Adobe vows Flash 10.2 on Android 3.0 tablets

Adobe to kick off Mobile World Congress said that Flash 10.2 was coming to both Android 3.0 devices like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the BlackBerry PlayBook. Like on the Mac and PC, both will support Stage Video GPU acceleration to take much of the load off the processor. The shift should significantly extend battery life and lead to smoother performance as a whole, Adobe said.

No timeline was given for when 10.2 would arrive, but it was implied that Flash 10.2 would come to phones and by extension that Android 3.0 might as well. Most believe so far that Ice Cream, Android 2.4, is the version to bring some 3.0 features to non-tablet hardware.

Along with the software update, Adobe added that about 84 million devices currently supported AIR either natively or through compiling it into a native app, such as through Android or iOS. It anticipated about 200 million having support by the end of 2011. The software developer didn't say how many of these it thought would use Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS or iOS.

Native mobile Flash has shipped on 20 million devices so far, or about 12 percent of all smartphones. About 50 upcoming tablets will have full Flash support this year.

The addition of GPU-enabled Flash on mobile devices could eliminate a major reservation of Apple's about Flash. It has so far refused to use Flash, in part because it doesn't run well in many situations, either in raw performance or battery life. While Adobe has yet to demonstrate the benefits in public, 10.2 could at least lead to an experience closer to that which Apple wants, especially for video. Apple has contended that HTML5 is better for pure movie viewing as it lets the graphics hardware in a mobile device use its full hardware acceleration.

By Electronista Staff