FlashLite
Latest
Chumby NeTV unfurls its web-connected tentacles for the FCC
FCC appearances are usually a good indication of a product's imminent arrival. And with Chumby's NeTV already headed to developers' hands later this month, this Commission filing isn't exactly catching us off guard. Now, a firm retail date is all that's missing to complete the once huggable platform's official outing. Those unfamiliar with the Flash-based, WiFi-enabled device can look forward to a webified HDTV experience that'll stream online content, as well as texts and photos from your Android phone, to a flat panel display. Sure, there are plenty of other options to bring the net to your livingroom, but how many of them can claim an octopus as their mascot? Check out the source link below if emissions testing and user manuals tickle your fancy.
Chumby NeTV turns any HDTV into a Chumby that's hard to hug (video)
Existing HDTV owners cursing because they don't have a Smart TV will soon catch a break from Chumby. It's developing the NeTV, turning any TV (geddit?) into a giant, unhuggable Chumby that connects in-line between source and TV, overlaying the interface on top of your picture. It ships with a seven button remote, but most people should consider using their Android phones to get the most out of the on-board WebKit browser, seamless photo sharing and notifications that put your SMS messages and emails onto the big screen. Developers are gonna get their mitts on the device later this month, but you can catch a sneak peek after the break [Thanks, Torin]
Aluratek goes boldly where many have gone before, announces Libre Air e-reader and Cinepad tablet (update)
In what appears to be Aluratek's latest feat of badge engineering, the company's outing a familiar pair of slates -- a 5-inch reflective TFT LCD e-reader and a 10-inch Android tablet. Aluratek's calling the former the Libre Air, and says it's nigh-identical to last year's Libre Pro save the addition of WiFi, a curved chassis and a $130 price price point. Meanwhile, the spacious capacitive touchscreen at right (which ships with Adobe Flash Lite) belongs to the Cinepad. Last time we saw the Foxconn-sourced tablet, it ran Android 1.6 on a Marvell Armada 100 SoC and a fairly unimpressive screen, so things had better have changed drastically -- Aluratek's pricing it at $300 when it ships next month. PR after the break. Update: Aluratek tells us the Cinepad now runs Android 2.2 on a 1024 x 600 screen, and has a 2600mAh battery that should last five to ten hours on a charge. %Gallery-112646%
Nokia N8 review
The first time Nokia's N8-00 popped up on our radar was way back in early February of this year. On that chilly, misty morning, we learned of a mythical being capable of shooting 12 megapixel stills, recording 720p video, outputting via HDMI, and -- most importantly -- ushering in the promised Symbian^3 touch revolution. It's been a long road of leaks, teasers, hands-ons, and previews since then, but at long last, the legend of the N8 has become a purchasable commodity. All the early specs have survived, including the 3.5-inch AMOLED display, but the key question today, as it was at the beginning, relates to that all-new software within: does Symbian^3 succeed in elevating Nokia's touchscreen experience or does it drag down an otherwise stellar combination of high-end parts? For that verdict and much, much more, join us after the break.%Gallery-103738%%Gallery-104212%
Rydeen hopes to cash in on tablet fever with Android-based, Armada-powered PND
You may never have heard of auto electronics provider Rydeen Mobile, but it certainly knows of you -- or more specifically, your desire to obtain a slick new tablet PC -- and has thus created an 7-inch Android tablet that integrates the dedicated map functionality of its GPS machines. The "gPad" GCOM701 won't be a terribly high-end device, mind you, with an 800MHz ARMADA 166 SOC, 256MB of RAM, bring-your-own-microSD-storage and what we're led to believe is a resistive touchscreen, but it sounds like at least Rydeen isn't being stingy on the software front. You'll find a full suite of Google Apps, Adobe Flash Lite 4 and AVI support, not to mention 4 million points of interest thanks to the integrated Navteq client. Connectivity include GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, both mini and full-sized USB ports, plus a front-facing camera for video chat, and there's a 2400mAh battery the company claims will provide six hours of solid use. Find it this November at an unspecified price, no doubt alongside the pictured (but not mentioned) car dock.
