Flash Player mobile optimization features

Mobile text input

Flash Player provides support for use of native device virtual keyboards with TextField support if no physical keyboard is detected.

A virtual keyboard is automatically raised and lowered in response to focus changes on text fields when editing text on mobile devices, supporting a virtual keyboard to enable unobstructed and intuitive text editing.

The focused text field is centered in the visible region of the page and appropriately zoomed/scrolled to ensure it is not obscured by the virtual keyboard.

Upon screen rotation, incoming calls, or other system events, any already existing text input is retained.

The virtual keyboard works with TextField but does not currently work with the Text Layout Framework or other Flash Text Engineflash.text.engine text.

Consistent with HTML, text input for SWF-based content on a particular device is true in-line and doesn't take you out of the page.

Unobstructed and intuitive text editing on mobile devices using a virtual keyboard.

Upon screen rotation, incoming calls, or other system events, any text already input is retained.

Multitouch and gestures

(Multitouch not available for Android)

Developers can take advantage of the latest hardware and operating system user interaction capabilities using new ActionScript 3 APIs for multitouch and native gesture events. Create multitouch aware content for a wide range of devices and multitouch capable machines.

Interact with multiple objects simultaneously or interpret the incoming event stream as gestures.

Native gestures include pinch, scroll, rotate, scale and two-finger tap.

Compatible with existing content designed for mouse/stylus based interaction.

• Enables the creation of multitouch aware content and support for a wide range of devices and PCs.
  
• Gestures that work on the device work in Flash Player.
  
• Developers can create their own gestures through ActionScript.
  
• Common use cases include finger painting, dragging of multiple objects and image manipulation.

Enables the creation of multitouch aware content and support for a wide range of devices and PCs.

Gestures that work on the device work in Flash Player.

Developers can create their own gestures through ActionScript.

Common use cases include finger painting, dragging of multiple objects and image manipulation.

Accelerometer input

Accelerometer class provides a way to receive acceleration values in x, y, and z axes from native device accelerometer sensor to ActionScript.

Specify the rate of accelerometer updates to conserve battery life.

Leverage the accelerometer on supported devices for user input control.

New opportunities to innovate user interface design, games, and user input.

Optimized SWF management

Flash Player optimizes SWF loading and playback for mobile CPU and memory limitations to provide a better user experience. Instances are loaded or deferred based on SWF priority, visibility and available memory and CPU resources to enable more immediate browsing experiences without waiting for every SWF on a page to load.

Developers can indicate SWF priority through a new HTML parameter, hasPriority. Deferred instances are loaded after the HTML page load is complete, and offscreen and invisible instances are started when they become visible.

Flash Player will also automatically pause SWF playback if it is not in view or the foreground application—for example, when a call is received or alarm goes off—to reduce CPU utilization, battery usage, and memory usage.

Optimized loading of SWFs on mobile devices to reduce battery usage, improve performance, and provide a better user experience.

More immediate browsing experience without having to wait for every SWF on a page to load.

SWF pause and resume reduces battery usage, memory, and CPU utilization and improves overall performance.

Sleep mode

The Flash Player timer slows down when the mobile device goes into screen-saver mode or a similar mode to consume less CPU and resources saving on battery power.

Timer returns to default setting when a wake-up event is being triggered.

Improves CPU resource utilization and extends battery life on mobile devices.

No interruption in audio/video playback. Backlight remains on for better user experience.

Incoming phone call pauses Flash Player.

Graphics hardware acceleration

(Turned off for Flash Player 10.2 beta release on Android 3.0.1 tablets)

GPU-based vector renderer replaces software renderer on smartphones and smartbooks to significantly improve the frame rate and consume less power.

Hardware acceleration of 3D effects, vector graphics, color transforms, alpha, device and embedded text, Saffron, and surfaces.

• Faster rendering performance for more expressive user experiences.
  
• Reduced power consumption.
  
• Vector graphics provide scalability with high-quality rendering—including anti-aliasing—to different screen sizes without multiple bitmaps.

Implementation of graphics hardware acceleration will be dependent on the graphics silicon vendor of the device.

Faster rendering performance for more expressive user experiences.

Reduced power consumption.

Vector graphics provide scalability with high-quality rendering—including anti-aliasing—to different screen sizes without multiple bitmaps.

Video hardware decoding

Flash Player 10.1 introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth, high-quality video with minimal overhead across supported mobile devices and PCs.

Combine hardware accelerated rendering, GPU composition, and video hardware decoding to deliver stunning multimedia experiences on mobile devices with available hardware.

Using available hardware to decode video offloads tasks from the CPU to improve video playback performance, reduce system resource utilization, and preserve battery life.

Deliver smooth, high-definition video with minimal overhead across devices.

No CPU resources used for video scaling. Audio and video can be decoded purely in hardware.

Preserve battery life.

Hardware accelerated video presentation

(Turned off for Flash Player 10.2 beta release on Android 3.0.1 tablets)

For Android 3.0.1 tablets, Flash Player leverages the Stage Video hardware-accelerated video pipeline, allowing users to enjoy beautiful, smooth playback of high-definition H.264 Flash powered video content across the web.

Audio hardware decoding

Hardware audio decoding uses available hardware on mobile devices to accelerate audio decoding. Without hardware decoding, audio decoding is a CPU-intensive process that involves complex parsing and decompression operations requiring high CPU cycles and power consumption.

Provides equivalent functionality to software decoding in Flash Player with accelerated AAC audio (Main, LC, HE/SBR profiles) decoding.

High-quality audio playback experience.

With audio hardware decoding, overall CPU usage should reduce, freeing up CPU cycles for other operations, which in turn will help performance and improve battery life.

Hardware audio decoding is transparent to the user. If hardware driver is not available or audio codec format is not supported, it will fall back to software decoding.