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The entire Android-loving public has been waiting for Flash 10.1 support on our beloved Android phones like the Droid and the Nexus One. Some lucky users of select handsets like the HTC Hero and Motorola Devour are graced with Flash Lite, but that has its fair share of limitations. So as we desperately wait for Adobe to bring Flash onboard, who will and won’t be getting a ticket to ride?
A post on the Adobe forums suggests it won’t be decided exactly how we thought:
Hi all,
You can expect the final release for Android to be available mid-year. All Android devices that meet our minimum s/w and h/w requirements will be supported. Unfortunately, I cannot say a lot more publicly about our port to the Android platform at this time.
As for WinMo, we have made the tough decision to defer support for that platform until WinMo7. This is due to the fact that WinMo6.5 does not support some of the critical APIs that we need.
As for your other questions:
* Yes, we will support the Motorola Milestone.
* No, the HTC Hero will not be supported b/c it does not have the correct Anroid OS version and it’s chipset is not powerful enough. We require a device with an ARM v7 (Cortex) processor. Examples include the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets and TI OMAP3 series.Best regards,
Antonio
Antonio is an Adobe employee and this suggests something different than what we may have assumed – just because a handset is upgraded to Android 2.0 DOES NOT mean it will be eligible for Flash 10.1 and in fact, many phones won’t be able to enjoy Flash 10.1 regardless of OS updates. In addition to requiring Android 2.0, each phone will also require a minimum processor spec.
Taylor from AndroidAndMe did a little research and made a list of US phones that, based on this information (and assuming its true), will not ever have Flash 10.1 capabilities:
- Sprint Hero
- Sprint Moment
- T-Mobile G1
- T-Mobile myTouch 3G
- T-Mobile CLIQ
- T-Mobile Behold II
- Verizon Droid Eris
- Verizon Devour
What a shame, what a shame. Hopefully they’ll at least release it to those ready, willing and able by the first half of 2010 as they’ve promised. And hopefully we can have some more clarification on exactly what phones will and won’t enjoy Flash in the future. Afterall, there are people making purchase decisions NOW based on what features their phone might have in a few months from now. We just want some transparency so we can make informed buying decisions!
[Adobe Forum via PocketNow, Thanks Reese!]
HTC made flash lite work on the Hero, I’m sure they will make this work too.
Adobe shows again and again that they are not only lazy but at the same time unable to convey information. Flash is the most superfluous piece of software on a handset imaginable.
But apart from that: Why shouldn’t I use Flash on one of the slower handsets? Of course the oh so important Flash games might not work but at least I would be able to browse on shitty websites that require Flash for site-navigation.
Die, Flash, die!
Include any non ARMv7 or OMAP3 based H/W.
At this point, it would be easier to list the phones that WILL get 10.1 than the ones that won’t.
N1, Droid, SE-X10, Desire and Liquid.
Sad sad day!!! It’s really sad for the people who still got over a year left on their contract. Lucky for me I brought my g1 on day 1! Which mean I only got until august to get another phone. But its just a way for us( the customer) to spend more money.. so next year the nexus one and the droid will need to be replace before your 2yr.contract is up. Hopefully some dev will bring flash to my g1 before august!!!!(ROOTED)
eh, this was expected. i dont miss flash on my g1. but probably because it is not my main mode of browsing.
@testhase
So how does setting a minimum required spec make them lazy?
@KBlack
It shows that they do not want to spend any time to optimize their code for slower devices.
An alternative explanation might be that they don’t want to stand the embarrassment in front of their customers which have to face the unbelievable slowness of Flash. It is, after all, a resource hog. No-one expects Flash to run decently but not making it available because it would give them a bad name is just adding insult to injury. And besides, Adobe nowadays stands for security holes and slow software. It is unbelievable how many holes are e.g. in the Adobe Reader. Adobe is the new Microsoft.
…………..wow…………..wow……..really?
No flash…………for my……Hero…….FK you Adobe, Apple was right, you are a bunch of lazy bastards:[
Fk you Adobe, FK you!
Its weird how adobe demonstrated flash on the g1 and then turns around and say that it doesn’t reach the requirements. We already know flash will work on the g1 so why not just optimize it for the g1 that way most, if not all, android users will get flash
Let’s all hope that developers see the light and switch to HTML 5 fast! I don’t like Steve Jobs but he is right when he says that Flash sucks. It’s always the first thing to crash!
