Rumor: RIM Working on Full Flash & Silverlight Browser Support?

by Ronen Halevy on Aug 19th, 2009 at 2:19 pm EST

adobe-flash-logo Now this came from left field. Rumors were floating around that RIM is working on a browser to beat the iPhone but this is a bit much to swallow. The BoyGenius scored some inside info that RIM is working on baking Flash and Silverlight support into the BlackBerry browser. Rumors have it pegged at sometime after next summer with LTE and HSPE starting to roll out but still this makes me wonder.

The BlackBerry browser barely manages to hold a candle to WebKit and other smartphone browsers. I would rather RIM fixed the essentials, like actually being able to have JavaScript enabled, before they start working on flash. Or even other useful features like tabbed browsing. I usually turn off flash with FlashBlock on my desktop so I cannot see why I would want it on my BlackBerry. Flash manages to bring Firefox to its knees so I can only imagine what it would do the the BlackBerry OS. The only time I actually use it is for video streaming sites. Though Flash support might make for some fun browser based games.

What do you think?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 and is filed under News.
Tags: browser, Flash, Silverlight

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11 Comments to “Rumor: RIM Working on Full Flash & Silverlight Browser Support?”

Posted by: perry
August 19, 2009 at 2:24 pm EST

I hope this comes out before i reach 60, i’m now 40 years old?

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Posted by: Ronen Halevy
August 19, 2009 at 3:31 pm EST

Dont hold your breath

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Posted by: automan69
August 19, 2009 at 3:40 pm EST

Try holding your breath on this one. When you see flashing before your eye then you have it….lol

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Posted by: DavidB
August 19, 2009 at 3:43 pm EST

I don’t think that RIM can pull off speeding up the devices enough to make it palatable. And the required HSPA/LTE/WiMax networks needed aren’t going to be anywhere close to widely deployed. I call BS on BG’s source. There is far more RIM should focus on than flash garbage.

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Posted by: MH
August 19, 2009 at 4:37 pm EST

I think I’m just sick and tired of operating system and hardware manufacturers trying to provide browsers. They provided updates only twice in the life of the device, and the updates don’t fix half the bugs and don’t make the system more user friendly. I’m waiting for a Firefox or a Chrome to replace my Blackberry browser.

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- Posted by: papped
  August 19, 2009 at 5:08 pm EST
  
  Didn’t they already more or less say Fennec isn’t coming to BB…
  
  Reply
Posted by: papped
August 19, 2009 at 5:10 pm EST

Also I don’t think a lot of people who haven’t used other mobile OSes realize how much of a curse/pita flash support can be. It can actually detract from the browsing experience heavily in a lot of cases, rather than adding to it.

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Posted by: Sith_Apprentice
August 19, 2009 at 5:16 pm EST

Skyfire has Flash, and works quite well, why wouldnt a BB browser be able to do the same? RIM has proxy servers, as Skyfire does, where the rendering takes place before being streamed to the device. Should be able to use the same concept.

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- Posted by: papped
  August 19, 2009 at 6:40 pm EST
  
  That’s a different type of browser though.
  
  Also while Skyfire is nice, it has it’s own drawbacks.
  i.e. fullscreen flash in Skyfire is a problem.
  
  Because Skyfire doesn’t actually handle the flash content on the client side, “fullscreen” assumes the resolution of the server.
  
  On Nokias, you can click on a flash vid to auto scale it to full screen. Why? Because it’s not being handled by a server…
  
  Reply
Posted by: Jp
August 19, 2009 at 8:51 pm EST

I agree. Rim should first take care of the small things that it can do to make the current browser better before tackling such a huge undertaking. I mean don’t get me wrong, I live and die by my bold, but the browser is lacking at best. I have to give it to RIM for being that optimistic that it will get it right within a year!!! Lets hope so for their sake.

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