The rumor about the Motorola Xoom launching initially lacking Flash support has been verified by Motorola. This is an interesting update as the Xoom is the flagship Android 3.0 Honeycomb device and in fact the tablet on which Google designed Honeycomb. The lack of Flash support would appear to be a software issue on the entirety of Honeycomb and not a Motorola issue exclusively.
The fact that we already have flash support on our lower performing Froyo devices, leads to more questions as to why this is taking place. While our phones are currently running Flash 10.1 the tablet version will be 10.2. According to the Adobe, Google had to make some changes to the OS in order to allow Flash 10.2 to take advantage of the new hardware. That suggests that hardware acceleration is present with Adobe Flash 10.2 in Android Honeycomb.
The new Flash 10.2 will include Stage Video, which enables higher FPS and improved video quality by decreasing processor and memory usage. With Adobe Flash 10.2, Adobe says that there will be battery life improvements over Adobe Flash 10.1 for mobile devices as the newer edition of the plugin won’t tax the CPU as much.
Test results show up to 80 percent CPU savings when playing back video in 1080p on Windows® and Mac OS
It appears that Adobe has not completed the stated enhancements in order to provide adequate 1080p video playback and support with the expected performance. They have opted to instead delay the release rather than put out a sub par product. Verizon has stated to expect flash support during the Spring, and many expect that to be within the next few weeks.
However this plays out you can still expect the Motorola Xoom to be the first Honeycomb device with flash 10.2 support and most likely before the other options even see their North American release dates. Does this news affect your purchase decision, or do you have an alternate theory on this Flash debacle? Let us know in the comments, we are interested in how the community is reacting to this new development.
Source: AndroidCentral