Hopefully someone will make a ROM for the older devices that has flash 10.1
I’m really starting to have my doubts about Flash. It seems to be everywhere on the web, but seems to be having more and more problems as time goes by. It may be a dinosaur whose time has come to go extinct. When I finally pulled the trigger and went Android, the MTG3 was the most advanced handset (with Tmo). 6 months later, suddenly there’s the Nexus 1 and some of the sexiest software being written won’t run on my handset. sigh…
a lot of us would be on HTML5 if apple didnt get involved in messing up the latest standard meeting
Adobe fail. Adobe is lazy and stupid.
not worried. Devs have come up with amazing things so far for the Hero (and other devices) that werent “supoosed” to be running on them. Only a matter of time before it gets figured out.
@cwalker
u can get an upgrade each year now at tmobile as long as ur not on the even more plus plan so u can get a full upgrade right now if u wanted….It changed a couple of weeks ago..
This makes me really mad. The only reason I went with the Droid eris over the moto Droid was because they said it would get flash just like the Droid, so I got the nicer looking phone, which would eventually get flash too. That sucks…luckily I’m eligible for an upgrade in a month or so. I’m switching to the n1 when it hits Verizon!
i dont see this as being all that surprising nor unreasonable.
phones with weak processors wont be able to process flash 10, a fairly intensive application. kind of a duh.
i have hct hero and am not too surprised nor disappointed by this. 500mhz processor is already being worked pretty hard, im happy it does the stuff it does.
i was walking along the beach in a rural area when a song popped in my head, so i open imusic and download it and am listening to it in within a minute. its freaking magic people!!! the phone is sending and receiving signals from space which gather and process data just so i could listen to bill withers “aint no sunshine”!
and people are disappointed that they dont get full flash on their phone.
@AARON
:o……did everyone hear that…..he admitted he downloaded a song illegally, someone call the FCC!!!
This is bullshit, I own the samsung moment. This Android OS is nothing but a big mess. This might be my last Android experience. Windows Phone 7 series is looking purty good right about now. All of those phones are going to be treated pretty much equal by MS. Google should just stick with search engines and youtube, they’re actually good at those things.
The funny thing is when the FCC come a knocking, bill withers wont see a penny of it. A far as flash 10 on mobiles, try playing flash stuff on you computer and then check how it impacts on your processor.
Flash is totally bloated and slow, the only reason to have it is so you can experience the web as it is at the moment, but roll on HTML 5, something that was designed to be usable, fast and lean.
I call the lack of Flash a blessing. If I need it that bad, I can just use my computer. I couldn’t imagine how slow browsing on my Hero would be if it did have Flash.
Like someone said above adobe showed us SHOWED US||||||| flash running on the g1 and now newer devices can’t run it. Man I used to be pissed at motorola but I swear these guys take the cake they are straight up liars I don’t believe a word they just said. They can go straight to hell
Wouldn’t phones like the Moment get Flash, after it gets updated.
And love or hate Flash, it is everywhere right now…I need it for many things, not video, but tons of other sites that I go to.
I’m all for killing it but not before another system is in place.
@ johnnyb
um uh, its a digital backup since i of course own the original cd. i just unfortunately hadn’t ripped it to my phone yet…
also your would want to call the irra not the fcc.
:p
Damn damn damn I finally ditched AT&T after 10 years because of prices and damn if the thing I seem to need the most…..stupid flash players…..is not available for my new freaking phone, nor will it be anytime soon….well I suppose I have 2 years to hope it happens! Don’t continue you stupid websites that use flash….AAAAAHHHHHHHH I HATE NOT BEING ABLE TO WATCH CNN VIDEO!!!!!
