Adobe AIR for Mobile Devices at Mobile World Congress
Today Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona. If you follow my Tweets or are a regular reader of my blog, you already knew we had some big announcements coming to the show. I’m so happy we can finally talk about this ;-)
Adobe AIR for mobile devices
If you are in Barcelona for MWC, make sure you drop by our booth! We are demoing AIR applications running on Android devices. This is fantastic news for Flash Platform developers who can now build applications that not only run across different desktop operating systems but can now also be deployed to Android devices. It’s obvious that AIR for Android takes full advantage of the improvements and new features we added to Flash Player 10.1. Those include multi-touch, gesture inputs, accelerometer input, GPS and screen rotation. My fellow evangelist Kevin Hoyt recently recorded a demo showing a couple of AIR mobile apps (Tweetbox, Southpark, Acrobat Connect) on the Motorola Droid. For more information, visit www.adobe.com/go/airmobile.
Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices
I’ve been using Google’s Nexus One for a week now. One of the perks of working for Adobe is having access to the prerelease bits of new technology we are working on. The Nexus One I’m using actually has Flash Player 10.1 installed on it. It is extremely refreshing to be able to use the full web on your mobile device! Just the other day I wanted to view a video on Qik.com. While Qik has a mobile HTML5 site, the Nexus One didn’t seem to have the correct video codec. So I opened the normal Qik site which uses Flash Player to play the video… I pressed play and the video played. No blue Lego blocks, no missing plugin headaches. It just worked and that’s the way it should be. So far, I haven’t seen any Flash content that didn’t work on my Nexus One. I think that’s pretty impressive seeing as this is still a prerelease version. So yes… We are still working on it and no… you can’t download it today. But it’s coming soon and it truly is the missing piece in the mobile web puzzle. Whether you are addicted to Farmville or Bejeweled or if you’re like me and don’t want to install an app for every single news site you visit, you’ll be able to use those games and watch those videos in your mobile browser soon!
While most of the content just works, you should really think about tailoring your content to deliver the best possible user experience on mobile devices. Get a head start and learn how to do just that on Adobe Devnet.
I’m also really excited to see the Dell Mini 5 Tablet in action. In the video below Alan Tam shows a sneak peek of Flash content running on Dell’s upcoming touch-based tablet.
We’re demoing Flash and AIR content on a number of different devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week but if you can’t make it, make sure you don’t miss these demo videos. I’ll also record a few demos at the booth today and post them to my blog later… If there’s anything specific you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Stay tuned!
It’s a great time to be a Flash Platform developer! Flash on!
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Very cool. I love a number of the adobe air products and have been wondering when that platform would make it onto the mobile devices. It really is a cool platform.
Personally, I would have liked to hear more about the plans for ecosystems and how AIR for Mobile ties in (e.g. how devs will be able to monetize on their apps and content). Perhaps it’s way too early for that though. :)
Hmm, is it true that only a handfull of the newest Android devices will get Flash support?
http://androinica.com/2010/02/25/flash-10-1-will-not-be-supported-on-all-android-phones
My HTC Hero is only 6 months old :)
I’m a Flex/Java programmer but I guess in that case Android Java apps is the way to go…
Hopefully you can get your performance issues fixed.
Wim
@Wim: As the article suggests, Flash Player 10.1 will indeed require an OS update. Whether or not your phone supports that update has not been announced yet. Our goal is to bring FP10.1 and AIR to as many devices as possible. I know this is not the answer you are looking for but it’s all I can say at this time.
@Serge: The HTC Hero will get an update to Android 2.1. That has been officially announced by HTC. It should arrive around mid-March.
I’m more worried about the required CPU; if that’s true that would exclude a lot of Android devices (all pre Droid and pre-Nexus one) even if they have Android 2.1. It’s the same CPU that’s used in the Iphone 3G, so I guess when Steve jobs changes his mind and Flash does arrive on the iPhone it’ll only be for the Iphone 3G S…
Now Flash Lite is available on the HTC Hero; why would FP10.1 Mobile not be possible if the phone receives Android 2.1 support. Very heavy flash files maybe a little slow on the HTC Hero then, but that’s better then no Flash at all I think :)
Wim