A new round of benchmarks suggest that Flash 10.1 Beta slows down page loads in Android 2.2 Froyo. That has been the topic of controversy for a few days now, thanks to PocketNow. The site did a number of browser tests and found that pages with flash dramatically reduce page loads on Froyo than it does when you disable it. That has led a number of users to believe that Apple was right in disabling Flash as it hammers performance. We don’t understand why.

Loading Flash content means the phone has to process more information before displaying it. If a phone, say the iPhone, doesn’t support it, the processor, in conjunction with memory, doesn’t have to process it. Wouldn’t it make sense that a page that’s bigger in size would take longer to load than a page that wasn’t as content heavy? Why is this the topic of controversy? What’s so shocking about it? Not to mention, PocketNow’s benchmarks are flawed. They are testing flash-enabled Nexus One vs. HTC HD2 without Flash, two different devices that can’t reliably provide an apples-to-apples comparison.

We concur with their conclusion, however. They recommend that if faster browsing is your cup of tea, disabling the Flash plug-in would be the best bet. But if you’re looking to watch Flash shows on Hulu, you may want to enable it. Reasonable enough. So let’s all relax and not overreact. Flash on mobile devices is just fine, at least until we see further evidence of it not working.