer by the name of Sean Christmann. He took nine mobile devices, smartphones and tablets, and compared their performances with videos in Flash and HTML5. Youtube videos were used for samples. A high speed camera was used to capture every frame from the videos and recorded playback on the different devices. The Droid X, iPhone 4, Motorola Atrix, HTC Desire HD, Samsung Nexus One, Blackberry Playbook, Apple iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom were used as test platforms.
Flash dropped more frames than the HTML5 web language using a Motorola Droid X. Some mobile devices, like Apple products, do not support Flash at all, so using them in this test seemed pointless. Some interesting developments in android allowed some of the Galaxy Tab tablets to score near to 100 percent in their tests. The honeycomb version of android seems to shine using the H.264 video standard.
The key to Flash being more productive in the mobile world is outside the realm of Adobe, the makers of Flash. Hardware support is needed to give Flash a boost, and Adobe only makes software. The chipset is the place where Flash is processed with success or not. For now, processor speed is what makes or breaks the user experience for Flash. Adobe has brought the need for processing speed down with their latest version, so things may improve slightly for them. The problem is that people do not know their latest, faster version is available.
Look for more speed wars in the future between Flash and HTML5. For now HTML5 is taking the lead in user satisfaction, with android providing much of it.
