The Tech Bench

Since the release of the first iPhone, one of the features that has been missing is Flash support.

The mobile Safari browser is great, but so many of the online videos and interactive web content is written in Adobe Flash that the lack of a Flash player for the iPhone takes away from the otherwise amazing mobile web experience.

So far, Apple has been vocal in why we don’t need Flash for the iPhone. Their stance is that Flash is a resource hog and that video and interactive web content can be better delivered with other standards like Java (I mostly agree.)

Flash section of Travelocity on the HTC Hero

Adobe, of course, believes in the Flash standard and has demoed the first Android device with Flash built-in, the HTC Hero smartphone.

The demo shows Flash video, a Flash game and interactive Flash web content. The usability looks great and the ability to double-tap to bring the content full screen is nice. The speed is a little on the slow side.

According to Adobe, this version of Flash (built into the phone’s ROM) will play about 80% of the Flash content out there flawlessly.

If Adobe can get Flash to run well on other mobile devices, Apple may come around to supporting the standard in the iPhone.

With Adobe continuing to put resources into making Flash mobile friendly, combined with the increasing performance of smartphones, I’d say there’s a good chance Flash will come to the iPhone.

[ Adobe Press Release ] [ HTC Hero Flash Demo ]