Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 for Android Enter Private Beta

Adobe has just announced that it has begun beta-testing the Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Android. The two pieces of software are in private testing for now, but the betas will be opened up to the public at some point. Adobe couldn't specify a precise date for the public betas. At the same time, the releases of both Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 for Android, BlackBerry and Palm WebOS devices have been pushed back to the second half of the year, after initially beings scheduled for H1 2010.

“You can now sign up to be notified when the first public betas of both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 are available. We just started the private betas and we are really looking forward to getting these technologies into your hands as soon as possible,” Lee Brimelow, platform evangelist at Adobe, announced.

“There are separate sign-up pages for Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 so go on over and get registered. Unfortunately I can’t give any information about the specific dates for the betas.”

The two platforms promise some interesting, new capabilities on the mobile front. The highlight is better support for native hardware capabilities, like multi-touch support, accessing the accelerometer present in the vast majority of smartphones today and hardware acceleration of graphics and video where available.

Pre-release versions of both Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 are available on the desktop front, but, for Android mobile devices, the platforms are just now entering the private beta period. This would explain why the scheduled release date has been pushed back. You can sign up (Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0) for the public beta and Adobe will get back to you when it becomes available.

Flash on mobile devices has been the root of a growing dispute between Apple and Adobe (and pretty much everyone else). Apple doesn’t support Flash on the iPhone or on the iPad and has been very critical of the platform. It has recently banned third-party developers from using it for their iPhone/iPad apps, if they want to be included in the iTunes App Store.