Why Android won't beat iPhone

I found an interesting post about the 'Android opportunity'.

The author explains why android couldn't 'beat' pittyPhone : to keep it simple, if Google doesn't follow the marketing machine of Apple, Android won't success.
The Apple's marketing bulldozer worked like a charm, you won't beat the pittyPhone if you don't beat its main weapon : marketing.
And, right now, Google isn't fighting with marketing...it lets device makers do this.
And right now, a Samsung Android phone or a Moto Android phone isn't as much wanted as a pittyPhone 4.0....because it's not more than 'another Samsung/Moto phone'.


Even if it makes me sad, I think I'm agree with this....and it means future won't be as good as it should be :(
As always fight agains the pittyPhone because of this and now, it's becoming the way to do : how many years before we see a b&w flat screen sold as 'the best TV in the world' just because the marketing was the best ?!
I already knew marketing is the 'science' to sell you a 'dream' (read sell you trash as if it was gold) but I realized with the pittyPhone WHICH trash for HOW MUCH. (and I won't talk about the air book, the first Apple computer even Apple Fans critizes!)


On a side, it's interesting to notice people which start to complain about pittyPhone are...developers (or any people trying to make money with pittyPhone).
So, unfortunalty, and even it the pittyPhone got some minor problems (everybody knows exploding is only a minor problem), it will take some times before Apple will start to loose market share....and while I'll waiting for this, Apple already started to fight with its competitors not with great phones (it would be a surprise) but with lobbying and false informations.

BSquare announces FL on Android

I missed this one : following HTC Hero's support to Flash Lite, Bsquare announced they have successfully ported Flash Lite to Android, throught a web plugin.

This follows their previous announcement on March.

New game of GamesPlaza : Summer Girl

GamesPlaza released totay a new free flash lite game : Summer Girl


This time, it's for girls and women since it's a dress up game.
It's the second dressup game of GamesPlaza...but it seems it's a popular kind of game for this category of gamers

AppStore : the magic disappears slowly ?

You could find a very instersting post at TechCentral about the App Store "anti-competitive and arrogant"
Also this very interesting point of view (which I share!) about the viability of the AppStore for developer.

BUG : NetStream/NetConnection memory leak

If you follow Flash Lite doc about Video.attachMovie, you should play a streamed FLV using this method

var my_video:Video; //my_video is a video object on stage
var my_nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
my_nc.connect(null);
var my_ns:NetStream = new NetStream(my_nc);
my_video.attachVideo(my_ns);
my_ns.play("video1.flv");

I just found a very annoying bug on this one :
when you call my_ns.play( filepath ), something is done on the background, then the video starts to stream & play when buffer is full
if you ever kill everything while 'something is done on the background', the 'something' doesn't stop and the first blocks of memory used by buffer are filled.

This is what I did for testing

var keyListener:Object = new Object( );
keyListener.onKeyDown = function()
{
 handleKey(Key.getCode()+"" );
}
Key.addListener(keyListener);

function handleKey( keycode:String ):Void
{ 
 switch (keycode)
 {
  case ExtendedKey.SOFT1:
   trace(_root.stream_ns);
   trace(_root.connection_nc);
   break;
  case ExtendedKey.SOFT2:
   Key.removeListener(keyListener);

   _root.stream_ns.close();
   _root.connection_nc.close();             
   delete _root.stream_ns;
   delete _root.connection_nc;
   // nothing still present in memory

   _root.gotoAndPlay("menu"); //get out of the frame with the video object
   break;
 }
}

Test this with a video (or download my sample)
Don't click the softkey yet, wait for the video to start playing
When you click the softkey, you could see on the memory manager every video data is deleted

Then retest, but quickly (or at least BEFORE the video start playing or you could see 'Connect to file_path' on the trace) click the softkey
At first, nothing happens (like you want to), you even have the wanted

FTPS116: Flash Video status : (NetConnection.Connect.Closed)

on the trace

BUT while the video is deconnected, closed, deleted and nulled, some (milli)seconds after you'll see a 'Connect to file_path' and the memory manager will show you something big on memory!

What happened?
I ask for a video
Flash Lite player starts something
I cancel the video and deleted it
Flash Lite doesn't know about it
Flash Lite finished its something
Flash Lite want to start the video but...err...where is my netstream ?! ok, forget it
Unfortunatly, it forget to kill its something

I fought a long time against this one, and I wasn't able to find a workaround....
The only thing I could do is to active the keylistener when the video is ready.
So no way to exit the screen before it starts playing...and so downloaded some Kbytes the user pay for! Very bad user experience !!
VGTrailers is like this, and I retried again this sunday to fix it without success...

I think it's NetStream/NetConnection bug. Not a Video bug, because if I don't use a video object and don't attachVideo, I have the same problem (and so I had sound but no video when I test)

If you ever got this one and found a solution, please, share it with me !

EDIT : I forgot to tell I tested it on read hardware, it's why you'll find oxygen's memchecker on the available test file

Motorola future phones...

Following Adobe Flash Lite post, I checked Motorola website to get more info (version, video support, etc..) and found nothing. As usual Flash Lite info are very hard to find (apart at Nokia & SE)...if someone got a better technical link...

BUT, the interesting thing is the road Motorola is taking, just jump to Motorola developer website and you'll see what I mean : Android everywhere !

I REALLY hope is making an fully available Flash (Lite) player, not like HTC dedicated one, so we can access to every android phone.

Play Flash SWF on your HTC Hero

Find on Mark's blog hints to open Flash file using Android SDK