I bought the phone from a t-mobile dealer an I was told it had flash on the g1 he lied to me to make a sale I feel. Went back with in 6 days of sale I was in my 14 days buyers remorse. He gave me another g1 an stated it was a glich in the phone. If no ones knows there is a civil law suit aginst t-mobile for this there telling customers it has flash. If they don’t give me a flash phone I’m taking part in the suit. Tom.loney.jr. [email protected]
No flash on my HTC Hero? Great! I don’t need a virus running on my phone. Flash is a disease and needs to be destroyed
are you people that desperate to watch porn on your handsets ? As for websites that run entirely on flash, i consider them to be the lazy ones, such lazy websites tend to make flashy UI to distract you from the lack of content of their website and you can be as dynamic as flash using html and ajax (google already proved that)
I cannot say i am surprised. Apparently, Jobs was quite right about Adobe. And when everything, that flash is used for now can be accomplished with just plain html, there is after all time for flash to perish.
And maybe flash including ROMs can be ported to these devices by xda
I’m just glad I traded my Eris for a Droid. I really only want flash because that is what the slingbox client for android will use…
Once again there is no platform cohesion and owners of relatively new devices are being given the shaft. You have to wonder if Google had a bit more control over their platform, that these messes wouldn’t be as prevalent or reoccurring. You know, updating all the phones running their OS concurrently, not showing favoritism for one OEM over another, making sure a feature it is touting as an advantage over other platforms actually works for the majority of the install base.
And Adobe lost my respect a long time ago. The sooner we are free from that proprietary plugin / disaster, the better. Shame on anyone actually looking forward to draining their battery with useless content and ads. And aren’t most of Android’s supporters all about free and open source? Why then are they clamoring for a locked down and proprietary piece of sluggish software?
Y’know, all your talk about who’s getting it and who’s not is moot! So far, nobody’s getting it and it doesn’t look like that fact is going to change any time in the foreseeable future. In the 80s and 90s we called this stuff Vapor-Ware. Talk is cheap, Adobe.
Same is true about the Android 2.1 release for the Motorola Droid. C’mon, folks, we backed you up and bought your hardware and now Apple is starting to make us look silly. Heck, they’ll have their 4G out soon. They’ll be in the second decade of the millennium when we’re still in the 20th century. Quit playing foozball and get your software released!
You have to love the “experts” who are calling Adobe lazy for not optimizing flash. They have optimized it. It’s called flash lite. If you want the full version, there’s a performance cost. You can’t add features without a price. The more flash does (and consumers want to to do) the more it’s going to cost in performance.
Or maybe the problem is that phones don’t have enough horsepower to run everything? They should, after all, have top of the line GPUs and CPUs and killer battery life, too. Oh, and don’t make them expensive, either, but that’s just greedy.
The good news for all the naysayers who want it both ways is that they have a good shot at a future in marketing.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Ross. 90% of the people who commented on this board clearly know nothing about any of the technology they’re talking about. Though, it’s funny to put a bunch of idiots in a room and see what they’ll come up with.
Big deal — so it won’t work on my Hero. Sprint gives you a new phone every year — so I’ll only have the Hero for a few more months anyway. I feel more sorry for people who are stuck with a carrier that gives a new phone every 2 years.
Adobe Flash is not coming to all Android phones [duh]
Posted on Sunday, Feb 28, 2010 by Erica Marchand
We’ve got some good news and some bad news about those waiting to receive Adobe Flash 10.1. The good news is that it’s expected to be released on Android phones coming “mid year”. Now the bad news is that the HTC Hero will not be supported.
“The HTC Hero will not be supported [because] it does not have the correct Android OS version and its chipset is not powerful enough. We require a device an ARM v7 (Cortex) processor. Examples include the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets and TI OMAP3 series.”
We’ve seen Flash being shown off already on the Droid and the Nexus One. We already knew this was coming, given that Flash is a processor hog even on desktop systems, but thank you for stating the obvious. [androinica]
im glad everyone cant get flash .. just makes my droid and my girlfriends nexus look so much more desirable HAHA
My PC XT can’t run Crysis. That sucks. Damn lazy programmers!
adobe should be diligent point
Any website requiring Flash for the navigation is no website I want to visit.
Flash 10 should only be an extra, and something I wouldn’t necessarily want on my phone. It’s built for Desktops so probably a resource hog.
If you look at Adobe’s record, they’ve clearly made prodcuts such Acrobat Reader way too bloated, it’s a natural tendency of software matures, to bloat. It takes a lot of discipline to keep something lean over the years. Believe me I’ve worked in the software industry for years. Remember how Microsoft added all the cool nifty features that nobody liked or used in Vista and said everyone had to upgrade their hardware to run it? That is what’s going to happen with Flash 10 on smartphones.
