There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about Nexus Ones running the Desire ROM from Paul at MoDaCo, which includes Flash 10.1. We’ve seen demonstration videos, and lots of speculation about Flash’s drain on the battery. But Adobe caught wind of the hubbub and decided to clear a few things up. First of all, they say the ROM employs an alpha version of Flash Lite, and not Flash 10.1. They also put together a long test video to give us all a better idea of the battery life we can actually expect with the final version of 10.1, and if this demonstration is representative of the final product, we should be able to watch a full movie before the phone croaks. Vid after the break:

Adobe’s been in the news almost every week, in one way or another, over the last few weeks. You’ve heard, right? Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch has certainly heard, and he’s pretty outspoken on the whole thing. He wants to set the record straight in regards to how people look at his company, and think about their product, and he’s got a pretty good strategy to make that happen: show it off. That’s exactly what Adobe did in Barcelona, during Mobile World Congress. They decided to show off to the world just what it was Adobe is planning for the mobile platforms of the future, and they did it all with the help of Google’s Android. While Adobe’s AIR software will be hitting several different phone models, the more specific Flash 10.1 was showcased on a Nexus One, the king of Android phones (currently on the market). Lynch wants to make sure that everyone knows Flash is still here, and with the help of Google, that may just be an option for the mobile industry. Plus, it does well to segregate them from the “i” competition.

via All Things D

One of the highlights of Sense UI gracing the Android Operating System, was HTC’s decision to include Flash player capabilities within the browser. Of course, as most things are, it was met with all sorts of reviews: some saying the idea and implementation was great, to others saying they wish it never would have happened. Well, hopefully your personal belief veers more towards the good, because it’s official that Google is pushing the software into their stock Android devices.

Erick Tseng was on scene at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday, taking part in Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s (keep the Eric(k)s straight, please) keynote regarding the presence and evolution of Google’s little green robot. Tseng and the rest of the Android teams plan to work closely with Adobe, so that they can “tie the Flash runtime directly into the high-end hardware in these devices.” Seems a lofty premise, unless the Android team believes devices like the CLIQ or Pulse are high-end devices. In which case, giving the Nexus One the “superphone” label wasn’t such a bad idea after all. No release date as of now, but you can be sure this isn’t the last time we’ll be hearing about this. What do you think? Is supporting Flash the best way to go?

via PC World

Adobe announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that Flash and AIR would be available for the Android platform in the first half of the year as part of a broader effort by the Open Screen Project to bring the software to a vast bevy of phones running the BlackBerry platform, Symbian OS, Palm’s webOS and Windows Mobile. Adobe also released the beta version of Flash 10.1 to developers and content providers worldwide.

My obsession with access to one particular program continues to dominate my take on any news that could possibly be tied to it. I am speaking of the AIR Twitter app, TweetDeck, which I’m hoping will finally be coming to Android.

Whatever happens with TweetDeck, I suspect AIR will open up a Universe of possibilities for social apps. Adobe simply says that it “allows developers to easily create contextual applications that are characterized by their ability to adapt presentation and performance to different application contexts while reusing code for each device or platform.”

Check out videos of Flash and AIR running on Android after the break:

Feeling low on your Android news diet? We’ve got the answer. Three cookie-sized (get it?) pieces of news small enough we can fit them in a single article, but big enough we can’t let them pass.

First up, the next pastry-inspired codename for the Android OS will be Gingerbread, according to a Googler. It is anybody’s guess what name will begin with “H” though.

Next, straight from your favorite science-fiction movie comes this statement from Franz Och, Google’s Head of translation services: “We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time” Yes, apparently in a couple of years we will be able to talk in a language and have a phone say the same thing in another. This will make for even funnier translations. When you ask your Latino neighbor if he wants to hang out and he suddenly punches you in the face, at least you’ll know who to thank for that.

And lastly, if you’re stuck on an Android version lower than 2.1 you have yet another reason to bash your phone’s manufacturer and to buy the phone directly from Google next time. When Flash 10.1 arrives for Android phones, it will only work on version 2.1. However, Flash 10.1 is supposed to arrive the first half of this year. Maybe by then most phones will be updated to 2.1.

[Via Gizmodo, LWN, Times Online]