Android 2.2 (Froyo) Web Browser Speed Test (Flash On) | Pocketnow

Is the Froyo web browser really significantly faster than anything else out there? Let's find out! To get Froyo: bit.ly/czSugZ and bit.ly/cnsZK5
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Android 2.2 (Froyo) Web Browser Speed Test (Flash On) | Pocketnow
• Android 2.2 (Froyo) We...
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[@AndreeMarkefors]

An instant classic!! =) This guy has basically come online to show us how great Froyo is... and it completely fails. He is constantly micro managing the Nexus, it's really choppy and slow to load. And the 3GS is the "soon to be" OLD iPhone. Leaving Flash out on iPhone was such a superior, classy move. "Let me reboot, I'll be back shortly....! =) "I'm unintalling Flash...." "Hmmm.... what's this... low resources...." =) Cudos to the guy for actually uploading this video!!!

[@foxtrot4550]

its amazing how your camera angle never changed, yet the video was very imformative and entertaining. You should be getting paid as a consultant.

[@Boehoehuahoei]

I would argue that your result/conclusions are pretty accurate. There is something I would like to add though. When you go to a flash website, your are in fact downloading a significantly larger amount of data. So the statement that the browser is faster hold up. (a lot more data, in almost the same time frame)

[@cugamer8862]

I'll add my licks to the dead horse. There will be an option to set the browser to only display a place holder where there is flash content when the page first loads, then the user can SELECTIVELY choose which flash items he or she wishes to see and use. Simple, elegant and powerful.

[@mastermind7771]

@Unrealshade Like the web cache? That builds up. /data stores installed apps, their data, etc. The most likely reason is that the data of the flash games he was playing plus the data of the sites he visited added up, in which case it's time to clean up the data from Settings > Applications > Managae Applications

[@marc1]

You'd never seen the low space notification before? I saw it within 2 weeks of getting my N1. It's not from running too many things at once. It's from having too many apps installed since they all install on the measly 256MB internal memory. Thank God 2.2 will allow installation of apps to the SD card.

[@JulesHatton]

Guys, you need to see round 2 of the Pocketnow video, click on the channel to find the vid. With Flash set to "on demand" (you click to activate a Flash app), Froyo is both quicker and supports the full web. I don't think anybody expected (or would want to) have Flash run automatically like in this test.

[@stewie325]

The N900 default browser handles Flash much more efficiently without choppyness. It's still the most complete mobile browser, just deserves a capacitive screen =D

[@colonelclaw]

so now I can have all those floating and pop-up Flash adverts on my mobile phone too? Awesome!

[@PotatoPirate123]

you can change the Android Browser plugin settings so Flash is opened on demand rather than all loading up automatically. A little arrow appears on flash content and when you tap on it the content loads. This is still in BETA and uses only software rendering at the moment so there is great potential. Many times on my iPhone I find I cannot access sites AT ALL owing to that particular site's Flash conent; I'd take slower browsing over nothing whatsoever!

[@yatah]

This was done more than 1 year ago. The flash version was a also a beta. I can only imagine it must be better today than what i was back then.

[@lockmuertos]

With native flash support for android being dropped, Chrome and other solutions like skyfire, frash, iSwifter, cloud browse, and photon browser may be the only way to view flash content on mobile platforms. I'm glad that 3rd party alternatives exist. Some of us actually like to have flash content available on our mobile tablets !! And let's not forget, not every Good flash website will be ported to HTML5. It's nice having backwards compatibility with the "old content"

[@kahuna3901]

froyo has made an incredible step into making flash usable but yeah it certainly needs a little refinement. flash was never properly meant for this technology but yet it seems to e working more and more. wonder if apple will ever yield cause if flash becomes super usable on the mobile platform then i dont see any need for any alternative specially as the desktop can remain the same

[@KnightMD]

@zab666 Your Desire has flashlite, not Flash 10.1... also, since it runs HTC Sense, it won't be getting the update as fast as you'd hope. It all depends on HTC and when they want to send it to you.

[@NaterBoxs]

remember people. this video was uploaded 2 months ago. things have improved A LOT since then.

[@travise]

In the preferences you can set plugins to load "on demand" which means it'll just put a box where the flash would appear and you can press it to have it load. Gives you the best of both worlds. Just as this video said, browsing on 2.2 is fast unless you install flash and go to flash web pages. Flash has been a huge disappointment to me, but instead of uninstalling it I just made the preference change so I can still use it when I really want instead of needing to switch to a desktop computer.

[@HarryM]

I personally like using the "Flash on Demand" option in the browser. It'll show a box for flash content but won't load it up unless I touch it ^_^ That way browser download speeds won't suffer from force loading flash content.

[@awilliams1701]

I have a suggestion (i guess this would be for adobe). How bout making the flash content just be a box with a flash logo. You tab it once to pull in the actual flash content, but until you do, you could have the browser treat it like a plain image. Then you get the best of both worlds.

