Adobe Premiere comes to Android after a year on iPhone: We speak to Adobe executive Diksha Kuhar

Adobe has brought its Premiere mobile video editing app to Android, nearly a year after it debuted on the iPhone. In an exclusive conversation with ET Digital, Diksha Kuhar, Director, Product Marketing, Premiere mobile at Adobe, explained why the Android version took longer to arrive and how the company has adapted the app for a wider range of devices. I have been using Premiere mobile on the iPhone for almost a year, ever since Adobe first announced the app at Adobe Max last year. I was also at Adobe Max for that announcement, and will be heading back again this year. Over the past year, Premiere has become more than just another app I have tested. I regularly use it alongside Premiere Pro on my laptop, particularly when I am shooting and editing content while travelling.

The Android launch now brings that same mobile-first editing experience to a much larger audience. Adobe Premiere is available for free on Android devices running Android 13 or later, with a minimum requirement of 5GB of RAM. Speaking to ET Digital, Kuhar said the Android version took longer because of the wide range of hardware the company needed to support.

"Android landscape is so diverse. There's a wide variety of devices, hardware specifications and capabilities, and we've taken the time to just get it right because there is a certain amount of quality and performance people expect from Adobe and we wanted to make sure that we nailed that," Kuhar said.

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Adobe's broader ambition is to make mobile editing feel closer to a complete production workflow rather than a stripped-down version of desktop editing. "One of the things that we very strongly believe in is that mobile editing should feel as powerful as it is easy to use," Kuhar said. "We honestly have a vision. We want to put that free studio in people's pockets."

Premiere mobile brings features including frame-accurate editing, a multi-track timeline, effects and transitions, 4K video export, creator-made templates and Adobe Stock assets. It also includes Firefly-powered generative AI tools such as Generative Fill, Image-to-Video and Generate Sound Effects. The Android version also gets Enhance Audio, which uses AI to reduce background noise and improve the clarity of recordings. Adobe says the feature was influenced by feedback from creators, particularly those shooting in noisy environments.

"We heard a lot from the Indian creators that they really want background noise removal, which is powerful," Kuhar said. "Otherwise, you have to carry mics everywhere. You cover a street festival, you're at a noisy cafe, you're commuting in a train, you want to be able to just do all of that without holding a mic awkwardly everywhere." I have already been testing the Android version alongside the iPhone version. On the Pixel 11 Pro XL, I put together the same video cut that I had edited on the iPhone. The iPhone was still faster when it came to exporting, but the Android version remained smooth throughout the editing process.

Adobe says it has tested Premiere across different Android devices and RAM configurations, with 5GB of RAM being the minimum requirement. "We've tested across various devices, across various RAMs," Kuhar said. "It's exactly why we've taken the time that it's allowed us the time to do the due diligence across the broad ecosystem."

The app also brings Adobe's multi-track editing approach to the phone, allowing creators to layer video, music, voiceovers, text and effects within the same timeline. Adobe says YouTube-focused creation tools, including templates, transitions and effects, are also available, with direct publishing to YouTube. For Adobe, however, the Android launch is not simply about making the iPhone app available on another operating system. The company says the experience has been shaped by feedback from creators who have been using Premiere mobile over the past year.

Kuhar pointed to voiceover improvements, Enhance Audio and changes to the multi-track timeline as examples of feedback that made its way into the product.

"We heard some feedback around voiceover, which is when a voiceover begins, people want a delay before the voiceover actually starts," she said. "That is something we addressed and launched in the app." Adobe is also expanding the creative ecosystem around Premiere mobile. The company says Adobe Fonts, enhanced captions, keyframes, cropping, beat detection and continued editing between mobile and Premiere desktop are among the features coming to the app.

For me, the significance of Premiere mobile is less about replacing Premiere Pro on a laptop and more about how much of the editing workflow can now move to the phone. After using it on the iPhone for the past year, the Android launch makes that proposition available to a much wider pool of creators, particularly in markets such as India where Android has a large smartphone user base. The update also comes at a time when the Government is also actively promoting the orange economy.

Adobe's pitch is straightforward: if the smartphone is increasingly where creators shoot their content, it should also be capable of handling a significant part of the editing process. With Premiere now available on both major mobile platforms, Adobe is taking a much bigger step towards making that happen.