Hell's gates are now open, and we're talking about pretty hot stuff entering the world of mobile devices as Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 is now out and official for a myriad of devices and ready to consumed by millions of users. What exactly comprises of mobile devices here? We're looking devices that include smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices with operating systems such as Google's Android 2.2 aka Froyo, BlackBerry, webOS, future versions of Windows Phone OS, LiMo, MeeGo, and Symbian OS. These are expected to be made available via over-the-air downloads and to be preinstalled "in the coming months".
Adobe has said that the new Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices have been completely redesigned optimized and now has "mobile-specific input models" like support for the accelerometer, smart zooming function (now the iPad's not the only hot rod that can do this now, can it?), multi-touch and gesture support. "Performance optimization work with virtually all major mobile silicon and platform vendors makes efficient use of CPU and battery performance." Some of these include Smart Rendering, which means Flash only works on what's visible on the screen, saving up precious CPU cycles; Sleep Mode, which makes Flash slow down when the phone powers down into screen saver mode; Advanced Out-of-Memory Management to handle non-optimized Flash apps so they don't chew up so much dang phone memory; and auto pausing of the Flash player when there's a phone event, like an incoming call. Oh, and it supports hardware acceleration from the GPU (hello, Tegra!), and hardware acceleration for audio and video playback.
They've got some major backing from the industry too, and we can expect some big guns on the content side of things on top of the 3 million Flash devs out there: AgencyNet, AKQA, Armor Games, Blitz, CNET.com, HBO, JustinTV, Kongregate, Mochi Media, Msnbc Digital Network, Turner, Nickelodeon, Odopod, Photobucket, RAIN, Roundarch, Sony Pictures, South Park Studios, USA Network, Viacom, Warner Brothers and more.
So where's the Flash Player? Adobe says: Flash Player 10.1 is expected to be available as a final production release for devices once users are able to upgrade to Android 2.2 “Froyo.” Once upgraded, smart phones, tablets and other devices can be updated with Flash Player 10.1 over-the-air via numerous ways including content triggered downloads, system software updates and on-device app catalogs such as Android Market, Adobe Labs and other venues. The upgrade mechanism will vary by device and device manufacturer.
Armed with the new Flash Player on your phone? Check out m.flash.com for a showcase websites to try out. Designers, refer to Adobe's Optimize web content for mobile delivery article to fully tap this new dimension.