Latest EVO 4G root uses Flash Lite exploit to do its deed
The cat-and-mouse struggle between Android users, carriers, and manufacturers to gain, patch, and re-gain root is one that shows no signs of slowing down, but the EVO 4G's latest recommended root method is particularly creative. Made necessary after the most recent over-the-air firmware update patched the old way of doing it, you've now got to visit a page on Adobe's site for tweaking local Flash settings, at which point a script works some magic and apparently takes advantage of a vulnerability in the EVO's Flash Lite build. Of course, that's just one of twelve harrowing steps in the whole process -- but regardless, it's not often we're thanking our lucky stars for a security issue.
Flash 10.1 on Froyo goes tete-a-tete with Flash Lite 4 on Eclair: butter vs. stutter (video)
Believe it or not, your newly-upgraded Nexus One isn't the first Android smartphone to have Adobe Flash video capability, nor even the first to play said content on a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU -- Europe's been rocking the HTC Desire since April, which sports a little something called Flash Lite even on the older Android 2.1 OS. Will frozen yogurt outperform puff pastry on its home turf? Find out in a blind taste test video showdown after the break.
Dell Aero details confirmed with new leak: 624MHz processor, handwriting support, DRM
Compared to the other crazy handsets Dell leaked today, the Aero is definitely the runt of the litter. But with a leaked Q2 AT&T release date, the Aero will be first on our doorstep. What other juicy morsels have we gathered? On the hardware side, it's sadly a slow 624MHz Marvell processor that drives that 3.5-inch capacitive multitouch screen, but hey, like the Chinese model, it's planned to ship with a capacitive stylus for handwriting recognition. More interesting is software. Like Motorola's CLIQ, Aero comes with QuickOffice right out of the box, and supports Microsoft ActiveSync and Exchange to ostensibly keep in touch with your business. For the social crowd, there's on-device photo editing and "aggregated notifications" for the bevy of social networks Dell's agreed to support. While you probably knew the device would have a WebKit browser with Flash Lite, leaks reveal it will have a robust media player as well -- robust enough to have some sort of music streaming and download ability (PlayReady, anyone?) protected by Windows Media DRM. Though it's probably still Android 1.5 onboard, docs show Dell plans a "refresh" to Android 2.1 sometime between Q3 and Q4, but it's hard to say whether the Aero will get an OTA update, or whether only new Aeros will ship with Eclair. That said, given the relative insignificance of this handset compared to its new big brothers, we're more than willing to wait and find out.%Gallery-91354%
Motorola makes i1 official, melds Android and push-to-talk this summer on Sprint
Right on cue, just after the aptly-timed teaser poster, Motorola signs on just the right dotted lines to make its i1 push-to-talk Android handset official. Let's run through the specs quickly, shall we? A 3.1-inch HVGA (320 x 480) touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 4x zoom, WiFi, and microSD expansion -- no mention of the processor, so we'll have to find out on our own later. The OS version is 1.5 and, while there's oddly not a single mention in either the press release of fact sheet, given the official images and unofficial leaks, it's definitely got Motoblur. The browser of choice is Opera Mini 5 with support for Flash 8, and if you're worried about Mother Nature's wrath, the i1 meets Military 810F standards for handling averse weather conditions. iDEN lovers can pick up the call sometime this summer on Sprint, with price yet to be named. Update: Motorola's just sent word that the i1 does not have Motoblur, despite the presence of the traditional green call / blue contacts buttons. That begs the question, then, of what exactly defines Motoblur here (is just the Happenings widget missing?), and what Android skin is on the i1 -- the press images here are definitely not showing vanilla 1.5. We're still awaiting a response to that, stay tuned. %Gallery-88737%
Motorola Devour has Flash support, makes Pixi look like an underachiever
Motorola's official spec sheet for the Devour reveals that there'll be a Flash Lite runtime on board -- presumably version 3.1, which offers support for a variety of video codecs and Flash 9 content -- and more importantly, it'll work in the browser. That's pretty cool -- it gives the Devour one small leg up on its Droid big brother and matches capabilities that HTC has rolled out in the past on the Hero, but what's more interesting is that the Devour allegedly uses the same next-gen low-cost smartphone processor from Qualcomm, the MSM7627, as the Pixi. Palm has elected not to roll out the Pre's upcoming Flash support to the Pixi on account of its lower-end specs, which begs the question: is Android's Flash Lite 3.1 player significantly more efficient than webOS' Flash 10.1 player, does the Devour have more horsepower packed in there than it's letting on, or does Palm just have higher performance standards for annoying ads than Moto does? [Thanks, StevenQ]
