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Android Lollipop, while chock full of features and a fresh new UI, still doesn’t support Flash enabled videos online. A once killer Android feature, Adobe stopped supporting their Flash player for Android devices many moons ago, as websites too made the move to more mobile friendly format.
It doesn’t happen often, but on occasion, you may run into a site still using Flash videos (Facebook is guilty of this on some of their videos). While you’d be SOL if you’re exclusively using Chrome, and recent update to Dolphin Browser brings Flash support to most Android devices — including those running Android 5.0 Lollipop.
And Flash playing isn’t the browser’s only trick, they’ve also added new features like settings sync across devices, and even the ability to share pages using NFC. You’ll also find a new Christmas theme if you’re feeling festive. Although the app looks somewhat dated in appearance (my kingdom for a Material design update), the functionality can’t be beat.
New features:
- Flash support and enhanced browsing experience on Android 5.0
- Merry Christmas! Check out gorgeous Christmas wallpapers in Theme.
- Sync speed dials, add-ons, themes, settings and more via Dolphin Connect
- Share pages between devices using NFC (permission “control Near Field Communication”)
- Auto-clear app storage when device storage is not enough (permission “measure app storage space”)
You can find Dolphin Browser available for free right now in the Google Play Store and on a side note, they’d better update their Play Store listing soon. Devs are no longer permitted to use quotes from users as part of the Google Play’s newly updated developer terms of service.
Flash is dead and buried. Why dig it back up?!
Because a lot of the internet refuses to admit that.
You have a point. But if they keep supporting it, they don’t inspire that part of the Internet to actually stop living in the past and stop developing for old formats. And then they see no need to adopt better, more secure, more modern formats.
Stop selling cars. There is a better way for personal transportation. If we don’t stop selling cars, there will be always need to use them.
That analogy is flawed, because unlike with cars, the majority of users and Web developers have already moved on. Simply because flash hasn’t been supported for mobile use for quite a while now. It’s like closing most of the gas stations and stop selling cars with combustion engines for some time and wait until everyone has moved on and then bring out a new car with an old school engine. Doesn’t make sense
Nope. You don’t get that analogy at all. What I’m trying to say with that analogy is to leave a market to decide by itself.
I see your point.
Because all my movie and TV show streaming sites use it dammit :P
A material design update would have made me give it a try again. Hopefully they’re working on one.
I wonder if they’ve gotten leaner now. Back in the day they were killing quite a bit of battery, hence why I went Chrome.
i don’t even have flash running on a desktop at this point unless i need it for something, because the other 99% of the time it’s just used to show ads
If you use chrome on a desktop, unless you go into developer options and disable it, you are still using flash, just the Google pepper version instead of the seperate install package.
that version gets disabled right away, it has issues compared to the separate install, i don’t use chrome as my primary anyways
So is flash actually 100% baked in? Or does it require the old ice cream sandwich mobile flash apk installed as well?
No thanks on material design update. I don’t need 1/3 of my screen blocked by a solid color bar.
Because that is a new thing for browsers on mobile devices…
Does it actually run it without dropped frames? Every promise of mobile flash has left playback laggy as he11.
It runs fine on my Nexus 10 and Nexus 4 – both video and audio. However, and that’s a big however, the audio lags 1.5 seconds behind the video. Which makes it the flash support useless.
So its all normal, being that is almost a requirement of flash to ruin the experience.
Just tested few sites with my Nexus 5 and it runs very well.
App storage control?
Really, i dont think Chrome needs that.
Flash, let it die, if its flash based I don’t want to use it.
Outright battery eater.
Wow. Just installed and surprised how smooth it runs. *thumbs_up*
Only reason I use Dolphin is because of the handy bookmarks pane. Does anyone know of another browser that has the same function?