According to a Nexus One user, the Flash 10.1 player on Android will play sound no matter what mode the phone is on, even silent mode.
It seems like it doesn’t matter if your device is on silent mode, if you’re watching a Flash-enabled video in the browser, the audio will still play. So, if you’re catching up on a show while others are sleeping, you’re going to want to use your headphones, or be a dick and wake everyone up in the process. It’s interesting to see that Adobe overlooked this situation with their Mobile Flash player, but we can give them a break, seeing as how Flash 10.1 Player for Android is still only in beta.
A frustrated user reached out to AndroidGuys in an email:
We rely on silent mode on all our devices to help the geeklet to stay asleep while allowing his mom and dad to continue to use their phones and computers. Last night the self-playing Flash video on the Iron Chef America website woke the little guy up regardless that my N1 was on silent. Today I’ve tested the phone on a few other noisy Flash sites and they all have played audio, regardless of the phone’s silent mode. I’m gonna have to keep earphones plugged into the device while the baby’s asleep, at least until Adobe can correct this obvious oversight…
The user email isn’t exactly the same as a formal support ticket, but we’re sure Adobe is sure hearing about it at this point. The no silent mode issue will likely be fixed soon in the form of a patch, or it could already be taken care of in an unreleased beta of the player. While this isn’t much of a big deal to many – the instance above is very specific, after all – at least it’s a known issue now. I don’t have a Nexus One anymore, so I can’t test this out for myself, but I doubt very much that this is an isolated incident.
Adobe, you’ve got enough work cut out for to prove that Flash on phones is the way to go, and there are alternatives. Add this issue to your to-do list, pretty please.
[Via: AndroidGuys]
[UPDATE]
Well, call this a big ‘Duh’ on our part, but as it turns out, you can silence the Flash Player on Android. If we had a Nexus One in hand to test this out, we’d have probably realized this. If you look at the graphic above, silent mode makes all sounds except for Media and Alarm silent. If you wanted to avoid hearing self-playing flash content on a Flash-based site, make you sure have the media volume all the way down. Sorry about that, this is something we should have looked into further, but may have been easily overlooked by the user above.