Spotted an interesting article on Scott Janousek’s blog stating that Flash Lite 4 is now available from Calsoft, one of Adobe’s partners responsible for getting the Flash Lite run-time working across various chipsets.
So why another version of Flash Lite? Isn’t Flash Player 10.1 for mobile going to make Flash Lite redundant?
Well not quite yet. Given the minimum device spec (order of a minimum of 600 Mhz ARM11)Â required to run 10.1 it’s going to be some time before there’s significant penetration across a wide range of devices. Plus whereas 10.1 is a browser only plug-in, Flash Lite 4 is both standalone and a browser plug-in.
So while developers can get to work straight away writing Flash Lite 4 applications and games for various distribution channels, those wishing to target Flash Player 10.1 will need to wait for AIR 2.0 to roll out across mobile.
Many may look down on Flash Lite as nothing more than a stunted version of Flash 10, but it makes a lot of sense for those wishing to write apps quickly or for those who simply want to port their existing web based games to mobile with minimum fuss. Its support for ActionScript 3 should make porting significantly easier than before where many developers would previously have had to actually re-write their code in ActionScript 2.
Outside Japan, Flash Lite doesn’t seem to have had the success Adobe would have hoped for. It’ll be interesting to see if that changes with Flash Lite 4.
Any idea how we can download Flash lite 4. I have a tablet that has ARM11 with Telechip8902 and don’t seem to find the flash that will get android 2.1 to work.
Hi Mark, as far as I’m aware Flash Lite 4 is only made available to OEMs. If it doesn’t come as part of your device’s OS then you aren’t likely to be able to use it on that device.