HTC Hero Supports Flash in Web Browser; Performance Is ‘Maddening’

Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky has a detailed review of the HTC Hero, the new top-of-the-line Android phone and the first to support Flash in the web browser. Here’s a transcript from his video demonstrating loading a web page containing Flash video:

“As you can see, it’s loading a video page, not super content-heavy. We’re on a Wi-Fi network. (Waits.) It’s not really… that snappy. It’s actually… it’s actually kind of maddening waiting for pages to load.”

Flash video playback is so atrociously slow that it doesn’t even look like video — it looks like a slideshow of still images. Shocking, I know.

But yet Topolsky concludes the video by saying “It’s nice to have Flash.”

★ Friday, 24 July 2009