Is full Flash coming to the Apple iPhone?

Flash a-ha, saviour of the smartphone
Flash a-ha, saviour of the smartphone

When it comes to the iPhone, the lack of Flash capabilities has been a bugbear for many an Apple user. Adobe knows this and that is why it is working hard to come up with a solution – and it looks like they have nearly cracked it.

Speaking at the Adobe Max conference in San Francisco this week, Adobe's chief technology officer Kevin Lynch has hinted that a full version of Flash Player 10 is to hit smartphones soon, including, most notably, the iPhone. Well, as long as they can please Apple's 'head chef'.

Full Flash

"We are midst of evolving Flash Player 10 for mobile," Lynch commented. "We're taking the full Flash Player and making that run on the higher end of the mobile market."

Teasingly, Lynch said about the iPhone: "It needs a little more baking. We need to pass the taste test of Apple's head chef."

One of the main reasons Flash hasn't found its way to the iPhone is because of Flash-based games. If the software ever does find itself on to the handset, it would mean the door is open for consumers to play games via the Safari browser, rather than go through Apple's App Store.

So, it will be interesting to see what restrictions are put in place by Adobe and Apple to stop this from happening.

While Apple may not be 100 per cent on-board with Flash just yet, Google is. Google Android leader Andy Rubin also spoke at the conference and was very excited about full Flash for smartphones, commenting: "Today, seeing Flash 10 makes me feel really warm. It was exactly what Android was built for."

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.