[Here is the quick link for the list]
It’s essential for every mobile developer to know their target mobile device profiles. This is the only way to ensure effective and reliable development plan and easier porting. That’s also been an issue for us and we often needed to collect technical information for all target devices we aim and up now did that manually combining different resources.
Flash Lite development and porting can be considered as ‘less complicated’ compared to Java and Symbian based platforms. However, that doesn’t change the reality that there is always the need to port. Especially after Nokia introduced S60 3rd edition devices, porting for Flash Lite got little more complicated, compared to S60 2nd edition’s (almost) the same 176×208 display size and specifications for most of the devices. One can claim here that; Flash Lite can scale and fit into different screens easily and that’s why Flash Lite is Flash Lite. Yes, that is true at first sight, however, unfortunately the fact that ‘it can’ doesn’t mean ‘it does’ well. Depending on the application, development will vary, and not everything will be displayed as expected or will perform good when they are scaled. Therefore, the only reasonable solution is to create different versions of the product for different possible screen sizes by defining target devices well and preparing a robust design to ease the pain of porting. To gain more insight about this issue, you can check Dale Rankine’s ‘Quickly create multiple versions of your Flash Lite content‘ article on Adobe web site.
Considering these facts and possible future needs, we prepared a list for developers to have a reference when developing Flash Lite applications. Initially there are only Nokia S60 and Series 40 devices, however, we hope to extend the list further with your help. Please register to our forum, and contribute to Flash mobile device list for developers. There is also performance information for all devices, which will be filled with tests performed by us and other developers.
When you visit the list, you will see some devices are in bold. Bold means that there is a confliction between Adobe and Nokia’s Flash Lite specifications or global knowledge. We hope to clarify these question marks to avoid future misleads for developers. If you happen to have a reliable information about these models, please add your comment on our forum.
We recently got the news that Adobe announced a public beta of Photoshop CS3 together with Device Central. Hopefully this will be a global solution for Flash mobile developers and eliminate further needs in future when things get more complicated with more devices available. However until then, we need clear and reliable information to reduce development risks and reliable marketing.
