Opera Mini fans

Many phones just does not support Flash

Opera Mini is especially directed for so called low end phones that have very limited resources. The worst bottle neck is the amount of RAM available on those phones. This amount of RAM is usually unclear for many mobile phone users. First of all, RAM is not the same as phones internal memory. For some reason manufacturers just do not tell the size of RAM, but it is usually very limited. Find out more about RAM usage here.

In practice the limited size of RAM means that there's not enough working memory to run the applications, like browser and Flash player, plus all the pages, images and JavaScripts opened during the session. For example Opera Mobile has been told to need several mega bytes just for the browser. I couldn't find any exact numbers but it's a lot more than Opera Mini takes.

Even if the mobile browser would support the use of external Flash player, then the next problem is whether the phone actually can run something like Flash Lite 3.x. Although Adobe has published some promising forecasts on fast crowing numbers of phones having Flash Lite already installed, the numbers of those phones are still small compared to phones without Flash Lite.

Then what about having an built-in Flash player?

Another "full browser" for mobile phones called Skyfire has been told to include full Flash player. Of course this sounds promising, but once again the amount of RAM becomes crucial. I found information telling that Skyfire takes even 16 MB RAM, and there's no page history included. So no way to make it work on low end phones.

But is it still possible to have Flash supported on J2ME applications?

I'm not an expert on this but it looks like it should be possible to open something like Flash Lite directly from J2ME application. And why not? However, currently there's a lot more important things to implement. There's no point to spend developers time and money when only relatively small number of phones can run Flash Lite.

Then what to do?

If Flash is important for you, then do consider buying a new phone that has Flash Lite 3.x already installed. Moreover, it's good idea to get 3G connection from your provider. You need fast connection to run rich media or download huge Flash files. Finally, forget Opera Mini and download so called "full browser" like Opera Mobile.

One thing is sure. You just can't get Flash Lite or any "full browser" to run on low end phone. As soon as majority of phones does have Flash Lite on them, or enough resources to run something like Skyfire, then it is fare enough to ask Flash supported on Opera Mini.