The Flash Conundrum

[OffWorld]

Since the official release of 2.2 and 2.3 firmwares for some of the Telechips tablets (in particular the Haipad M701) the question seems to come up more often: "Will I be able to run Flash?"

The short, and unwanted, answer of course is "No."

But I'm wondering exactly WHY the answer is "No." If I side-load Adobe Flash to my tablet it installs successfully, even though my device isn't "Flash Certified" and doesn't meet the minimum system requirement of an ARMv7 (aka Cortex A8) processor.

The frustrating "conundrum" part is that even though it installs no browser can detect that it is installed, I suspect because something important in the code is ARMv7 specific. I also presume that's why there are hacked versions out there for unsupported hardware - the best known are probably the "Flash for 2.1" (which apparently only works on a couple of devices running Eclair), and a "Hulufied" version for watching Hulu content with Dolphin HD on the Nook Color tablet. Though it doesn't support video, some people have somehow managed to get the old FlashPlayer.apk and FlashLitePlugin.apk running on the M701 (there's a YouTube video of someone demonstrating it running Flash animated ads in the stock browser under Eclair). I still don't know how they got even that much to work. No matter what version I install - all of which say they were "successfully installed" - no browser can detect they are installed.

I guess I can understand why Adobe decided to ignore all the ARMv6 devices out there in favor of Cortex A8, but one would think the only real downside on ARMv6 would be choppy FLV playback. I once installed an Chinese app called "WuzhenhuaPlayer" (also known as "SuperPlayer") which could actually play FLV files on my tablet - running Eclair no less - except without access to the hardware accelerated integrated video the playback was unwatchable due to choppy frame rates.

However, there is tons of Flash content on the web in SWF format that would probably run perfectly (or at least reasonably) well on ARMv6 processors. But Adobe won't even let us try and hacking the apk is beyond my skills.

There are plenty of folks (myself included) over at the Adobe Flash dev blog begging them to support ARMv6 - at least for SWF files. Of course we're probably all yelling at a wall, and our only "support" will come from someone in the Android community who figures out how to make Flash work for us.

 

[aino]

I'm asking me the same thing, and trying to understand how wondermedia achieved that, since their new wm8650 is armv5 and 600mhz only and flash works fairy well in their tablets.

 

[Omega]

I Have wm8650 with latests original wondermedia firmware, I compared youtube playback in browser and full screen with freescale imx515 cortex A8, strange wm8650 make frankly speaking perfect 360p playback, without any drop frames in browser mode and in full screen, same on cortex a8 imx515 come only with 10-15 frame per second.

 

[WintermuteTO]

I have the following Tablet

Features/Specifications:

CrystalView E-Pad Touch 4GB 7-inch Touchscreen Android 2.1 Internet Tablet General Features: Black face, silver back panel 7-inch TFT touch panel 800 x 480 resolution Google Android OS 2.1 pre-installed Telechips TCC8902 720 MHz processor 256 MB DDR2 RAM 4 GB internal memory microSD/SDHC card slot (128 MB to 32 GB) USB 2.0 interface Integrated IEEE 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Built-in speaker and microphone G-sensor function provides orientation sensing Supports txt and pdf eBooks Supports various audio/video formats Supports various photo formats Built-in rechargable lithium battery Supports add-ons from Android Apps Store Battery Specifications: Lithium rechargable 3400 mAh capacity DC 5V @ 2A current Physical Features: Menu, Home, Back buttons on face Volume + on side Volume - on side Microphone on front Power/Sleep on side DC 9V input on bottom USB port on bottom USB host port on bottom Mini HDMI output Card slot on bottom Installed Apps: Calendar Gmail Browser Maps Aldiko App Installer Calculator Clock Documents To Go Email File Explorer Facebook Gallery Music Settings Sound Recorder Talk Twitter Video YouTube Supported Formats: eBook: TXT, PDF Video: MPEG4, 3GP, FLV Audio: MP3, WAV Photo: JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF Power Adapter Specifications: Input: 100-240V 50/60 Hz ~ 0.5A Output: 5V --- 2A Unit Dimensions: 7.99 x 5.2 x 0.47-inches (H x W x D) Regulatory Approvals: FCC WEEE I have been trying to upgrade to a version of android that would allow me to play flash videos and view flash websites. When I look into the tablet info - it appears as a M709 firmware version v1.01 kernel 2.6.29 with Android build 2.1 - the funny this is that when I did a factory re-set it shows as a telechips tcc8900 evaluation board. The group that sold it to me (based on information from the manual is Midwest Trading Group - email [email protected]) - I have emailed them various times and have yet to receive a response. Since I am not fluent in Linux I am hesitant to attempt and upgrade or try to get root access because of the fear I have of having a brick. Is there anyone out there that can lead me in the right direction to enable this device to interact with Flash Web Sites> I have Adobe Flash Player 2.1 installed but cannot get it to run at an interactive level anyof my browsers installed (Maxthon, Opera, Dolphin and the default browser that came presintalled on the device. Any Help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Maxx

