By Adobe have announced that their mobile Flash solution for Android will soon be restricted in ways that many of us can’t help. This past November it was announced that the plugin would no longer be actively developed.
This didn’t mean that it would be unavailable in the Play Store, but Adobe wasn’t going to support it save for critical bug fixes.
Adobe made it seem as if the plugin wouldn’t come to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but it eventually did. It seems Adobe’s seriously serious about getting rid of it come August 15th, though, as they will be restricting new downloads of the plugin in the Google Play Store.
If you grab it now and keep it on your device you’ll continue to receive security updates, but if you want it at any point after that you won’t be able to go through the official channels.
And Adobe doesn’t recommend installing the plugin on Jelly Bean as they won’t be testing it with the update and are unsure how it will affect performance and stability.
Some people may still get Flash Mobile or Flash Lite support through their OEMs’ efforts, but Adobe itself isn’t going to have its hands in the mobile space anymore.
In short, if you want Flash you’d better download it now. And if you want to keep it, don’t do a factory reset or get a new device.
Oh, and if you have Jelly Bean feel free to install the plugin, but don’t come to us for support because Flash Mobile is now the red-headed step child. [via Adobe]
I know Flash isn’t well liked, and frankly isn’t well made, but I’m sad to hear this. There’s still plenty of sites that use Flash video that I use from time to time. Infrequently enough so I use Chrome (which doesn’t have Flash) and copy & paste any flash page’s URLs into the Flash-supporting stock browser, but I still want to have the option.
There is that app flashify …or something like that that’s let you hit the share button and well do exactly what you are already doing
Choose Browser, free in Store. Makes url sharing a snap.
Why? What’s the reason behind this? So no more flash content after 08/15
so stupid… hope Google finds a way to keep flash going as HTML5 is just not widely enough used yet… or at least the sites i use have not made the switch. maybe incorporate it in to chrome like they do on the desktop version?
Flash on smartphone/tablet is dead and according to what is being done with html and javascript it won’t have much life left on desktop. It’s time to opensource the flash player and see if a community can breathe new life into it.
I don’t see why they haven’t done that already.
The decision to discontinue mobile Flash support made no sense when it was announced and it makes no sense today. Flash, despite its flaws, is still used a lot. If it was already disappearing from web sites and it was not being used much, I could understand the decision. As things stand today, I cannot make heads or tails about it.
Adobe, What is going on? Are you purposely trying to lose money
this was one of my concerns with JellyBean …guess i was right
hope google dose find a way to keep it going
This will hopefully push more HTML5 adoption. I don’t dislike flash I guess, but I will be glad to have a new standard that is by all accounts superior. This will be kind of like moving to IPv6; it needs to happen sometime; and sooner rather than later. Oh well… progress.
The IPV6 change feels like more of a mandatory thing that WILL happen whether we want to or not and its not as much a “like/dislike” type of thing.
Hey, didn’t you beat up Rihanna? :-P yeah IPv6 is no doubt mandatory, but we are still able to get by for now. In fact, if we wanted to we could limp along for a decade with other tricks to conserve addresses. The point is that IPv4 needs replacing much like Flash needs replacing.
In 2010, Steve Jobs said, “Flash on a mobile device sucks!”
In 2011, Adobe said, “Flash on a mobile device sucks!”
In 2012, Adobe is again saying, “Flash on a mobile device sucks!”
Time to move on people!
Your right it does suck, but what sucks more is not having access to content because most sites still use flash.
It did suck back then but now that we have dual and quad core processors, it’s not nearly as bad as it once was.
it’s true. my Rezound can handle all the porn….errr….video sites I throw at it without a hitch
That isn’t and never has been the point. The point is that tons of web sites use it and aren’t in any hurry to change.
I’m running Jelly Bean and have it now and it seems to work just fine atm. Also I’m sure if the proper channels won’t have it some one on xda is bound to post it some where…
Titanium backup.
Hopefully more porn sites will embrace HTML5 for the sake of so many Android using males.
I read somewhere that porn sites were the first to embrace HTML5 in numbers, and that it is due to them that it’s use is speeding up.
I’m building a porn site(video portal) in Flash as one of my current projects and HTML5 is simply not an option at all. Not only is JavaScript just too slow when handling any complex interactivity and rather limited, there’s absolutely no way to protect the video with HTML5’s video tag. HTML5 is more than 7 years behind Flash and it still suffers from the same cross-browser/platform problems that have always plagued HTML.
For Android, we’re simply offering an app.
Protip: you can’t “protect” flash either.
Steve Jobs called it 5 years ago, hate to say it but he was right.
Someone remind me why Adobe dumped flash on mobile? Adobe Flash can and should work on hundreds of million devices and they chose to stop supporting it?
I’ve always defended Adobe and Flash, because I don’t “hate” it but this right here is just making me hate some of Adobe’s decisions on Flash. It’s wasn’t a make or break decision for me on Android (I’ve been on Android since G1) but they pushed it so hard and made such a big deal out of it only to drop it like a ton of bricks just a few years after finally getting it out. At the very least you’d think they wouldn’t have quit JUST to spite Steve Jobs/Apple. At this point, if anyone else had made the Creative Suite series of applications, I wouldn’t like adobe at all.
What is it with Adobe and shooting themselves in the face?
Seriously, if you want to kill flash stop updating it and stop selling it in CS!
This is a major reason I won’t buy an iPad. Now it’s going to seriously count against Androids as well, because quite honestly, a good number if work pages I go to need flash to function properly.
Interesting…was it Apple that just announced moving away from HTML5 too?
No. Apple actually stated they wanted HTML5. I just took my web designing class and I can see why they want it. You can easily integrated videos into your webpage without the need of additional plug-ins, hence flash.
Oops it was Facebook abandoning HTML5 to speed up their app for iOS. Close enough :P
LoL!! Yea. That’s close enough.
Uh…? I’m sure you’d be able to find the apk on the interweb. It’s not that serious. LoL!!
But I have my backup from ROM Toolbox, so I’m ok. Thanks anyways.
So it’s Skyfire until then?
We can all thank Steve Jobs for this. He’s the one that apparently decided flash was “Evil” and all the lemmings followed en masse.
I guess if you want to call everyone else in the tech world(outside of RIM which is on the verge of bankruptcy) lemmings then sure. Microsoft, and Google both are behind html5.
losts of people will be saving the apk
I’m sure Android and Android developers will somehow find a way to survive without Flash. It will be a obsolete security risk so who’s still going to even want it?
Adobe shifted all of their efforts into Adobe “AIR” last year, which is Flash played back via the AIR(Mobile, Desktop) runtime, or packaged as a mobile or desktop application.
Adobe has not abandoned the mobile space, not one bit, but given the circumstances of some systems being locked down — and even Google’s newer direction — the application route is the only truly viable option. It’s where they want us for obvious reasons.
The mobile web browser on any OS that relies on an app-store ecosystem, will probably never be on par with what we’ve been accustom to on the desktop — where Flash isn’t going anywhere and is still the king for video playback and online games — not when Apple, Microsoft, and even Google, are intentionally hampering its potential.
For those that believe the hype that HTML5 is an alternative to Flash. Yeah, that’s not happening, not even if it does becomes a standard; not as long as the browser DOM still sucks and everything is so reliant on the slow and stagnant scripting language that is JavaScript; the new bloat of the web.