1. Mobilize Your Apps with Flex
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2. Altoros Flex developers tested the preview releases of Flex SDK and
Flash Builder that feature new components for cross-platform mobile
development.
Our Flex developers published a Web-based application for Android and
iPhone. It was revealed, that all of the libraries functioned seamlessly, and
made sure the application supported accelerometer, multi-touch, and
gestures.
We wanted to see how Flex application supported the built-in camera,
microphone, and GPS, also we wanted to check how it interacted with the
Web.
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3. Our investigation revealed that the Flex application on iPhone supported
the following features:
 Switching between the application and the phone mode to make calls
and send SMS
 Uploading and sending graphics and text data using HTTP requests
 Building menus, tables, interactive networks, and diagrams
 Utilizing Web services in full—we tested how the application worked
with Twitter, and it ran perfectly.
 Launching and watching video files
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4. The application failed to access some built-in features of the iPhone:
 With the Packager, we faced some difficulties when trying to get access
to the camera and the microphone. It seems like the tool still cannot
exchange data with these APIs.
 We didn’t receive the coordinates through the built-in GPS. Though the
test demonstrated that its API was available, it was not active.
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5. In addition, there were some issues when comparing Flex app against a
native iPhone application:
 The Flex application runs slower than the native application.
 Its size is 2-3 times bigger than the size of a similar native application.
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6. Finally, it still lacks the functionality to convert complex Flex applications to
iOS. Interaction with the APIs of a built-in camera, GPS, and microphone is
already incorporated, but not yet working.
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7. We believe Adobe will improve the support for iOS app developers soon. It
would be great to have a full-featured interface for developing iOS
applications in Flex, like the one AIR provides for Android. It’s good news
that most of the components have been optimized for working with mobile
devices, and we also hope that the final release will have the rest of the
components optimized, as well.
Anyway, it is already possible to build cross-platform Flex applications for
iPhone even with this functionality.
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8. Altoros Systems, Inc. is a global software delivery acceleration specialist
that provides focused outsourced software product engineering,
independent Quality Assurance, and testing services to software
organizations and information-driven enterprises. Founded in 2001 and
headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Altoros has representative offices
in Western Massachusetts, Norway, Denmark, and UK. It manages a
software development center in Eastern Europe out of its offices in Minsk,
Belarus. For more information, please visit www.altoros.com.
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