Video: Intel-powered set-top box running Flash, decoding HD video
Intel's making a big TV push here at IDF, and a lot of it centers around the CE 3100 Media Processor, which combines an 800MHz Pentium M core with a proprietary video processing core all on one chip. That's about as much power as a 1.2GHz Atom, and it's enabled some pretty cool demos, like this box that's running a custom Flash Lite UI on top of Linux. The video silicon accelerates H.264 playback, so newer YouTube content looked fantastic -- some of the best big-screen YouTube we've ever seen actually. That's all the software was optimized for, however -- older content that required software decoding looked much worse, and playback wasn't stellar. That's down to optimization, though, and we're willing to forgive it, especially since the demo was put together in two weeks or so. Of course, the big question when you're looking at an IA core running Flash is whether or not this rig can do Hulu on a big screen, and the answer was cautious but optimistic: it's technically possible and even somewhat easy, but as usual it all comes down to Hulu allowing it. (What else did you expect?) Still, it's interesting to see a set-top box with some actual processing power, and Intel's got some more interesting demos for us coming up, including a three-tuner Tru2Way HTPC that can send video to a PS3. Video after the break!
BlackBerry browser to get full Flash and Silverlight support?
Sounds like RIM's trying to do more than just bring the woeful BlackBerry browser up to par with the competition -- Boy Genius Report says Waterloo's trying to leap way out in front by building in full Flash and Silverlight support. BGR says it'll be full Flash, not Flash Lite or the Open Screen Project's mobile Flash 10 implementation, but don't get too excited: it'll be next summer before RIM ships devices fast enough to handle it, and even then things may be delayed since they'll need HSPA or LTE data speeds to pull it off. Hey, maybe in the meantime all those engineers could maybe work on things like properly rendering a text page? Just an idea.
Flash Lite 3.1 update comes to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Typically, you expect Flash Lite updates (or updates to pretty much any module that comes bundled with the phone, for that matter) to be delivered via firmware bump -- a long, slow, frustrating process that can take weeks or months across all regions and product codes for a given Nokia model -- but refreshingly, a new version of Flash Lite is now available to 5800 XpressMusic owners by a very different method. The rarely-used App Update mechanism in newer versions of S60 is being used to push out Flash Lite 3.1, which is said to "improve web browsing, " add Flash 9 support, MP3 streaming, and add a host of other goodies -- and perhaps most importantly, YouTube's now more usable. Let's hope the N97 has this out of the gate, eh?
Adobe Flash platform for HDTVs & connected devices on display at NAB
The plan is to get Flash from every computer to every television screen, and Adobe's ready to take the next step this week at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas. Broadcom, Comcast, STMicroelectronics, NXP Semiconductors, and Sigma Designs join Intel as set-top box makers with chipsets ready to stream widgets and HD video to connected televisions, while content is on the way from Netflix, New York Times, Disney and Atlantic Records. Of course, Yahoo's widgets and Microsoft Silverlight aim to turn up the interactivity and streaming video to TVs and handhelds as well, though Adobe seems content to share with Yahoo! if need be -- Vizio's Connected HDTV demo and Intel's CE 3100 support both -- expect the blades to come out when Flash enabled hardware comes to market in the second half of this year.[Via Venture Beat]
Intel, Adobe plan a chicken in every pot, Flash on every HDTV
Intel's been talking up the CE 3100 (née Canmore) processor for quite some time now, and with Adobe as its newest partner -- late again Yahoo? -- pushing HD Flash streams to Internet connected TV's and set-top boxes. Frankly, we've already gotten quite used to YouTube and other online video access in the living room, but with the first Flash Lite-enabled system-on-a-chip due by mid-2009 and everyone and their mom watching TV on Hulu this could be the push that takes online video to the TV mainstream. Still, Intel must know that only Flash support so 2008, we'll be expecting more widgets to come.
