Flash a-ah. Saviour of the Universe?
As the MWC came to an end this year, Google and Adobe announced they’ve struck up a partnership to bring Adobe products to Android handsets. Adobe Flash is a popular web format used for embedding video and animation and is used in many advertising applications. And Adobe AIR is a cross-platform suit of routines to put Flash and other functions directly into user apps.
Flash has been in the news recently, mainly due to the criticism ladled upon Apple’s new iPad for not supporting it. Apple Chief, Steve Jobs is on record as expecting the world to move away from Flash products and instead to embrace HTML5. He’s further alleged to have rubbished Adobe in a corporate Q&A session after the launch of iPad, explaining that the reason Apple doesn’t support Flash in it’s devices, is because it’s so buggy and the developer is lazy. He’s said to have blamed most Apple Mac crashes on Flash problems.
I’m not going to repeat what he’s supposed to have said about Google, but it’s interesting to see Google and Adobe working so closely, so soon after the announcement of iPad. It’s a competitive market, and no one device will be all things to all people. Many games and applications, animations and web sites that I use online require Flash, so I’m pleased it’s coming to my favourite operating system soon.
Going robo-shopping in Barcelona
More Android phones are confirmed at the Mobile World Congress this week, for release in the UK market. Vodafone are taking two from HTC and T-Mobile is branding another Huawei device in its own livery, the same way it began selling HTC devices. All of these babies run the latest version of Android, 2.1 out of the box, and are reported as available from April.
From HTC, Vodafone pick up two capacitive touchscreen phones. First the successor to the Hero, the HTC Legend. With a 3.2 inch AMOLED QVGA screen displaying 320×480, it replaces the trackball of the Hero for an optical joystick. Second, and for higher-end Voda customers, is the HTC Desire. Featuring a 3.7 inch AMOLED WVGA screen display of 480×800 pixels, it’s powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. It also has the snazzy optical joystick.
From Huawei, T-Mobile will launch its own-brand Pulse Mini, applying the mini-me trend that’s developing across manufacturers to the design of the original Pulse. It features a 2.8 inch QVGA resistive touchscreen with a stylus. Readers will know it’s hard for me to buzz about naff resistive-screen technology, but more exciting news is that the Pulse Mini should be much cheaper than the two HTC models, increasing Android 2.1 adoption and bringing it to to pre-pay customers.
Does this make the OS choice simpler for consumers, or more ridiculous?
More operating system news at the MWC today as chipset maker Intel and phone giant Nokia declare a merger of their Moblin and Maemo platforms to create MeeGo. Intel will also source HSPA tech from Nokia and the relationship is likely to see many more Intel chips powering Nokia smartphones.
Developed over a five-year cycle, Maemo shipped on Nokia internet tablets since 2005. It stepped across into the high-end smartphone arena last quarter with version 5 for the N900, a hyper-phone for nerds. Moblin (Mobile Linux) has been around since 2007, appearing on netbooks and mobile internet devices.
MeeGo will be open source and hosted by the Linux Foundation, aimed at supporting a range of device types, it will appear on very high-end smartphones, netbooks, tablets and connected televisions towards the end of the year.
A fine pedigree or a bastard child? Time will tell. It makes sense to scale-up to compete and the two companies could become powerful allies. Both parents here contribute powerful functionality, but providing tools and apps that customers want to use will be key to running alongside the other big names.
MeeGo? Apart from sounding like a Pokémon and further challenging my spelling-check, it shows you how hard it’s becoming to name a product.
Like to know more? press release here
Phones, Phones, Phones
Valentine’s day saw the first phone launches announced at Mobile World Congress 2010, well at press launches held in nightclubs around the event venue.
Samsung’s first Bada OS phone has arrived, the touchscreen Wave or S8500. Featuring a 1GHz processor and a striking 3.3” super-AMOLED screen, technology to make the display brighter, and clearer in sunlight. The phone carries a new version of the very usable Samsung TouchWiz interface and is the first phone to ship with Bluetooth 3.0 onboard.
Sony Ericsson meanwhile are exhibiting three new phones, all mini-me versions of existing products. The Xperia X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro are both 1GHz and Android powered and the Vivaz Pro is a Symbian phone, running at 720MHz and capable of taking HD video. The Pro part here means that a slide out QWERTY keyboard has been added, increasing the Vivaz’s width by only 2mm.
(Pictures courtesy of GSM Arena)
As the MWC came to an end this year, Google and Adobe announced they’ve struck up a partnership to bring Adobe products to Android handsets. Adobe Flash is a popular web format used for embedding video and animation and is used in many advertising applications. And Adobe AIR is a cross-platform suit of routines to put Flash and other functions directly into user apps.
