On most smartphones, your camera tends to have just one or two flashes to help it out. However, Google has plans to change all that, according to a patent they filed back in September of 2011.

The patent shows a design featuring up to 8 LED flash bulbs assisting the continually advancing camera technology in handsets. The fact the patent was filed so long ago means Google has been throwing the idea around for some time now. The patent doesn’t necessarily mean we will be seeing the multi-LEDs on future handsets, but does mean they have considered the idea.

Google has filed patents in the past for technologies they haven’t yet utilized, but the possibilities for multi LED flash designs is endless. Not only would the flashes create better lighting for photos, but it could be used to snap multiple photos to be combined for HDR photographs.

Are you excited for the possibilities of this patent? Not only would dark light photos be amazing, but just think how bright your flashlight app would be.

[ source ]

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It was just couple of weeks ago when Adobe dropped its star product, Flash Player from its support on all platforms except for Blackberry OS.

There must be some life after death: Google’s Market now offers Adobe Flash Player 11.1.111.5 for Android mobile devices that qualify (generally speaking, Android 2.2+ phones and tablets).

The changelog for this particular release for Android cites some improvements on a mostly dead corpse of a player. Is it worth the time downloading it, to upgrade?

Presumably, the player should play smoother and smoother, with every update but it didn’t happen this way.  The app (or plugin, rather) became bulkier, more resource-consuming, and with more security holes than ever. That was the story when the player was alive in Adobe development labs.

While dying, Flash still has some importance. The move to total dominance of HTML5 in Web sites is not so rapid as some might want it to be. Moreover, Web browsers that support all the proposed features of HTML5 are not exactly available today.

The shaping of the HTML5 standard itself into a more or less complete, or just  finalized form, may take another couple of years. Until then, you might want to take shot at the new reincarnation of Adobe Flash Player for your Android phone.

I downloaded and installed it on my NOOK Color running CyanogenMod 7. As the least, it didn’t break it, and it didn’t crash. Did it make my streaming videos playing smoother? Not really. But as always, your mileage may vary.

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Fast internal memory is essential for mobile devices, and any improvements of logics that control access to that memory, as well as speed of flash and eMMC chips, is of a great importance.

So Apple’s forays into a purchase of a hardware developer seems quite logical. Reuters reports that Apple is in advanced negotiations to buy Anobit for $400 – $500 million.

Meanwhile, Anobit is also examining a large financing round with a leading Asian flash memory manufacturer, so this might explain $500M Apple’s bid for a company that has raised “just” $76 million from Battery Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital and Intel Capital since its founding in 2006.

Anobit technology is expected to double the present memory of  iPads and MacBooks. Reuters doesn’t clarify this claim further, so it will be safe to suggest that future iPads will gain from faster and smaller memory flash chips holding much more data.

If the deal goes through, it would be one of Apple’s largest acquisitions in the company’s history, and its first in Israel. Apple also typically buys software firms and not hardware companies, but when it buys something like this Israeli chip maker you can be sure this step is of critical importance for Apple’s plans to develop better iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks.

The post Apple Is Rumored To Buy Anobit Memory Chip Maker At $500M appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Mozilla team focussed mainly on improving responsiveness and enhancing the JavaScript performance, meaning smoother panning and zooming, faster start ups and quicker page loading. They’ve also reduced the amount of memory needed and optimized CPU usage behind the scenes for an overall stability upgrade.

But there are still a few known issues with the browser. They still haven’t been able to work out the kinks for their Flash add-on, they say, as ”currently, enabling the Flash plugin results in a compromised user experience across Firefox for mobile.”

And the alternative to Flash, HTML5 video, “may load slowly and create artifacts on the screen during playback.”

What’s more, sometimes letters typed on a hardware keyboard will appear in the wrong order, issues with SwiftKey that may cause it to crash or to prevent users from entering text in input fields, they say, adding users of Motorola’s Droid, the Galaxy S and the Nexus S may also experience a disproportionate amount of freezes and crashes.

That said, there are now more than 100 add-ons for Firefox 4 Mobile, meaning a more customizable experience for users.

Those with Apple products are still stuck with Firefox Home for iOS, basically an add-on for Safari Mobile which allows access to Firefox bookmarks, history and open tabs from their iPhone or iPad.

[Mashable via Mozilla]

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Without giving time-line specifics, Adobe said the Flash upgrade will be coming to mobile devices “in the next few weeks;” promising news for all those waiting for Android’s Honeycomb release since that platform is optimized for Flash to fully utilize the hardware. One of the known enhancements will be Stage Video, which improves video performance through hardware acceleration on mobile devices.

Adobe also took a moment to toot their own horn, so to speak, about Adobe AIR, which can now be found in more than 84 million mobile devices, including 20 million smart phones running Flash Player 10.1. Could these performance enhancements allow it Flash on the next-generation iPad?

