Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: skyfire, mobile, browser | Themes: Software, Smartphones
5. Full and Fast Browsing
We tested Skyfire with an HTC Touch Pro connected to an AT&T network over EDGE (2.5G) and a WiFi connection and with an HTC Touch on Verizon’s 3G network. We then made a comparison using Opera on the same 3G HTC phone as well as a 3G iPhone, an iPhone connected to the same WiFi network, and a BlackBerry Bold on AT&T’s 3G network. The speed at which Web pages load varies with the bandwidth of the phone’s connection, the number of people using the same cell phone, and the traffic on the Web server, so we loaded every page a number of times and took the average connection speed. Although you can often start reading or scrolling through a page before it's fully loaded, we timed the full page load, as shown by both the on-screen display and the loading bar.
We timed loading pages on six popular sites, but only Skyfire was able to support all the features on all these sites. Some mobile browsers were redirected to the mobile version of YouTube, CNN, and the BBC–and the mobile sites obviously loaded more quickly than the full versions of the sites.
Browsing times on Symbian S60 phones are similar, but while the page download is about the same, rendering the page image is usually slower because most Symbian phones have much less powerful processors than Windows Mobile devices do. Skyfire has one feature that may speed up browsing on Symbian: it will remember the last connection you used for getting online so you don't have to select it yourself every time (and you can change the connection type from inside Skyfire, if you leave a WiFi hotspot, for example).
Skyfire is consistently faster than other browsers are at loading Web pages, especially large and complex Web pages. With long pages that have a lot of scripts and page elements, like the full News and Reviews section here at Tom’s Guide, you can really see the difference between a 3G connection and a slower 2.5G EDGE phone. The screen size of the phone you use also makes a difference–the iPhone shows more of the page onscreen, so it has to download more of the page to start with.
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Now, if only they would release an iPhone app for this...
I'm not much for windows mobile after I used the BlackJack. It tends to slowly turn to crap as time progresses. It would be really nice to see this technology on a phone that's already championed as the best phone ever (generally).
This browser looks great and does great, except for smth. that is important for a phone like mine (Nokia E51) with a smaller screen: it cannot rotate the page which is annoying esp. when watching video...
somehow i cant see a third-party app beating a native browser, then again we have firefox....
@pocketdrummer; Skyfire can't produce a version for iPhone (keen as the team would be to do it) as Apple doesn't allow other browsers on the iPhone.
@pocketdrummer; Skyfire can't produce a version for iPhone (keen as the team would be to do it) as Apple doesn't allow other browsers on the iPhone.
there are alternatives im sure of it but there more based on the integrated safari?
I wonder how skyfire stacks up against bolt? It would be nice if this worked on my 8230...
Now, if only they would release an iPhone app for this...I'm not much for windows mobile after I used the BlackJack. It tends to slowly turn to crap as time progresses. It would be really nice to see this technology on a phone that's already championed as the best phone ever (generally).
Sorry to hear of your WinMo experience. I have the 2yr old Tilt on AT&T and haven't looked back since. Had to replace only once after having dropped it...Oop's! Waiting till my November date to get my discounted TP2. Of course my WinMo is XDA hacked running SPB Shell 3.0