Menneisyys

There are many standalone Flash players for the Pocket PC. Standalone stands for the ability to play “offline” .swf (Flash) file right on the PDA. I’ve reviewed all the previously available Flash players in my well-known Playing Flash Content on the Pocket PC roundup.

Now, a brand new and, what is more important, free (as opposed to the previously available, commercial standalone players) Flash player has been released. It has promising and useful features – and, unfortunately, a very bad bug: the complete lack of the D-pad support.

Availability

The home page of the application is here; direct CAB download link here. Note that the website may be offline; when I started writing this article, it was online; when I finished it, it was offline. Also accessible at Handango.

Compatibility

I haven’t run into problems on any of my (WM2003+; smartFlash isn’t compatible with pre-WM2003 operating systems) test Pocket PC’s (iPAQ 2210, Pocket Loox 720, HTC Wizard, iPAQ hx4700 (WM5), Dell Axim x51v A12).

Note that, by default, it doesn’t use the high resolution capabilities of VGA devices – that is, it uses pixel doubling. It (\Program Files\ smartFlash\ flashPlayer.exe) can be, however, forced into VGA mode. Just make sure you copy this file into the same directory (and also disable the built-in security if you have a WM5 device with security enabled by default – that is, on most WM5 VGA devices, except for the hx4700).

Pros

1. Free
2. Compatible with all WM2003+ operating systems and the test devices I've tested it on
3. Tiny (30kbytes)
4. .swf file association capabilities (as opposed to, say, even the latest, 2.10 version of PFlashP)
5. Full screen support in Landscape (as opposed to, say, PFlashP, which isn’t able to hide the taskbar) (Note that the Action button and/or Menu/Fullscreen toggles between the two modes.)
6. Doesn’t require any other libraries (except for, naturally, the Adobe/Macromedia Flash 6/7 plug-in) unlike, for example, PFlashP.

Cons

1. Absolutely no D-pad support, as opposed to all the other (commercial) solutions, including PFlashP. This means you won't be able to play, say, games relying on the D-pad. Anything not relying on the D-pad (but on, say, the stylus), however, is perfectly usable.
2. In full screen mode, it doesn’t resize the animation to fit on the screen, unlike for example PFlashP. This means animations bigger than the real screen estate (see for example one of my favourite test Flash animations, Bomberman) will only be partly displayed.

Verdict

Highly recommended if you need a simple, small, free Flash player and don’t need to use the D-pad and aren’t affected by the full screen size problem.

__________________
MS MVP- Mobile Devices.

jdrew

Thanks for the headsup.