HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support

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The Flash Platform is coming to Android. Today HTC is shipping their Android-based HTC Hero smartphone and it’s the first Android device with Flash on it. There was a lot of news this week about Adobe delivering the full Flash Player 10 experience in the browser and this is an important step towards this. We’ve set up a section on the Adobe Developer center with HTC Hero information and Adrian Ludwig has a good video that shows off what you’ll be able to do with the device there. Adobe’s mobile evangelist Mark Doherty also has a lot more info. One of the cool things for Flash developers is that this is the first device with multi-touch support for Flash content.

I think the main thing this shows is that Adobe is committed to mobile devices and ensuring that every phone, not just smartphones, has some kind of Flash support. Ultimately it’s about bringing the best Flash experience that the phone can handle. Once we get the runtimes out for Flash Player 10 and AIR then we’ll be able to bring a much more full fidelity experience to higher end devices. But we’ll also continue to support the less powerful devices as well with as many features of the Flash Platform as possible.

In addition to the support for the Flash Platform on the Hero, HTC also announced they’re joining the Open Screen Project (OSP). As I’ve been talking to customers about the OSP I’ve discovered a lot of interesting tidbits about the project. One of them is how we’re working with members to port Flash Player to their devices/chipsets/operating systems. In this case, with Android and the HTC Hero, we gave HTC an ActiveX and Linux reference implementation of the Flash plug-in. HTC then used those to implementations to port the Flash Player to the Android web browser on the device. Adobe, HTC, and Android engineers then worked together to optimize it.

That’s happening with a lot of our partners and all of the work we do helps feed into making Flash Player 10 available for more devices. As an example ever since ARM joined the Open Screen Project engineers from both Adobe and ARM have been working together to make optimizations to the Flash Player for ARM chipsets so any netbook, smart phone, or embedded device with an ARM chip will get an optimized Flash Platform experience. I think it’s going to be a good year for Flash Platform developers who want to get into the mobile space.

Related posts:

  1. Android uses XML for User Interface Language
  2. Adobe Open Screen Project – Open Specifications and Open Technology to Help Expand Flash Player Reach
  3. Updates to the Google Maps API for Flash Including Support for Flash CS3
  4. The Flash Platform (again) and Hello Flash Catalyst
  5. This One Time, at Flash Camp….I Got Flash CS4
  • http://www.newvibes.com KJ

    AIR applications for mobile phones? yes please!

  • http://leefernandes.com lee

    Glad to hear it! I hear from a lot of people a desire for the full flash player on mobile devices, not just from professionals either.

  • Sathya

    Good News!!! If the FP 10 is made available in the devices, whether Interactivity can be done through AS3??? I’m curious to know why it is still AS 2.0 is used for Mobile platform.

  • http://sympleton.com Joel Fiser

    We’re Loving Flash 10 on all these groovy devices. However, I have yet to hear confirmation on the most important aspect of all this.
    Are we going to have an AS3 API into the devices so we can access GPS, the phone’s functions, etc?
    If we get this, there will be a creative explosion for smart phone software that will make the Apple App store seem silly. Without it, still cool – but no Renaissance.

  • http://bluemetal.tistory.com kevin lee

    great news! nice to hear that.