Flash 10.1 Coming to Windows Mobile and WebOS Phones Soon

One of the biggest things holding back smartphones from becoming the default method for accessing the internet is the lack of Flash support. Just about everything out there in internet-land runs on Flash, meaning a lot of phones can’t do more than look at text and images. Can you imagine the internet with no video, no browser games, no flashy moving menus? Sounds more like a Depression-era schoolhouse than the Recession-era interwebs.

Despite the myriad of workarounds some people have made for Flash on mobile devices, Adobe has finally announced an official version of Flash that will work directly on any device that accesses the internet, whether that be your desktop PC or your Palm Pre.

Adobe announced Flash 10.1 at the MAX conference in Los Angeles, saying it’s the first version to really exhibit the virtues of the Open Screen Project. Flash 10.1 is supposed to work on anything with a screen and provide a specific set of features to users regardless of the size of the screen or the OS running in the background. There has long been support for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, so the real question is how 10.1 will work with the myriad mobile platforms.

Adobe has taken all that into account, announcing public betas for Windows Mobile and WebOS (think Palm Pre) versions of Flash 10.1 by the end of the year. Android and Symbian phones will be getting their own beta a few months later in early 2010. Even BlackBerry manufacturer RIM has officially joined the Open Screen Project and will presumably getting Flash 10.1 sometime next year.

That list covers most of the major smartphones in the world, but there is a glaring omission. Can you see it? There’s no mention anywhere of Flash 10.1 support for the iPhone OS. That’s a pretty big oversight considering the popularity of the iPhone. And yet, it seems a little unsurprising considering Apple’s seeming disinterest in porting Flash to their device in the past. Perhaps Apple has a different solution in mind.

Just check out this video to see how well Adobe has made Flash 10.1 integrate with the interface on the Palm Pre. Flash knows when you’ve navigated away from the window it’s operating in and reacts accordingly.

That Palm Pre is running 3 instances of Flash simultaneously! I have laptops that can’t do that without grinding to a halt. Flash 10.1 takes advantage of inner processing power by using GPU acceleration in future chipsets (like Tegra and Snapdragon). That means Flash will take up even less processing power from the main chip, leaving it open to multitask other things. Flash combined with the new generation of mobile chipsets should finally make the phone as much of a multitasking powerhouse as your computer is.

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