[@natescottdavis]

You should be able to go into the browser settings and choose to enable plugins "on demand" which will let you load flash content only when you want it and keep things faster otherwise.

[@mastermind7771]

LOL 10:22 - "Froyo, Android 2.5" xD

[@haticK]

wow i cant believe youtube videos are that smooth. cant wait until my droid x comes

[@bez787]

that was pretty impressive on the amazon site, he loaded the n1 after the iphone and it still won.

[@zsmorr92]

Not too bad.. I sort of wish he showed it without flash installed, but oh well. Flash itself is pretty neat on it, is pretty good considering it doesn't have hardware acceleration yet, it should be much smoother once it does.

[@Virtual-Media]

@Krauser1226 I see that you went with the droid x, that's what I went with as well. How's it working for you? I couldn't be more pleased with the phone other than the froyo delay. I'm hoping flash runs smoothly on it as well. I run an interactive tv station on my site done in Flash and would love the ability to control it on the go.

[@TruthInjector]

It's not "flash and hold" it's double-tap to force the video to the full width (larger in landscape)

[@lucarescigno]

There IS a click-to-flash functionality in Android. Of course if you don't use that it'll make your browser slow because it'll try to load every flash ad on the page.

[@renboy2]

Um... just enable the option 'Plugin on demand' - you'll see a placeholder on all the flash components in the page, everything will work super fast - AND you'll be able to click the placeholder to load the specific flash you want anyway - best of all worlds.

[@karnqu]

thanks just the kind of comparison I was looking for

[@DunkLjud]

1- this iPhone doesn't have the ability to minimize apps.. so that means its memory is not in use by other app. 2. The nexus does, so he might not have quit the apps with a taskkiller. that makes the phone go slower due to the apps in background taking memory. 3- This makes the iPhone look faster then.

[@raza838]

Lmao. This was fast browsing. o.o amazing I never realized how much android improved until I see these videos

[@gittenlucky]

Nice. I would like to see the same browser compared on all 3 phones as well (Opera).

[@Wezzybman]

pretty decent speed to be loading all the flash content w/ it. i would lik the option for flash content to use flash based applications on specific webpages, but for general browsing deffinately turn off.

[@nicklassayshi]

At 06:00 No, it will play directly in the browser, not open the YT app.

[@PinkMirrorKirby]

@TrueYears Android Gingerbread supports 1280×720 resolution, which is much higher than that "retina display". Android apps don't crash as often as you think. Widgets does not drain too much battery and the live wallpapers stops when you are not on your homescreen, my Galaxy S lasted me about a day or two, so no battery life problems here. Btw, I don't use a microscope to read my texts, also Super AMOLED > Retina Display.

[@cannon0811]

Playing all those flash games for FREE is one of the Main reasons for Apple to block flash from the Iphone.

[@Virtual-Media]

@Krauser1226 I appreciate your honest enough to admit why Apple doesn't like Flash. However it's not Adobe being lazy it was Apple not letting Flash have access to the GPU.

[@Papierkoorb]

Thank you, Great Job ;) Bit i've one question: Is The iPhone jailbroken or you just have the New iPhone OS 4.0 ? Greez

[@mastermind7771]

You can enable plugins on demand, and also, the "low on memory" notification appears when you are low on space for installed apps, not running apps.

[@vaxick]

Should include WebOS in those tests. It has a very quick web browser as well.

[@obigalish]

VERY IMPRESSIVE MOVE BY GOOGLE HERE! There are hundreds of thousands of flash apps/games that android enabled phones now have access to and Iphone users don't. Not to mention the millions of flash based websites out there.

[@Solrac924]

one thing to keep in mind, the official final built of Froyo hasn't been pushed out until this week. this video of "testing" is void.

[@HumanOFtheWeek3000]

Try using Skyfire for the HD2 and Nexus one, it has flash 10 but is a lot quicker and smoother then flash 10.1 beta

[@G230rc]

to quote Cartman SOUTH PARK! FUKN SWEEEEET!!!!! cant wait to get it on my Droid X

[@odites]

On N1 many apps were in background and gps was activated... You should to test browser with sites without flash contents because nexus maybe is more slow but it can use those!! It's completely different!!

[@amd77j]

@sgohara I was using touchscreen phones long before the iP-hone. Please look up the terms "Palm" and "cellular phones" together. I dunno, you may be surprised. Best regards.

[@Unrealshade]

@st0kes it does suck to always have it open. but it rocks to click on a flash content and be able to see it if you really want. like listening to music, i miss that quite some time

[@JonathanoQo]

@Shadow14l i noticed the same thing, they even have tests on that checker board rendering and i phone always wins becuz supposably it never shows checkers, but here in a web site not specially set up for iphone it showed. that shows how they set up tests.