Flash sucks. I’m await full HTML5 integration to the Android Browser (or if Google actually decides to give us Chrome). Seriously, Flash sucks like IE sucks. They both achieved dominate market position and decided to sit on their asses. Heck, even MS Silverlight is multitudes times better than Flash. Will MS/Novell/(Intel) bring Moonlight to Android?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/24/silverlight_to_linux/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/moonlight-2-expands-silverlight-capabilities-linux-662
For those looking to place blame you can lay it squarely at the feet of handset manufacturers that decided to skimp when it came to designing their hardware and on Google for not mandating a minimum set of requirements for the hardware that Android can run on. In this day and age of ubiquitous built in memory it’s unbelievable that not every Android phone built was built to at least match the specs of the f’n iPhone. That wretched POS can take every update that Apple releases, even the damn 1st gen, and yet we can’t get the same because everyone decided to cheap out built in memory. And please don’t raise the bogus issue of the iPhone being only 1 phone and Android covering many different phones because that is the issue. Google and it’s partners practiced piss poor planning and now the Android community is suffering with fragmentation.
If performance is the only reason for not releasing Flash on slower CPUs, I’m sure some non-Adobe developers will make this work, probably at slower than Adobe-intended speed.
This news is not a big deal to me.
Let HTML5 come and then we can choose what we want to use.
So supposedly the Behold II should be able to get Froyo but they can’t get Flash? What a bunch of BS
if you did some research, why didnt you just show the recommended software and hardware requirements!!?!?!?!??
Ok, WTF?? Not that I care, I have a Droid… I’m just pissed about having to wait… but here’s a video from Adobe showing off Flash for Android on… a HTC Hero… ??huh??
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/open-screen-project/htc-hero-1st-flash-on-android-smartphone/
What? No Verizon Motorola Droid? Just the Droid Eris?
I love this site because there are some genuine realists here. I too was duped as many were by the tease videos that adobe put out falsely advertising flash for hero. Who the FK needs flash? This site is great without it..(typing this on one of my iPhones right now..)
this whole flash fiasco is going to cut the nuts right off of android.. They’d better get their sht together and at least get n1 and droid playing lame ass miniclips ASAP or expect to feel the backlash.. (and worse.. The mocking wrath of the apple fanboys!)
roid fanboy: ha ha no flash
apple fanboy: ha ha no flash, but we never expected it in the first place lol..
I think google and the manufacters of theses phones need to be honest…doubt we will ever see 2.1 upgrades or flash for older models it sucks
Well i feel like i have been cheated by adobe because i bought the Dream because adobe was posting videos how flash will work on it and it was supposed to be out last year October but then that changed. What adobe and google did was uneatical. They were spreading false information for personal benefits.Boosting sales of all the first generation android devices. They even had hardware specification and all android devices were in the range and flash was suppose to work but then that change again. Well for me this is leson learned. I was thinking about the i phone at that time but i didn’t get it because flash was “going to be release” on the adroid in october 20 . The conclusion to all this is stay as far as possible from this companies for me now the only 2 options are back to Blackberry or the I-phone.
Ok as it explains in the article itself, there is no need to be panicked, the htc hero is fully capable of running most flash applets, it is just that adobes newer 10.1 as what you would need on a desktop will only be available to phones whose hardware is closest to that of a desktop… your htc hero’s are still top class devices, just with less RAM, and a less competitive processor. Actually the processor is just as quick as the iphone 3gs, although the android os and htc sense running over the top of it with applications takes up most of its computing power… You guys simply seem to want as much as you can get for as little input or research as you can give.
that htc adobe for the hero is 100% factual and has been since release… because you dont realise this only shows what a good job they have done… test it now, go and play an adobe flash game!
ps i had to revert to a blackberry awaiting a repair… you really dont wanna go there
I am really discusted that I don’t have flash on my Motorola Droid. It is a great phone, but after my contract is up I will never buy anything Motorola again.. I just can not believe the way both adobe and Motorola have said they will have something available and have never done it. Oh well, I will just not do business with Motorola again. Well I have voiced my opinion, I am sure they could care less.
I have a srint epic ….will this get a flash update ?
Android 2.2 Phones & UP! Some Even 2.1