Verizon Wireless flashes phones

Verizon Wireless is adding Flash capabilities to its mobile applications deck, Get It Now, possibly opening up the platform to a raft of new content.

Verizon Wireless uses Qualcomm’s BREW content distribution platform, in which games, graphics and other applications are written natively in C++ and ported over to binary runtime environment. Qualcomm then adds those applications to its sizable content catalog where they can be downloaded to any BREW-enabled phone. By adding Adobe’s Flash technology, however, Verizon Wireless isn’t abandoning BREW. It’s merely adding a plug-in, called Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 that will allow BREW phones to read flash code.

The advantages of such a system may not be immediately obvious. Due to large carriers like Verizon Wireless and Japan’s KDDI’s support of BREW, the platform isn’t lacking in content. And according to Mitch Oliver, Qualcomm Internet Services vice president of solutions and marketing, more sophisticated applications will automatically migrate to BREW since they can be programmed more efficiently natively. But Flash has a much broader developer community beyond that of mobile content. Developers are attracted to the platform because of its easy of use and animation capabilities and with the new Flash Lite development platform, those developers can easily port content made for PC or the Web over to phones or jump with greater ease into the mobile development realm, Oliver said.

Verizon Wireless is launching the new Flash engine on four existing phones, the LG VX9800, the Motorola RAZR V3c and V3m and the Samsung SCH a950. While those phones are already in the market, as customers download Flash content for the first time the Flash Lite program will download with that content. Verizon Wireless plans to extend Flash capabilities not only to its new phones, but to authorize its existing catalog of Get It Now phones.

In other mobile applications news, Cingular today said it is launching a location-based navigation services using TeleNav’s GPS mapping technology. Launched on Cingular’s latest business PDA, the HP iPAQ hw6920, the application uses full-cover moving maps and turn-by-turn voice and onscreen directions, very similar to an onboard vehicle navigation system. Cingular will charge $10 a month for unlimited use of the service and is making the TeleNav Navigator to its other business PDA devices like the Palm Treo 650, but in many cases customers need to buy a Bluetooth-enabled GPS receiver to make the service work.

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