HTC Hero Android phone to ship with Adobe Flash

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 25 June 2009 05:08

Business IT - Technology

Adobe's Flash technology makes its debut on the Android platform with the announcement of the HTC Hero. The new handset will start shipping in Europe next month.

Like it or not, Flash is a significant part of the Web. Although the iPhone has shown a device can be successful without Flash support, the arrival of Flash for Android will be a useful boost for the open-source platform's acceptance by consumers.

"As the first Android device with Flash, the new HTC Hero represents a key milestone for Android and the Flash Platform. With close to 80 percent of all videos online delivered with Adobe Flash technology, consumers want to access rich Web content on-the-go," said David Wadhwani, vice president and general manager of Adobe's platform business unit.

But it appears that the Android version of Flash may be somewhere between Flash Lite (as used on certain other mobile phones) and the full implementation found on personal computers.

"The collaboration with HTC offers people a more complete Flash based Web browsing experience today and presents an important step towards full Web browsing with Flash Player 10 on mobile phones in the future," explained Wadhwani.

Flash on Android supports ActionScript 2.0, whereas ActionScript 3.0 was introduced in 2006 with Flash Player 9.

Still, users will be able to play videos encoded with the Sorenson or On2 VP6 codecs (including YouTube videos), listen to large streaming MP3 files, and use web interface elements designed with older versions of Flash in mind.

For more on Flash for Android development and details of the HTC Hero, please read on.