[@ytgibbo]

@ldimillo19 I do care actually. It was a callous, off the cuff remark. I apologise to anyone who was offended by it. Let's hope instead he was crushed by a grand piano. That can't offend anyone surely? (Unless they know someone who's been crushed by a grand piano of course)

[@JonathanoQo]

@marksky90 yes it can play that and much more, hulu, 3d games, even games like quake in flash format.

[@manemzjum]

wouldnt the fact that you loaded the pocketnow website onto the nexus one previous to the test give it an advantage as would it not have stored the site in the system cache

[@SetitesTechAdventures]

Has it been stated that most of us use our "mobile phones" while mobile. This test needs to be done over 3G first of all. When I have wifi available, which is at home or in cafe's, I also have my netbook with me. I admit that the flash is not as good as I would like, but indeed it is a beta. The key, as always, is do you prefer choice or do you want to be told what is good for you. People who want choice go android. People who don't, won't :) Viva Android.

[@vanhalenbr]

Very good review... nice video, unfortunately some fan-boys make a very bad comments here.

[@xXGogetaXx]

@ 6:00 The "embedded youtube player" on the iPhone has actually been there for quite a while. Not sure how long, but definitely already in 3.0. So no need for flash there! Also, on froyo, if I want to use flash, am I going to be stuck to seeing flash adds too? Can't I enable it on a per-page basis?

[@Virtual-Media]

@Krauser1226 it wasn't Adobe being lazy it was Apple not letting flash have access to their GPU. And don't accuse me or anyone of knowing nothing about computers because macs can't run flash.

[@mvorules]

On my HTC Inspire I am very happy with its browser. And it is 2.2.1 Froyo, so maybe it is just the Nexus One browser that is having some slip ups!! Because mine is doing great!

[@AndreeMarkefors]

@DarkMyst3ry The FAIL is that everyone crying for mobile Flash is now correcting their statements to "what I meant was Flash on demand". And what they mean by that is: "so that we don't ever have to demand it". As per technical demonstration Google has already established the quickness of the browser without Flash- but if you want to do that test, wait a few weeks and do it with the actual competition: the iPhone v4. The laugh is: the first thing you do once Flash is installed is shut it off!

[@TechTechManTV]

I would rather have a smooth and working web browser with no flash then a choppy and unsmooth one with flash. Hopefully the browser with flash un-beta will be faster =/

[@InitialDAmine]

@AvocadoCake there is round 2 and even at the end of this video on flashless website the iphone was the slowest.

[@takigan]

Actually, at 9:27 the HD2 probably would have won that last test since you started it about 2 seconds later.

[@InitialDAmine]

@ryanconor05 On the HD2 Opera is standard and that is not mini.On that case they can use skyfire on the HD2 in none would catch up. And no the Safari was the slowest watch the end of the video and the video with flash disableded

[@chevyvan10]

Google is trying to conform their phones to the internet. Apple is trying to conform the internet to their phone.

[@MenfromearthNet]

of course it will take longer to load if you have to download the flash content... it's so obvious but repeating Jobs statements about flash makes you feel so cool...

[@Shadow14l]

@johnchen0213 It's choppy because when you scroll on Froyo, it has the whole webpage loaded already and keeps the whole thing up. Apple just employs a neat little trick which loads the page in only certain areas, and when someone scrolls it loads the other areas. You can clearly see this by noticing the checker-boarded areas when scrolling on an iphone or ipod touch. Froyo could easily employ a visual trick like this and run just as "smooth", but essentially it's all just a eye candy.

[@obigalish]

@TheEpikkFilmz if soon meant next month or next year I would agree with you, but html5 is still in testing phases (performance is still behind flash), and its features are only sporadically supported by some of the major browser. I personally hope HTML5 ends up replacing flash/silverlight etc..,but its still too soon for me and billions of other web surfers to voluntarily disable flash, it sucks that apple has strong armed all of its users to do so.

[@mastermind7771]

@Unrealshade Sorry, I meant internal memory- as in, installed apps and cache; in other words, everything in /data.

[@InitialDAmine]

You guys need to know that is a BETA version without the material acceleration. The real integrated flash would come in june.

[@thanostlotr]

@shikengriuber i think u can disable all flash content, and u can enable specific ones when you want to. there should be no lag, with flash :)

[@roblemay80]

Hey genius did you remember to clear the cache on all three phones before the browser page load test??? Any cached images will def help the page load faster.

[@goldeneye007662]

I had an iPhone for over 2 years. I now have a Droid Eris. I like the Droid better.

