For more videos from Mobile World Congress, check out the MWC page on Adobe TV.
Tag Archives: fp10.1
It’s great to see all the excitement about Flash Player 10.1 coming to mobile devices! Though some people need to learn to get their facts straight before jumping to conclusions.
For me, day two of Mobile World Congress started with a demo on how to build Flash based applications for BlackBerry devices. Since RIM is one of our Open Screen Partners you will soon see Flash Player 10.1 and AIR on BlackBerry devices. As a Flash developer I am obviously very excited about that. BlackBerry has traditionally been an enterprise platform, one that uses Java as its core developer platform. Bringing Flash Player 10.1 and AIR to these devices opens up a whole new world for Flash Developers but also for BlackBerry users.
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.
Video: AOL Media explains the benefits of Flash Player 10.1
Sun Sachs from AOL Media explains how Flash Player 10.1 coming to mobile devices is going to change the way they publish their 88+ brands across multiple devices.
Video: Brightcove about Flash Player 10.1 on mobile devices
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I bumped in to Cameron Church from Brightcove. We talked about the Brightcove Mobile Experience and Cameron explains how Flash Player 10.1 expands Brightcove’s reach to smart phone users.
For more info about Brightcove, check out brightcove.com.
Flash Player 10.1 and battery life on mobile devices
It’s great to see all the excitement about Flash Player 10.1 coming to mobile devices! Though some people need to learn to get their facts straight before jumping to conclusions.
One of the biggest improvements in Flash Player 10.1 is the memory and CPU consumption which obviously also has a big impact on the battery life. Battery life on mobile devices is very important and thus always top of mind for the engineering team!
There was a lot of commotion around the video that my colleague Michael Chaize published. He showcased a number of Flash based apps to show off the performance of FP10.1. Some of the applications he showed are CPU intensive and thus also potential battery drainers.
Mark Doherty posted a great follow up post with some background information on how we test battery consumption and performance internally. He also recorded a 17 minute YouTube video which resulted in a 6% battery drain. That results to being able to watch over 4 hours worth of YouTube video over WiFi using Flash Player. I can’t even do that on my brand new MacBook Pro (which is supposed to be able to give me 8 hours of battery life)… I’m not even sure I can do that on my Apple phone using their native YouTube app…
Today, Michael posted a follow up video where he plays a 26 minute video and plays a Flash based game for 12 minutes.
He noted a 10% battery drain after the playing the video which calculates down to 4.3 hours of video. Playing the Flash based game for 12 minutes resulted in a 4% drain which boils down to 5 hours of continuous gaming in the browser using Flash Player 10.1.
Those numbers are pretty impressive to me! Especially when you consider that this is still a pre-release version of the Flash Player running on a pre-release version of Android.
Kudos to the Flash Player team! Flash on!
BlackBerry community very excited about the Flash Platform
Earlier this week (can you believe I really have no idea what day it is today? :)) I joined Adobe’s David Wadhwani and RIM’s Chris Smith on stage at the BlackBerry Developer Day Keynote. Afterwards I asked a couple of BlackBerry community members and application developers about how they feel about the Flash Platform coming to BlackBerry devices. The video is now available on Adobe TV.
Flash Player 10.1 and AIR coming to BlackBerry devices
For me, day two of Mobile World Congress started with a demo on how to build Flash based applications for BlackBerry devices. Since RIM is one of our Open Screen Partners you will soon see Flash Player 10.1 and AIR on BlackBerry devices. As a Flash developer I am obviously very excited about that. BlackBerry has traditionally been an enterprise platform, one that uses Java as its core developer platform. Bringing Flash Player 10.1 and AIR to these devices opens up a whole new world for Flash Developers but also for BlackBerry users.
At today’s BlackBerry Developer Day we showed some of the new workflows between Adobe’s creative tools and both RIM’s and Adobe’s development environments. With the upcoming BlackBerry plugin for Illustrator, it’s incredibly easy to create assets for different screen sizes. It also simplifies communicating with the developer as he only needs to import one file in to the BlackBerry development environment he’s comfortable with. We’ve also demoed how you can soon build Flash based applications for BlackBerry phones and how Device Central makes it easy to test those applications as if you were using it on the actual device. Developers can use Device Central to test and tweak different screen resolutions and test the application as if it was running on the phone. The next version of Device Central will even allow you to test features like the accelerometer and multi-touch.
I talked to a number of BlackBerry application developers (video will be available on Adobe TV soon) who were at the keynote this morning and it was great to see their enthusiasm. Not only are they very excited about the improvements both RIM and Adobe are trying to make to streamline the communication between designers and developers but I could definitely feel the excitement about Flash Player and AIR coming to these devices as well.
I really like how RIM and the BlackBerry community are embracing the idea of being able to include Flash content in their mobile sites and applications. I can’t wait to see which types of “super apps” the BlackBerry community is going to build once they have Flash Player and AIR on the devices and to see what types of apps the Flash community is going to build for BlackBerry devices.
Make sure you keep an eye on the BlackBerry developer blog. A video of the keynote will be posted there as well as a bunch of information on how to build apps for BlackBerry devices.
Flash on!
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 ;-)
Raising the bar… again: FP10.1 & AIR2 betas on Labs
Wohooow… It’s always great to wake up to new toys to play with! Flash Player 10.1 and AIR2.0 are now available on Adobe Labs.
This is a very exciting release for Adobe. Not only is it the first time that we sim-ship Flash Player and AIR for all 3 major operating systems (Mac, Windows & Linux), Flash Player 10.1 is also the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project. While we’re only releasing the beta version of Flash Player 10.1 for the desktop we do plan to roll out additional betas prior to the release with more features, performance improvements, new tooling options and support for mobile platforms. I’ve been lucky enough to play with some smart phones that already have Flash Player 10.1 and I am absolutely amazed to see the performance on these devices. It’s also great to finally have FP10 in the browser on a mobile device. It’s great to see you can now have the full web in your mobile browser!
We’ve already talked about and demoed some of the new features at MAX. Check out the feature page on Labs for a complete list of new features in Flash Player 10.1 and Christian Cantrell’s blog for a comprehensive list of new features in AIR. Christian also has a bunch of code samples on his blog demonstrating the new features. Also check out Adobe TV for more demos and tutorials.
Don’t forget… These are pre-release BETA releases. While the Flash Player and AIR teams do their very best to maintain backward compatibility, things may break. And that is exactly why we do these public betas. If you do come across an application that doesn’t work, make sure you tell us about it!
I can’t wait to see what you guys are going to build with this new set of building blocks… Flash on!