Verizon launches Flash-based "Dashboard" for snazzy content delivery
Verizon has launched a new "experience" (for lack of a better word), dubbed "Dashboard," that will eventually find its way across much of the carrier's lineup -- but lucky Chocolate 3 owners are the first to get hooked up. The Network's looking at Dashboard as an entirely new content stack that complements its existing portals, capable of delivering a richer experience thanks to its Flash-based roots; the idea is that content providers will be able to offer free and paid content side by side, seamlessly, without the user needing to jump between sites or apps. We're all for flashy new ways to use our handsets, just as long as we don't accidentally buy stuff without realizing it until our bill shows up next month, ya dig?[Via mocoNews]
Microsoft licenses Adobe stuff for Windows Mobile
Well, that's not much of a vote of confidence for Microsoft's own products, now is it? Despite the fact that Silverlight for Mobile development is well underway, Windows Mobile's patron saint has decided to license Adobe's Flash Lite and Reader LE packages directly and make them available to WinMo licensees straight from the mothership. Though Adobe's press release says that availability on specific devices will be "confirmed later," we imagine that it'll be a no-brainer for virtually every ODM to sign right up to offer the goods -- just ask any Nokia N95 8GB owner how cool the in-browser Flash support is.[Via Mobility Site]
Microsoft bites bullet, licenses Adobe's Flash Lite for Windows Mobile
Microsoft is expected to shore-up its much maligned Internet Explorer Mobile browser this morning by announcing new Flash Lite support. We have no idea when the new plug-in technology (including Reader LE for PDFs) might make it into Windows Mobile. Nevertheless, with the far superior Skyfire and Opera Mobile 9.5 mobile browsers already supporting Flash Lite, and Microsoft's own competing Silverlight not expected to go mobile until the end of the year, it can't be long now can it?
"WhoNeedsAniPhone" for WM users in iPhone denial
We're personally of the opinion that the best way to cure iPhone envy is to... you know, buy an iPhone, but we understand there are plenty of reasons why folks might be forced to admire from afar. A lengthy contract might be stifling your inner free spirit, for example; maybe the lack of 3G is just too much to bear (YouTube addicts, we're looking at you). The aptly-named "WhoNeedsAniPhone" project seeks to ease the pain of this demographic -- likely a sizable one -- by using Flash Lite to bring the iPhone's key visual elements to touchscreen-enabled Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. Key goals for the release (which isn't yet available -- sign up to beta test it at the site) include a functional launcher, slide-style lock screen, and weather widget; baby steps, yes, but when you consider that the real iPhone's visual fireworks nearly match its actual functionality, that ain't a bad list.
Adobe Flash Lite 3 adopts video support
Have Adobe Flash Lite installed on your mobile? If so, you'll be glad to know that a near-future upgrade will support video soon. Adobe's Flash Lite 3 is due out sometime before July and will natively have video support built in. The format, you ask? Well, naturally, Adobe's native video support in Flash Lite 3 will be its own Flash video format (FLV) that is used for videos all over the web these days (yeah, that goes for ads, too). Flash Lite 3 will be available on S60, BREW, and Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 (most likely WM6 as well). Don't fret, though, if you don't have one of these mobile OSes at your disposal -- Adobe Flash Lite 3 will also be available on embedded operating systems from many OEMs.