[@rahulm92]

@BERTEDUS You have to wait a lot dude, sadly. Because HTC sucks at updating OS ( one reason is - HTC Sense UI ) But Froyo + Sense UI is worth the wait :)

[@ththsd]

@guardian2b yes you have to update it to 2.2

[@beebeeice]

Holy crap.. thats alot of multi tasking on the HTC

[@nickbu1]

Much faster when you are on a non-flash website 10:23 Android 2.5? Looking forward to the same video but without flash

[@Virtual-Media]

@Krauser1226 I wish more Mac fans could be as honest as you. All platforms have there weaknesses and strengths, neither would be as good as they are today without the competition they created. Flash made web video ubiquitous. Not win-media, quicktime or real... I feel it's disingenuous when people jump on the 'I hate Flash campaign' because Steve Jobs didn't want it competing with iTunes.

[@DunkLjud]

@makiasd Notice that I said "THIS" and THIS iPhone he is talking about is a 3G not an 4G. When the 4G is out its still not better than any phone coming that date too.. Iphones 4:th released phone got "run in background" ability woow! the same thing lot of phone could do when the 2G came out... hmm...

[@JETheBeast]

so ur the guy who is sometimes on the jon4lakers/technobuffalo channel!

[@ipaqmaster]

cool , finally a freaking phone that supports FLASH! =D

[@skaterbub2003]

A small question: What is the app, you're using on your second computer monitor on the top?

[@drummerkid1993]

Phone storage space is about how much stuff you have on the long term flash storage not the RAM...

[@TrueYears]

@EduardoReyesT So the problem is Flash and the iphone would still win I am sorry but stock browser that comes with Droid just sucks you need a sub menu just to go forward?

[@FredJai]

is brandon the founder of pktnow? hes the best reviewer out of all the other people workin at pktnow =/ GO BRANDONNN!!!

[@Beysl]

@bathellfire well... disable stuff until you are on the same level like the iphone and its faster. Its all about costumizing your phone and NOT having what steve wants you to have/buy. so pointless argument there. (as most of apple fanboy comments)

[@meak911]

The iPhone OS is the easiest and fastest to navigate. Android can copy all it wants, it just doesn't quite measure up.

[@dron120388]

That`s why flash is old technology!

[@arpakyna]

@smoshrules459 Opera only does that if you have enable "Opera Turbo" in the settings. What makes this comparison obviously unfair is that Nexus is loading the flash content.

[@ryanconor05]

Why would you use Safari on the iphone but opera mini on the third phone? You do know that they did let out the Opera mini application for free in the App Store? Right? Doesn't really matter, iphone won most of them in the end on a handicapped browser.

[@TrueYears]

@EduardoReyesT so you don't really care how long it takes you to type a site or navigate as long the site loads fast? Youre probably just happy the site loads at all after spending a minute navigating your way there. Interesting concept I see now.

[@tuanistico]

just using your finger in the iphone is a complete different experience. try the nexus, the omnia, all of them are slow and unresponsive, none of them has been able to really kill the iphone. period

[@showerladdy]

We don't know what wifi each device is working on! Flash is not for the phone because its not seamless! As you see the flash phone trying to hold composure acting glitchy due to the overwhelming flash application, the iphone cut the fat.

[@NaterBoxs]

disable flash (or keep it on now that 2.2 has officially came out and flash has improved) and the nexus one will dominate both of these so called phones.

[@JessieThurston11]

Did you not see the word "Beta" next to flash install? on a OS that wasn't supposed to be out yet.

[@zab666]

@KnightMD Well, still I enjoy HTC sense a lot, so I don't mind waiting at all. Flash light works very good and it doesn't slow down browsing like in android 2.2.

[@asianoutcast87]

Google has been gaining the market very fast because they are doing everything apple is not. But this time it hit back at them. There is a reason why BOTH microsoft and apple said that flash is not going to work on phones. Even an incomplete HTML5 feels better than flash.

[@arpakyna]

@smoshrules459 Opera _Mobile_ does have that option, and no, it is not enabled by default. Opera _Mini_ has "turbo" enabled by default and no way of changing this.

[@zab666]

hm my phone the htc desire already loads flash, but videos do not work like in this video here. will there be an update to 2.2 with all the htc widhets for the deisre? i hope so...

[@Zabivelli]

@makemyownpath is there a also an update to android 2.2 for htc desire of se x10?? i thought the android 2.2 was not released yet??!!!

[@DarkMyst3ry]

@AndreeMarkefors haha Yeah i agree with ya about the whole wanting Flash, and then having it "on demand" and all And the iPhone v4 will be some competition, but not with the browser. As of now, theres is no way that Apple is going to have flash for Mobile Safari, and also, since the iPhone is not a multi-tasker (atm) then it uses Mobile Safari to it's fullest, so i don't think it will get too much faster with v4...

[@TrueYears]

@EduardoReyesT ever heard of the combination between software of hardware?

[@Epicistic]

@Nnnarekkk He's doing that on KZbin, a page owned by Google for that matter.

[@vanskiid]

if ipone had flash, we would have the best web browser