 

[OffWorld]

Until someone provides us with a hacked Flash player app we're out of luck. The Telechips CPU does not meet Adobe's official minimum hardware requirements and any version of Android less than 2.2 "Froyo" doesn't meet the operating system requirements.

 

[wiresquire]

I thought flash was (kind of) working in one of the roms I tried. It may have been the albertdsh 2.2 rom build. It was one I didn't leave on for long - mainly for other reasons. You know what? Web pages loading flash ads slowed down so many webpages that it destroyed the web browser experience. Even gestures etc were non-responsive because the CPU was being eaten alive by the silly flash animations. From what I saw/thought at the time, seemed like it really needed flash to use the 'gpu acceleration' same as for video.

Edit: it may have also been this albertdsh 2.1 rom. See translated notes here

 

[OffWorld]

I've spent a little more time looking into this and here's what I've found.

According to this post I found over at xda-developers the reason the browsers can't detect Flash Player is installed is probably because it is missing a couple things:

com.google.android.feature.GOOGLE_PLUGIN
android.webkit.permission.PLUGIN

The first one is a file apparently necessary for Flash Player to "embed" itself inside the browser.
The second one might be a file or maybe it's a database permissions entry - I don't know.
I don't know because I can't locate either of these files. I can't locate them on my tablet. I can't locate them in the Froyo, Gingerbread, or Honeycomb emulators.

What I did was download and install the "flash_for_21.apk" file in that post. This appears to be different in some way from the other "Flash for 21" file you'll probably find.

Why? Because after installing it Market will now show "Adobe Flash 10.3" in my list of available downloads, whereas before it wouldn't find it. Also Opera Mobile would show Flash Plugin options in the Advanced Settings (but Opera Mobile has always been terribly unstable on my tablet so it crashed as soon as I tried to load a page with Flash content).

While that all sound promising I can't install the update to the player because it says "Package File was not signed properly." Attempts to sideload 10.3 give me this error which pretty much says the same thing:

Failure [INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_INCONSISTENT_CERTIFICATES]

Ok, so it still doesn't work, but what did I learn?

1. The reason Flash isn't detected by the browsers is most likely that it is missing those two important things. Most Android third-party browsers are just front-ends to the same webkit webcore used by the default browser, so if that can't detect Flash is installed none of them will. I'm guessing that Opera (like Firefox) does not use the webcore, which is why it could at least detect the Flash installation, even if it still couldn't use it.

2. I need to figure out where those two important files/permissions are. The "Flash for 21" apk, as the name implies, is for Eclair (the xda post says for 2.0 and 2.1) so maybe I just need to get a hold of properly signed 2.3.1 versions and get them where ever it is they go.

3. This all means we most likely don't need a hacked version of Flash Player, we need to hack Android so the browsers can FIND Flash Player is installed. Installing the Flash Player app has never really been a problem and clearly it can be installed on unsupported hardware and unsupported versions of Android which further suggests it is NOT checking any of that stuff.

So, anyone know where the aforementioned files/permissions are located or where to get them?

 

[azpirate]

Hey there, I have a Google android tablet that is running eclair (android 2.1 update1) and I downloaded an app from the android market that is called "swf player", it works on about half of the flash stuff out there but on the things it plays it plays well with no lags. I would also like to get flash to work but................