Jelly Bean can use Adobe Flash, just not with Chrome Browser

Adobe Flash Player is fairly major topic of discussion. While many of us have had Flash installed since the day it was available, others never even knew what it was or they didn’t need it. Personally, I would forget to install it after a new ROM install and found that maybe 1 out 50 sites I visited on my phone ever even needed it. That doesn’t mean that some of you out there are like me though. When Adobe announced that Ice Cream Sandwich would be the last officially support Android OS to be supported, a lot of people got bummed out and even upset. Now that Jelly Bean is starting to make its way around the web, some official and some not so official, you might wish you had Flash available.

Luckily, the developer community likes to try things on their own and see what happens. XDA member stempox went a head and snagged the Flash APK and side loaded it to Jelly Bean and found out that it works just fine. This can be particularly helpful on the Galaxy Nexus or Nexus S running Jelly Bean, as well as any JB ROM you might be running currently. This is really the only option since Adobe blocks the app in the Play Store when it knows you are on JB.

Lets not stop there though. What about the Nexus 7? Well, the N7 doesn’t have the standard browser that Google has been using in the past. Instead the device is pre-loaded with the Chrome Browser. Since the Chrome for Android browser won’t support plug-ins, installing the Flash APK won’t do you any good. You would need to copy over the Browser.apk to /system/app using a file manager that lets you cruise through root files. Not all that difficult, but still a hassle.

Either way, Flash does still work, just don’t expect Adobe to ever release an update to solve any issues you might experience. If you want to look into both options, head to stempox’s xda thread for Flash and Censura_Umbra’s xda thread for the Nexus 7