A phone that is able to install Froyo/Flash right NOW

[allmandring]

I am due to finish my college thesis in a little more than a month and am coming up to the practical/development side of it.

Its about GUIs/adaptive-interfaces, etc. and is supposed to for example demonstrate a Flash-based interface that adapts the same date for different devices - in this case a normal browser-based PC and an Android browser.

This is why I need to get a Flash-enabled Android phone to demo this on.

At the beginning I was thinking about Nexus One - but since I'll be spending 400-500 Euro for a device, it got me thinking that I might as well get something newer/faster for the money - that would "last" longer. I would go for the EVO but I'm in Europe/Germany and its not available there - so I was thinking about either HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S.

However the problem with both of those is that officially they don't support Froyo/Flash yet - I know that they are bot supposed to get it soon, but I need Flash support NOW to demo my thesis project.

So what would you recommend? I'm new to Android (and the terminology - so please bare with me), but was thinking that maybe someone knowledgeable could answer if I could possibly root(?) Desire or Galaxy and install (a custom rom) Froyo? on them (is even a custom hacked rom available for either of them? is everything working ok?) just to demo my thesis - and then alternatively come back to their original rom after the thesis to wait for the official update like the average joe.

Or is this all not worth it and I should just get a Nexus One?

I was also reading an article a while back that the latest android flash 10.1 release has also been hacked to work on Android 2.1 ... could anyone confirm this? If so, I could live with Galaxy/Desire on 2.1 with flash 10.1 support only... but does the hacked plugin work ok? and performance issues or other things that Froyo does better?

Please help and thank you!

 

[UrbanMuppet]

No longer a contributing member. Account pending for deletion.

 

[Lepodo]

It just so happens that a couple of days ago the Desire has a nice little Froyo ROM, with HTC Sense included in it.
Android 2.2 ported to HTC Desire, working quite well -- Engadget

 

[Pryomancer]

I'd say go for the Nexus One, it's just as fast as the current phones, well it's only a few months older than the EVO.

 

[grainysand]

The Nexus One says hi.

It's got the same internals as the Evo, which is to say it's hardly an outdated piece of crap. Go for it.

 

[allmandring]

Thanks guys!

Yeah, I need to demo everything on a phone - part of the gui design is also how for example multitouch gestures change our interaction with the mobile devices - so I need to show that. You could simulate everything with a mouse, but still not the same thing...

Of course Nexus One is not "an old crappy phone", its just that all of these phones cost about the same and if I could have a phone that just came out with a few extra features for the same price... without the contract Nexus One is about 450, HTC Desire 400 and Galaxy S is 420 Euro.

Upon further research Desire and Nexus one do seem to be almost the same phone - as far as I can tell there are small differences only in video capture, etc... but this could be a software/firmware issue as well..

I was leaning towards Samsung Galaxy S - a faster processor, Super AMOLED, more memory, a better camera and a larger battery - do make its hardware more attractive. But unfortunately not sure about Flash support on it - where would be a best place to look for custom roms for the Galaxy?

Also - anybody running a hacked 10.1 flash player on Android 2.1?

 

[grainysand]

Flash player on 2.1 is a no: Eclair doesn't have the framework/library for it. You can get Flash Lite in Sense ROMs, but from my experience it's pretty terrible. Like, really, really terrible.

You can head over to xda-developers for Galaxy S custom ROMs but, right now, I see just one and it's the shipped ROM with Modaco modifications. That's it. Don't expect 2.2 ports, Sense ports or anything--Samsung isn't into releasing their kernels, so hacking/modding is going to be extremely limited.

 

[allmandring]

Thanks for the tip again!

I was actually reading this (or a similar) article the other day about installing Flash 10.1 on Eclair (although reading the comments - they seem to be having mixed success), thats why I was asking:
http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-install-flash-10-1-on-android-2-1-eclair-devices/

This is probably the origin for that:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=686736

 

[opticalshadow]

id say go for the N1, i love it, and as far as being out dated, until late this year or next year when phones start getting the 2 ghtz procs in them this thing is still top of the food chain. the only advantage the evo has is 4g and hdmi out. everything else is fairly similure to my knowing.