Comments on: Video Proof that Flash kills battery life? Evidence from a Nexus One

By: MultiDev

MultiDev — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:25:00 +0000

There’s a proper study out that refutes the hearsay that apple fans like to tout as fact. In reality flash has very little effect on battery life:

http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-player-101-for-android.html

By: MultiDev

MultiDev — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:25:00 +0000

There’s a proper study out that refutes the hearsay that apple fans like to tout as fact. In reality flash has very little effect on battery life:

http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-player-101-for-android.html

By: What?

What? — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:00:07 +0000

Gwydion is right.

“Gwydion Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 5:37 am

You have to know better how battery indicator works on Android, it doesn’t change between 50% and 25% and then it changes. It doesn’t have a continuos dropping indicator. So, it can be between 50% and 26% at the start of the video.”

There is no way you can tell that the battery is really at 50%, it could be at 26% at the start of that video. Half bar indicates the battery charge is within 50% – 26%

By: Adobe Flash on the iPhone, Text to Speech, and an iTunes tip | Macgasm

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:15:41 +0000

[...] this week’s episode of the Macgasm videocast we talk about the drama surrounding the Adobe Flash show down on the blog. We also get a pretty sweet iTunes tip from Corey, and with finish it up by talking about Text to [...]

By: Macgasm Podcast #282 | Macgasm

Macgasm Podcast #282 | Macgasm — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:01:10 +0000

[...] In this episode, we talk about the Nexus One flash battery life ordeal. [...]

By: Adobe addresses leaked ROMs and battery concerns | Android Headlines

Adobe addresses leaked ROMs and battery concerns | Android Headlines — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:09:37 +0000

[...] Adobe also took the chance to address the claim that Flash kills battery life on the Nexus One. [...]

By: androfun - Adobe responds to leaked ROMs and Flash 10.1 battery concerns

androfun - Adobe responds to leaked ROMs and Flash 10.1 battery concerns — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:00:34 +0000

[...] also took the chance to address the claim that Flash kills battery life on the Nexus One. To prove their point, they uploaded a 17 minute video to Vimeo and reported their tests show that [...]

By: Mobile Tweaks | Adobe responds to leaked ROMs and Flash 10.1 battery concerns

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:58:40 +0000

[...] also took the chance to address the claim that Flash kills battery life on the Nexus One. To prove their point, they uploaded a 17 minute video to Vimeo and reported their tests show that [...]

By: Andy R

Andy R — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:07:09 +0000

Totally agree. There are a huge amount of free flash games out there that are easily as good as the stuff in the app store and thats what apple don;t want, people browsing to free game. I don;t buy any of this power consumption rubbish. If Google (Andriod), Rim (Blackberry), Synbian(Nokia), Windows Mobile, Palm, Nvidea are all building Flash into their devices and its running well then there’s no issue. These companies want their mobile’s to look good and run well, and if they can do it so could Apple.

By: Mark Doherty

Mark Doherty — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:59:19 +0000

Hi Joshua,
There are edits in the video, it was part of a longer piece.

My earlier comment also explains the indicator UI, there is no definitive answer but we have obviously shown evidence to the contraray.

Thanks,

Mark

By: Joshua Schnell

Joshua Schnell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:44:05 +0000

*high five* You’re probably one of the few commenters who actually read what I said. Thanks for that. This post was supposed to be a public gripe at Apple. The lack of flash on the iphone has everything to do with Apple losing out on their 30% profit from appstore sales, and until they can figure out a way to include flash games in the appstore there won’t be flash on the iPhone.

By: Joshua Schnell

Joshua Schnell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:39:12 +0000

That’s pretty funny Macaca. Did you even read the post? Here’s a nice little quote for you. ” If Flash gets approved game developers will be able to continue using the flash platform instead of using the iPhone SDK. That’s the real issue here, not streaming video content. Flash games will challenge Apple’s AppStore model, and that’s something Apple doesn’t want to encourage.”

But you know, a fan boy would totally take a potshot at Apple.

By: Joshua Schnell

Joshua Schnell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:36:25 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to comment Mark. I can see how a battery may be on the verge of the indicator showing 25% and switching over in the period of about five minutes.

What I don’t understand is how it’s been claimed that the video is an edited piece. There were claims that it was an edited piece both on your blog and in the comments on the vimeo page.

If you mean that this entire five minute period was only a small sample piece from a larger body of work, and you don’t mean that it was a bunch of footage edited together then you should be a little more clear. People like Alec McEachran (below) are clearly confused (he’s not alone). Can you elaborate on which it is so I can add an update to the post?

Thanks

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:12:08 +0000

Unfortunately, Apple wants you to have to buy a Mac for iPhone development, that’s why they did it that way. Epic fail @ Apple. Also, a big reason for Apple’s crap is that they want to promote Cocoa and SproutCore and try to make Flash obsolete so Apple doesn’t become almost obsolete AGAIN.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:10:03 +0000

Steve is full of crap along with his iPhone fanboys.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:09:31 +0000

First off, I have a DROID and if it isn’t used the battery will last for almost a week. Even under heavy usage the battery will last all day, and that’s the same as my iPhone, so it’s not better or worse on battery life than the iPhone.

