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Flash 10.1 Update announced for (almost) everything

As the above video demonstrates, it looks like hardware acceleration for Flash video and websites is finally about to become a reality.  Adobe announced this week that the Flash 10.1 beta will support a number of mobile platforms, including Nvidia’s ION and Tegra chipsets as well as OMAP4 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor.

The ION GPU provides advanced graphics for low powered and low cost devices such as netbooks and small form factor PCs like the Acer Aspire Revo and ASRock ION 330.  Both the Tegra and Snapdragon are high powered processors for next generation mobile devices running a variety of operation systems, including Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian.

Besides Windows, Mac and Linux, public betas will be available for Palm’s webOS and Windows Mobile before the end of the year.  Symbian and Android should be out early in 2010.  When it comes to mobile OSes, RIM’s Blackberry is still up in the air, as although RIM is part of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, there’s no announced timeline for the beta release for the OS.  Also missing is Apple’s iPhone OS, and according to Adobe, Apple hasn’t given them the level of support to make it happen.

What the new beta will do is allow full Flash browsing, including HD video, on devices that don’t even have enough pixels to show 720p video.  Though this may seem somewhat counter intuitive, it’ll make the mobile browsing experience that much better, as mobile users theoretically won’t have to worry about sluggish performance and “install missing plug-in” placeholders when surfing the web on the go.

Whether the 10.1 update will perform as expected remains to be seen, but at least there’s a hint of a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, especially if the above video is any indication.

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  1. […] releasing an update to Flash (10.1) that will offload computing to the GPU; specifically, it will support Nvidia’s ION […]

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