Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: skyfire, mobile, browser | Themes: Software, Smartphones
1. Is This The Browser To Beat?
Can Skyfire beat the lauded iPhone and Blackberry browsers? Can it do the job of displaying Web page on a phone, Flash and all? Find out. We put it to the test.
The iPhone revolutionized mobile phone browsing, with a big screen, intuitive gestures, and a powerful browser based on the same Webkit rendering engine that’s behind the desktop version of Safari, but there are still things it can’t do (embedded Flash in particular). Browsers on the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian have been improving and both Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox, and Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (due in Windows Mobile 6.5), promise a full desktop browsing experience. But phone screens and keyboards are small, even with 3G bandwidth, which like batter life with WiFi connections, is limited. You’re also never going to have the same processing power on a phone that you will on a desktop or notebook PC. All of these reasons are why Skyfire takes a slightly different approach.
This new browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 (there’s also a version for BlackBerry in private alpha testing) is based on Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine that Firefox uses, except it runs on Skyfire’s data centers around the world rather than on your phone. The server does the hard work of decoding and rendering the page and then sends a compressed, interactive image to the Skyfire client on your phone.
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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