Also, the video never says the battery is dead after 10 minutes, it fades out! You don’t even see what the battery life is!?

ASSuming is bad.

By: Gwydion

Gwydion — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:24:40 +0000

Why it’s impossible?

By: Gwydion

Gwydion — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:37:51 +0000

Finally, if you can explain how a mobile device physically can drain 350 mAh in 5 minutes I will be glad to know.

By: Mark Doherty

Mark Doherty — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:35:50 +0000

Hi Joshua,

You are forgetting that the battery indicator is a simple graphic with 4 steps, the last two are yellow/red and do not indicate capacity.

The four step mechanism is pretty standard on mobile phones, and it’s used ironically to save battery power instead of polling the battery repeatedly and redrawing the screen.

If the battery is at 51% and drops to 48% then this can appear like the battery now has 25% power. Batteries chemistry can also have an effect, but let’s not complicate things further.

The real litmus test is in checking the raw percentile from the Battery Usage, shown in my blog post.

Michael Chaize (Adobe) has created another much longer video that demonstrates video and game play over a few hours, look for that on my blog soon.

Mark
Adobe

By: Macaca

Macaca — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:06:10 +0000

Well, the only thing dicey is this blog post. Your kicking up quite a tantrum for one video. Im sure Adobe and Google measure their data a bit more professionally then just watching a single webvideo. But seeing this is a Mac-fan blog im not suprised, maybe you feel threatened?

By: jardenberg kommenterar – 2010-02-25 | jardenberg unedited

jardenberg kommenterar – 2010-02-25 | jardenberg unedited — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:51:48 +0000

[...] Video Proof that Flash kills battery life? Evidence from a Nexus One | Macgasm [...]

By: Adobe responds to leaked ROMs and Flash 10.1 battery concerns « Android Junkies

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:01:49 +0000

[...] also took the chance to address the claim that Flash kills battery life on the Nexus One. To prove their point, they uploaded a 17 minute video to Vimeo and reported their tests show that [...]

By: Adobe responds to leaked ROMs and Flash 10.1 battery concerns – Android and Me

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:31:17 +0000

[...] also took the chance to address the claim that Flash kills battery life on the Nexus One. To prove their point, they uploaded a 17 minute video to Vimeo and reported their tests show that [...]

By: Joshua Schnell

Joshua Schnell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:30:46 +0000

it’s impossible. See my reply above.

By: Joshua Schnell

Joshua Schnell — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:29:24 +0000

Here’s the numbers from the video. At no point does the clock jump significantly between the 50% and 25% battery life. The first number is the time on the phone, the second number is the timestamp in the video. It’s not overly disjointed.

3:59pm at 0:43min
4:01pm at 1:39min
4:02PM at 2:45min
4:04PM at 4:37min
4:05PM at 5:42min

At 3:59PM the battery is about 50%, and at 4:05PM it’s at about 25%. That’s five minutes of time that’s elapsed. Unless he sat down at the exact same time on another day and edited it together… I have a hard time seeing how it was “edited”.

By: Andy R

Andy R — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:57:15 +0000

I agree its more about keeping Flash games away from the iphone to stop app store competion. However if you check out Flash CS5 it possible for Flash developers to take Flash content and directly compile to an iphone ipa file. Then deploy through the apps store as a native app. This has a few advantages. One you can use Flash to deploy to iphone, which means brilliant Adobe development tools. This also means that the mass amount of Flash developers out there will start delivering content to the iphone. So more apps for iphone, and money if chosen through the app store for developers. And finally because Falsh is cross platform, no need to own a mac for iphone development.

By: Alec McEachran

Alec McEachran — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:53:11 +0000

Very scientific of you… evidence: one possibly edited video.

A counter-argument: http://bit.ly/cdtbLV

By: Mauro

Mauro — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:13:30 +0000

Since you have been so kind jumping on conclusions, here is another “interesting video” as you call it, showing a 6% battery drain on a 17 minutes youtube browser experience in the Nexus One…

http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2010/02/24/battery-performance-with-flash-player-10-1-on-nexus-one/

I cannot play Plants VS Zombies on my iPhone for 20 minutes, it almost drains all my battery… So is that game as bad as Steve Jobs Flash badness ? lol…

By: Battery Performance with Flash Player 10.1 on Nexus One | www.flashmobileblog.com

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:02:12 +0000

[...] from Daring Fireball and Macgasm have spent a little more time than expected studying the battery indicators, as opposed to the [...]

By: Marthy

Marthy — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:11:10 +0000

I agree with the article, but google phones in general have a terrible track record of having short battery lives anyway.