Flash 10.1 Beta 3 for Android in the wild

With Andorid OS 2.2 out in the wild, I am sure some proud owners of the new OS have gone out and downloaded the Flash 10.1 Beta to try out the ‘full web experience’ that Google, and Adobe love talking about. The Beta itself is fairly easy to get a hold of, you just need to download and install it from the market! The Beta has come a long way since it’s introduction at Google I/O, but it still has a ways to go. The interface seems to be a bit sluggish on both 3G and WiFi alike, and there is that nasty issue of keyboard interfacing that has to be addressed.

This is a huge undertaking. When you talk about delays and whatnot regarding the arrival of Flash on the mobile market, there are a lot of things you have to keep in mind. Adobe and Google are teaming up to bring us a FULL Flash experience on our phones, if they were just aiming to bring us movies or a few better rendered web pages, that would be different. No, they are bring us movies, games, interfaces, everything. The whole shebang. That means that they have to come up with an acceptable way to replicate keyboard commands that run some games and apps out there from just a touchscreen and some non-standard buttons. The solution has to be sleek, the solution has to be responsive, and the solution has to be idiot proof.

Think about that for a second. Just try and think of a solution that fits all the criteria listed above, because you know that will be the criteria it will be held to when they announce it to be finished. You could try a software keyboard, but in portrait mode the keyboard would be awfully squished. So much so that it would be nigh impossible to try and hit a combination of the WASD keys together. In Landscape mode there wouldn’t be hardly any room left for the app after the keyboard was brought up, especially on some smaller device screens, so no to a virtual keyboard in its current form.

Maybe you could have a voice-to-text converter. Sure that might work for some longer strung inputs, but could you imagine shouting “SPACE, SPACE, W, W, W, D, D, A, S!” at your phone, trying to control a game? Yeah, neither could I.

Flash will be a huge booster to the Android load out, and although it might not be seen in everyday use, it will be awfully nice to have. With the Flash Mobile Showcase up and running, you can see which sites have been optimized to run on the new system. I think it is coming along nicely, and I cant wait to see what Adobe or even what some modding crews do to fix the input issues. For now, the video below shows you how far Google and Adobe have come:

Where would you like them to go from here? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks Tipsters!

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