Play Flash Games on iPad

All the Android fans love to brag about how their tablets work with Flash games, movies and Web sites. Their biggest rival, Apple’s iPad, has many more available apps and several other great features, but non-Apple salesmen love to hit home this one point: iPad cannot load Flash.
But, this point is not exactly true anymore. Sure, Flash is not built into the default Safari browser on iPad, but third-party developers have found ways around this problem. One third-party app we especially like for playing Flash games on iPad is the Photon browser.

On the surface, the Photon Browser works just like any other browser. You type in a Web address, and it goes to the specified page. When you find a page that requires Flash, you simply click the lightning bolt at the top right of the browser.

This starts virtualization mode, which means the browser is actually running from a server in the cloud and not your iPad. This is the way Photon works around the Flash issue—it simply reroutes the browser to a computer that has Flash installed. You are then controlling that computer’s browser from your iPad.
While the virtualization concept is simple enough, controlling it takes a little practice. Photon has built in extra controls for this mode, including the ability to switch from mouse mode to touch mode. Click the arrow to switch to mouse mode.

Some games, like Pictionary or Scrabble, require mouse movements. Use this mode for these games. Otherwise, click the hand icon to switch back to normal iPad mode.

When you need the keyboard, click the keyboard icon at the top of the page.

Otherwise, you can play whatever Flash games you like. We played Sid Meyer’s Civ World on Facebook with no problems. We also tried Cafe World, Frontierville and Farmville, all of which worked smoothly.

The Photon Browser is not free, but considering its benefits, the $3.99 price tag seems fair. Some users report lag time when using virtualization mode. We have been using this browser for about a month and have not experienced lag over our home WiFi connection, but did experience a bit of lag in 3g mode, especially during peak browsing times.