Wireless Wednesday: Flash and Prototypes and Leaks! Oh My!

It's Wednesday, and that means we're covering phone stuff. And dear God there's a lot to cover!



First up, a Flash news flash. First up, the bad news. Adobe announced today that they would stop investing in their development tools for iPhone OS and instead shift all of that focus into Android, citing Apple's recent, and quite vindictive, changes to their app development policy. That, coupled with the clarification from Adobe that Flash 10.1 will be ready and start shipping by the early part of the second half of the year, makes our BlackBerry, Palm, and Android lovers pretty happy. Flash 10.1 will enable smartphones to access full Flash like a computer does. That's right, your Droid will play Hulu and your Pre will rock Farmville. God help us all.


And speaking of Apple, some lucky dude is now rich for going to a bar. Last week, an Apple employee had a prototype of the newest iPhone at a bar, where he was celebrating his birthday. Unfortunately for him, he left the thing behind, letting some anonymous bar hopper to find it. He did try to find the owner in the bar, but upon failing and closer examination, he realized that it wasn't the 3GS he thought it was. It was in fact an unreleased product. Apple quickly remote wiped and bricked the device, but not until we learned some stuff. The prototype has a front facing camera, a bigger battery, and strangely a smaller screen. Apple later confirmed that it was legit. So happy birthday, Apple test labs guy! Your gift is a pink slip! Consider yourself lucky, Apple employees have died for less (sad, but true).


And finally, some goodies for you BlackBerry loyalists. Some screenshots of the new 6.0 operating system have surfaced, along with a new phone! The new OS is multitouch enabled (though it's still possible that not all new devices will be touch-based), uses a WebKit browser (same engine behind the iPhone and new Palm browsers), greatly improved media player, and better social networking and RSS feed integration. Most importantly, the home page is redesigned with panels and app categorization. The new phone, the 9670, is essentially a Curve Flip. Full QWERTY keyboard, 5mp camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, the works. And it runs, you guessed it, BB OS 6.0! And my personal favorite part: It's CDMA, so it could hit Sprint or Verizon!