Flash updated, links to privacy settings

Android phones have Flash, iPhones don't. That may become irrelevant when every website has made the switch to HTML5, but that's still years away. Flash is gonna stick around for quite a while.

Flash for Android is updated. You won't notice much of a difference, except for one tiny little detail: the new Flash app puts an icon in your app drawer.

The icon launches your web browser and takes you to the mobile Flash player settings page. It doesn't have all the features of the desktop version, but the options available for the Android Flash plugin are useful anyway.

The Local Storage menu lets you limit which sites can store Flash data on your phone. You can choose always or never, and there's a setting in between called "only from sites I visit." This setting lets the sites you surf to store some stuff so you don't need to redownload everything when you come back later, but it stops third party Flash content from being stored. This helps fight the infamous Flash cookies that advertisers abuse to track you. There's also a button that lets you erase all stored content with a single tap.

The other setting is called "peer-assisted networking." This lets sites lighten the load on their servers by letting their users redistribute their Flash content: you share the Flash stuff you already downloaded with others, and you may get your Flash fix from other users instead of from the original site. If you're often using Flash on 3G connections you better switch this feature off.

• Flash (Android Market)