Posted Sunday, July 1, 2012 by Wade Pierce in News

Adobe to stop Flash support starting with Jelly Bean 4.1

Adobe Flash Player is to be discontinued for future versions of Android starting with Jelly Bean 4.1. On August 15th of this year Adobe will actually limit the Android app to select versions of Android or it can be pre installed by the manufacturer. Meaning that even the stock browser will not be able to stream those flash videos. We all knew this was coming, but are we ready for the HTML5 transition? Some sites I frequent like YouTube, IGN, or Funny or Die all have implemented html5, which is good, but not quite enough.

HTML5 might be the future, but it certainly is not the present, currently the Flash based sites heavily outweigh the HTML5 based sites. If you are browsing the web on your Android device with Chrome for Android you will notice that a lot of sites won’t work on your phone. Yes some have mobile alternatives or apps, but this is not enough. HTML5 will become the industry standard at some point. As it is now you can not simply go to a channel’s website and stream an episode they have available for your Android device using the Chrome browser, yes the stock Android browser is nice for using flash but once you upgrade to Jelly Bean you will no longer have the choice, unless you download it outside of the Google Play Store somewhere. Sure with the next couple of years the lack of HTML5 will undoubtedly change and more websites will jump on board with it. But now in the current we will all experience the growing pains of the transition.

If Adobe would have supported Flash on Android for one more year to “help” with the transition it would probably not help anything. By cutting it off abruptly they are pushing websites into the switch, which believe it or not, actually helps speed up the process as consumers want the content and want it now. That demand helps make the switch all the faster. Though if you REALLY need Flash player on your mobile, maybe you can seek a third party browser like Firefox, or Dolphin HD. How do you feel about the lack of Flash support on future Android builds? Let us know in the comments.

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Wade Pierce

Wade Pierce, better known as PapaPompous on the inter webs, has been blogging in mobile tech for a couple years now and has played with all forms of mobile tech from BlackBerry, iPhone, webOS, to Android. He is happy to call Android his go to OS and happy to call Android Does his new home.