Flash on iPhone 3G

The old iPhone and the new iPhone 3G provide support for many popular applications including push-email but surprisingly lacked in Flash capability. This limited the functionality of the iPhone as Adobe Flash is the most widely used web animation platform in the world. Although the initial iPhone did not also support Microsoft Exchange mail, the iPhone 3G rectified this shortcoming.

But iPhone owners were disappointed when the new iPhone lacked the Flash capability in its new 3G avatar. This shortcoming is soon to be rectified as announced by Adobe chairman Shantanu Narayen. Narayen revealed that Adobe and Apple had reached an understanding as far back as June 2008 regarding development of an iPhone-only flash version.

The Adobe chairman explained that the PC version of flash would be too heavy for the iPhone given the limited processing power and battery life vis-a-vis the PC. At the same time the Flash Lite is just not up to the mark for a smartphone of iPhone's calibre. This has necessitated the development of an iPhone-only version of flash to support the spectacular possibilities that flash offers.

However the major development work would be carried out at Adobe's end and not at Apple's, which would finally approve the flash version. Initially Steve Jobs wasn't too keen about Flash because of its resource hogging tendencies but has finally come around to the need for flash supported iPhone to deliver richer web experience.

What is taking time for the iPhone Flash version to hit the markets is the fact that a iPhone-only flash version that is not resource heavy is a pretty tough nut to crack admits Narayen. Still it can be reasonably expected that we would be seeing a fully functional flash version for the iPhone in the first half of 2009.

This development would be welcomed by all iPhone users but most by the iPhone web and gaming freaks that figure in the plentiful. After all Flash enabled web pages offer far more absorbing and engrossing browsing experience. The same holds true for flash-enabled gaming, which is far more fun with many cool features to be uncovered and explored.