[via PR]

The post Flash 10.2 Optimized For Mobile – Will The iPad 2 Get It? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Well, apparently RIM recently posted a video comparing their upcoming Playbook tablet’s mobile browser to that of the iPad. So? No harm done in publicizing your product, right? Right, the only catch is that the said video, apart from favoring RIM’s tablet, also did its bit to highlight iPad browser’s weak point (no Flash support, slow page loading speed, lack of pixel to pixel rendering fidelity, lack of high end Javascript and HTML5 – there are too many of them, by the way).

Perhaps RIM just wants to show the world that their tablet’s browser, apart from supporting cutting edge stuff like HTML5, also provides the added bonus of Flash support, unlike that of the iPad. Jim Balsillie, CEO of RIM, also openly stated the same, “You don’t need an app for the web,” (touching upon the fact that most iOS apps are mere frontend implementations of web services).

Even though this isn’t the first time Balsillie has attacked Apple or Steve Jobs, one wonders the motive behind it anyway! This is because RIM devices such as the Blackberry smartphones are taking a beating not from the iPad or iPhone, but rather from Android powered machines. Guess there’s too many of Android devices to attack, so RIM just chose the stationary object (Apple) to hit at.

Plus, talking about giants such as Apple gives you free publicity, no matter who you are. And to further delve deeper, RIM has sensed the fact that the iPad, though initially eyeing the youngsters, has managed to make an impact among the business users (read: RIM stronghold). Obviously, RIM has to counter-attack, and it will not be shocking if the present video is followed by other similar ones.

The post Showtime: Its RIM vs Apple appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Got an iPhone or an iPod touch? Mildly frustrated by the lack of Flash support on your favorite iOS device? As it turns out, that could soon be changing with an interesting workaround. Even more interesting, the solution is apparently Apple approved too.

Skyfire 2.0 has indeed been approved by Apple and it is slated to show up in the App Store this Thursday. It’s another web browser alternative to mobile Safari, but it packs the extra punch of being able to play Flash-based video content on your iPhone.

To do this, Skyfire takes the Flash content, remotely converts it to HTML5, and relays the new stuff back to your iOS device. The converted video is then perfectly happy on your iPhone, but you will have to wait for Skyfire’s remote servers to do the lifting for you.

This won’t work for Flash games or anything like that, but it does mean that you can go ahead and stream your favorite Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert clips now. Skyfire for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad will sell for $2.99.

SOURCE: BGR

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Vimeo on iPad now playing videos via HTML5

YouTube is undeniably the biggest dog in the yard when it comes to online video sharing, but other options shouldn’t be overlooked either. Trying its best to get in good with Apple fans, Vimeo has now launched a video player that’ll work with your Flash-free iPhone and iPad.

The new media player from Vimeo will automatically detect the device that you’re using and channel you toward either Adobe Flash or HTML5. It’ll also choose the video quality and resolution based on your connection speed. No Flash on your iPad? No problem. HTML5 is there and, if your connection can handle it, you can do HD too.

YouTube supports HTML5 for the iPhone and iPad too, but you have to use the dedicated app to get to those videos. With Vimeo, as I understand it, you just go to the mobile version of the site and stream content at will. This is true not only of iOS devices, but also Android phones with Webkit-based browsers.

Vimeo intros HTML5 player for Apple iPhone, iPad, Android [Intomobile]

The post Vimeo now friendly with iDevices, supports HTML5 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Apple’s iPad and iPhone can definitely handle running Flash. I mean, if HD video games are possible, what the hell is a little bit of flash going to do to your battery? I mean seriously, Steve, let’s get real. If a user wants to install an app on their device that may result in a life threatening circumstance like the battery draining faster, just let them. They shelled out good coin on the thing, if they want to take it to its limits then they should have all the right to do so. You did let Mirror’s Edge on from EA sports (review coming soon), that sucker took that beautiful 10 hour iPad battery down to a paltry 4 .3 hours.

On a similar but related bull shit or not. Ford motors has banned any owner of their vehicles from using Goodyear tires. All motor vehicle service stations and tire companies have been notified not to install Goodyear tires on any Ford, ever. The reason being, Goodyear tires make the Ford vehicles drive smoother and faster. Not something Ford intended to result in using their product.

Oh good one, I almost forgot about the illegal raid on Jason Chen’s house.

The post Adobe to Steve Jobs: We have Android :P appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

More specifically, the boys at RIM are planning an updated version of the BlackBerry Browser that will integrate full support for Microsoft Silverlight, as well as full support for Flash content. We’re talking about full Flash support and not just Flash lite too.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that RIM is only “planning” on integrating this kind of support into the BlackBerry web browser and the company has not really indicated any sort of timeline for when we should expect its deployment.

Well, that’s not completely true. RIM told the guys at BGR that this won’t be happening until next summer, so I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s around this same time that RIM will be unleashing a new family of devices to take advantage of higher data speeds offered by the upcoming HSPA and LTE networks.

Source: BGR

The post BlackBerry Getting Support for Silverlight and Full Flash appeared first on Mobile Magazine.