AT&T introduces WP7 Samsung Focus S and Focus Flash

AT&T has just announced its new lineup of WP7 smartphones and unveiled a couple of new Samsung-made smartphones in the process. The Samsung Focus S and Focus Flash are both Mango-running devices that come with the sweetly deep blacks of SuperAMOLED tech.

The Samsung Focus S is the more impressive offering with its 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus placed on top of a super slim 8.65mm body. You’d also be getting an 8 megapixel main camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing snapper with this one. The CPU under the Samsung Focus S bonnet ticks at 1.4GHz (no dual-core apparently), while its built-in radios allow for 4G speeds (though we suspect HSPA+ is what they meant).

The other new offering is Samsung Focus Flash, which offers a 3.7″ Super AMOLED of the non-plus variety and a 5 megapixel camera. AT&T doesn’t say anything about a front-facing camera, but we assume those are considered standard by now. Again, there’s a 1.4 GHz CPU inside.

Strangely enough, though, AT&T, failed to provide images of the newly announced devices. We’ll be updating this article when their PR department gets round to uploading them on their website.

The third new addition to the AT&T Windows Phone 7 lineup is the HTC Titan, which was announced at the start of the month. The 4.7″-screen’d smartphone will be packing a 1.5 GHz CPU, but won’t be getting a screen technology as impressive as that of the Samsung smartphones.

The final bit of good news brought to us by the press release is the upcoming Mango update for all of the current WP7 smartphones that AT&T offers. Carriers are known for being responsible for the delay of updates, but AT&T promises that won’t be the case with HTC HD7S, HTC Surround, LG Quantum and Samsung Focus.

Source | Via

Adobe finally delivers Flash video to iOS devices

Adobe’s Flash Media Server 4.5 lets Flash video content be viewed on iOS devices

In April 2010, Steve Jobs’ outlined why Flash would not be permitted on iOS devices in his “Thoughts on Flash” open letter. While Jobs made some valid points in terms of Flash’s proprietary nature, security concerns, and the fact it drains the batteries of mobile devices, the popularity of the Skyfire 2.0 mobile web browser and standalone VideoQ Flash video player showed that there were still plenty of iOS users keen to Flash video on their mobile devices. Now Adobe has finally come to the party with its own solution that will allow Flash video content to be viewed directly within Safari on iOS devices.

When it detects a lack of Flash support on a device, Adobe’s Flash Media Server 4.5 will allow Flash content to be streamed using the iOS-compatible HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) protocol – an HTTP-based media streaming protocol supported by HTML5 that Apple created and already uses for Quicktime X and iOS. As with Skyfire’s solutions, the Adobe solution sees the on-the-fly video crunching taking place on the server, so the mobile device won’t have to carry out the processor-intensive crunching themselves, resulting in improved battery life. It also means that Flash-based games and animations still won’t work on iOS devices.

The use of the HLS protocol means Safari on iOS already supports Adobe’s new solution. All that is needed is for content publishers to shell out US$4,500 and implement the new Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, which Adobe showcased during the IBC trade show in Amsterdam last week.