So, now that jailbreaking is easier than ever, right now is probably the best time to dive into the vast array of possibilities that lay ahead in shackle-free land. I’ve already tricked my iPhone out pretty substantially, but there’s always somewhere further you can go. Yes, Flash had already been ported to the iPad, and now the iPhone has received the Flash treatment as well. Jailbreaking required, naturally.
There’s lots of cool things to do with a jailbroken iPhone that you can’t do with a shackled iPhone. Like, having a useful lock screen with calendar information. Or, a fancy overlay with easy access to often-used settings (turning on wifi/data/3G and such on a per-need basis saves boatloads of battery life). Or, a notification system that works pretty much like Android’s (i.e., is actually useful). And so much more.
We can add something new to the list, even though this one does require a bit more of a walk-on-the-wild-side kind of approach. Flash 10.1 had already been ported to the iPad by Comex, and now, Grant Pannell has compiled the resulting code to work on just about any modern i-device – as long as it’s an armv7 (in other words, the iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, iPad and the iPhone 4). You’ll need at least iOS 4 on the iPhone, and iOS 3.2.x on the iPad.
The code in question, called Frash, isn’t available through Cydia just yet, mostly because we’re talking alpha code here (it’s at version 0.02). This means you’ll have to place the .deb package on your i-device manually and install it from there. Grant Pannell also provides detailed build instructions.
So, how is this possible? Isn’t Flash closed-source? It indeed is, but famous iOS hacker Comex (of Spirit fame) got clever: he wrote a compatibility layer for the Android 2.2 version of Flash 10.1, allowing it to run on the iOS. Of course, there’s a copyright issue involved with obtaining the Android version of libflashplayer.so, so be advised – although I don’t think Adobe will be too peeved over this. In fact, I think they’re laughing their bums off.
When it’s all done and working, it actually works remarkably well, as the guys over at RedmondPie found out.
Of course, be advised that this is alpha-quality code, and as such, is not to be trusted in any way.
As soon as I read the news report on the “legalization” of jail breaking I figured Flash for iOS would be top of the list. And here it is. I wonder how many OTA “updates” that will keep locking the back door that Apple will issue to keep people from using software and features it doesn’t approve? Just because jail breaking is legal now doesn’t mean that Apple will make it easy for consumers.
How long does the battery last running this?
You mean I can see all of those wonderful Flash ads now? Yippee!
One of the things I like the most about not running Flash on the iPhone / iPad is that there are no Flash ads.
The other thing is that since Flash is very buggy and is a huge resource hog, I appreciate the extended battery life and stability in the phone that would most certainly go away if I were to jailbrick it.
You have to push the flash widget to activate it, so your arguments againt this are incorrect.
I can continue running the plethora apps I use on a daily basis that do all I need and more in a smartdevice in a secure, stable environment, or I can jailbrick it and run an alpha quality compatibility layer over unlicensed code that was written for another device so that I can have my allocated monthly data sucked up by advertising.
Decisions decisions…
Ah, you mean the secure environment that can be completely compromised from a website?
Have to credit Adobe with those pesky malformed fonts and PDF.
No, the security flaws in Apple’s iOS are in Apple‘s implementation of PDF. Adobe Reader is a steaming pile of half-rotted manure, but Apple managed to screw this up on their own.
So Adobe is resposible for the implementation of the PDF renderer on iOS ? I didn’t know, thank for your insight
. So next time there will be a vulnerability in how a browser handle HTML files let’s just blame w3c, and vulnerability from jpeg image handling, from the jpeg group, and TIFF image vulnerability let’s blame Adobe on this (duh….).
Edited 2010-08-09 08:25 UTC
LOL. I have an Android phone; I COULD run flash if I wanted to, but I choose not to, and I’ve yet to run into a real need for it. On the desktop, it is sometimes necessary to have flash, but for everything else, there’s flashblock.
it won’t be as easy to block html5 ads
why not? adblock has been doing just fine blocking “html4” ads this entire time. don’t be such a tool.
I too have an android phone, and i did try flash on it quite briefly… It was extremely annoying seeing all those animated ads, it made pages load considerably slower and would probably have had a serious impact on battery life had i continued using it.
Pr0n on the iPhone – not that I’ve got one….
actually most video porn sites detect if you’re on a mobile and just feed you a mp4 with h264 instead of flash.
You’re saying there are actually valid reasons why someone might want to jailbreak?
But… but… I thought that the only possible reasons to jailbreak an iProduct is to recompile your kernel or run a bittorrent tracker on your phone or to pirate $5 apps or to crash cellphone towers.
But is it accelerated or will it make my iPhone an unusable piece of junk.
Why bother….
There is no equivalent of “mouse-over” on touch based devices.
So real apps are out, and what’s left is the capability to drain your batttery with useless advertisements.
So short-sighted of OSNews to think this is a good thing.
To buy video rentals somewhere else?
To watch video on Flash-only sites?
Plenty of Flash games can be played with a touch device.
I read recently a story about a company that created a touch screen with sensor that can detect when the finger is hovering the screen. I *think* this was reported on Engadget but I could be wrong. Perhaps this can be used to create mouse-over effect when the finger is hovering over an icon.
Edited 2010-08-09 10:18 UTC
It is a good thing to have the options to run whatever you want on your phone without the manufacturer having a say in the matter.
On Android if you press and hold for a half a second, you trigger the Mouse Over event. I don’t know. I would think it’s better to actually know what you are talking about before you talk about it.
Hahahaha, ‘frash’ in my local slang means “a lot, a whole bunch, a plethora, of things”, which I would transliterate into “A lot of content” bring to the users
Great, now people can run it, realise they don’t really need/want it anyway, and stop complaining!
Every piece of Adobe software I’ve used is complete bloatware, things like their PDF viewer drive me mad, at least OS X and Linux have built in lightweight viewers.
Flash came from Macromedia, and that legacy is still there. It’s far from bloated, despite being quite feature rich. Most people I know, don’t have a problem running Farmville, and really quite like it.
I’ll never understand the Flash bashing from regular Windows users. It’s some weird kind of follow the leader mentality on display I think. (There are some valid gripes from Mac and Linux users.)
Good for iPhone I guess, now if my favorite video streaming sites would de-port flash…
I have an older PC on which I used to watch 480p youtube videos quite alright for the last 1+ year. After the latest flash update fullscreen playback is out of the question, and windowed playback raises CPU usage to 80%-99%.
Reinstalling older versions doesn’t help in any way whatsoever, and yes I uninstall any version with the official uninstaller.
Edited 2010-08-09 12:25 UTC