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!
Preparing for Mobile World Congress
Believe me when I say that Adobe is going to rock at Mobile World Congress next week! I wish I could tell you about all of our announcements today but you’re gonna have to wait a little longer…
If you are in Barcelona for MWC, please come and say hi! The Adobe booth is located in hall 1 (stand 1D45). We’ve teamed up with lots of content and device partners and we will be showing lots of cool stuff at the booth!
Keep an eye on my blog and the Flash Platform blog for more info throughout the week!
Hope to see you there!
Europe needs a European wide network carrier
Here’s a thought: For this mobile web to really work, we need a European wide network carrier.
If I was living in the US, I could pick one of the big carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon and use their service across all states. In Europe… No such thing. There are some alliances between some carriers but there is no such thing as a European wide carrier and frankly they don’t do a very good job at promoting these alliances.
I travel all over Europe and thus I always need to be aware of the fact that I am always roaming. And roaming is still freaking expensive. Sure, Adobe does pay my mobile bill but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about how much it costs.
Most of the European carriers are owned by only a handful of big telcos (like France Telecom, Vodafone, …). It is definitely possible to make this happen. I honestly don’t know why we don’t already have a European wide carrier… But then… I guess that these big telcos don’t mind making truckloads of money from frequent travelers like myself… *sigh*
Day 2 with the Nexus One
I promised to keep you up to date with how I get on with Google’s Nexus One. Today is actually already day three without using Apple’s phone and I’m still enjoying it. The only thing that I am really starting to miss is a decent mail client. This could potentially become a real problem.
The Nexus One has a decent mail client but it doesn’t support the certificates that our Exchange server uses. That means I have to rely on third party solutions and the only option available in the free Android Market is the Touchdown client. It works fine but the UI is just… well… let’s be kind and say that it doesn’t look that good. The mail client that I want to use (Moxier Mail) is not available as a free download and because there still is no official way to get paid apps in the Android Market in Belgium, I can’t buy it. I really dislike the UI on Touchdown… So much so that I find it horrible to use.
I really really hope I can solve this soon because I really need a decent Exchange client…
Other than that I am really happy with the Nexus One’s performance and its features. And having Flash in the Nexus One’s browser already changed the way I used the mobile web. Yesterday I heard about another act of violence/vandalism in Brussels and so I wanted to look up more info on the web. The article on the local news site I visited also had a video… Flash Video. I just hit the play button and watched the entire clip in the Nexus One. If I was still using Apple’s phone, I would have needed to take out my laptop to see the clip…
After watching that clip, I was curious to see how other Flash Video enabled sites would work. I opened up CNN.com, picked one of the news clips, hit play… and it immediately started playing. I also tried the BBC’s iPlayer and some other local news sites. They just worked… without the need for the publisher to republish their content in a different format. I just opened the browser, opened the exact same sites that I visit/use on my laptop and clicked “Play”. Now that’s a magical web experience!
My first hours with the Nexus One
There’s no denying that Apple did a terrific job with the iPhone. After walking around with PDAs and smartphones, Apple really changed the market and it took a while for competitors to catch up. I honestly never thought I would think about replacing my iPhone any time soon. Even with all its obvious flaws… But today, a late Christmas gift arrived in the form of a Google Nexus One.
I had heard and read about it and really wanted to get my hands on one to see if it was really as fast and good as the reviews seemed to suggest. Today I finally got that chance and yes… the reviews are right. The Nexus One certainly feels very fast, the screen is gorgeous and the camera is a serious upgrade from my iPhone 3GS. It also feels a bit lighter than the iPhone and also looks thinner. The most obvious plus is that it has Flash Player 10.1. The same Flash Player that you are used to on your desktops and laptops will soon be available for your smartphone.
I’m going to try and not use my iPhone for a few days, a few weeks, … as long as I can. I have become pretty accustomed to using my iPhone for just about everything but I really do feel that the Nexus One may be a very good competitor.
Things I like so far:
- It has Flash Player 10.1 therefore I finally have a full web-experience in the palm of my hand.
- The camera. The quality really is better and it comes with an LED flash making the camera usable even in the dark.
- Most of the apps I use daily (like Tripit or Twitter) are also available in the Android Market or have a decent alternative.
- I love the fact that you can organize your home screens exactly like you want them.
Things I don’t like:
- The Android Market is not fully available in Belgium. Therefore I only have access to free apps. This will potentially become a real problem for me and it sorta already is. The Exchange client that I want to use is not a free app and therefore I can’t download and install it. I hope I can find a workaround soon because this is a serious deal-breaker… If you happen to know a workaround, I’d love to hear it.
- Are there really only 5 home screens? I currently use 9 screens on my iPhone… This may become a problem although you do have access to all your apps in the application menu. I guess it’s just a different way of launching the apps.
I’ll keep you updated on how I get on with the Nexus One, on which sites I visit/use that I couldn’t before and on any Flash development experiments I may have time for in the next days/weeks. Stay tuned ;-)
Adobe at Mobile World Congress
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is just around the corner and you can already feel the excitement building.
2010 is going to be an amazing year for Flash developers who want to create mobile applications. Not only did we announce the Flash CS5 iPhone compiler but we’ve already demoed Flash Player 10.1 on a variety of devices from Android to WebOS to Windows Mobile. At Mobile World Congres in Barcelona we will be demonstrating uncompromised rich web experiences in Flash on the latest smartphones, netbooks, and smartbooks with some of the Open Screen Project partners. If you plan to attend the show, come visit us in Hall 1 and experience them firsthand.
We’re also offering Flash Platform developers a limited number of complimentary exhibition visitor passes (a value of € 599 per person) on a first-come, first-served basis. Email us with your name, company name, and email address (for each pass) if you’re interested. For more details, visit http://www.adobe.com/go/mwc2010.
From the evangelism team, Mark Doherty, Tom Krcha, Enrique Duvos and I will be there to answer your questions. Hope to see you in Barcelona!
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