AfterDawn: News

Skyfire mobile smartphone browser now available

Skyfire has finally released the complete version of their smartphone mobile browser, promising a "PC-like web experience."

The browser is a free download and will display pages almost exactly as they would appear on a PC, similar to the Safari browser for the popular Apple iPhone.



Skyfire also notably supports Flash, Java, Silverlight and Ajax.

The browser in its current form will run on all phones using Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and Symbian phones with Nokia's S60 platform. A BlackBerry version is coming later.

Adds Skyfire business development vice president Raj Singh:

"The top two user complaints were that it took a long time to start up and it was slow when zooming in and scrolling, so we attacked those issues." Zooming is now instant and scrolling pages is "faster and smoother" adds Singh.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 27 May 2009 14:29

• Previous article

• Nokia Ovi Store goes live

• Next article

• Zune HD is finally here

• 7 comments

• Lothros

  Yes, because the world just so needs another Proprietary Rubbish Browser when there are much better, faster and more secure Open Source options available that can be tailored to any and all operating systems.
  
  Hell, even Skyfire admits it's basically a Firefox derivative by its use of Gecko.

  27.5.2009 16:36 #1

• locobrown

  Bring it to PSP! PSP, PSP, PSP!!!! Please!!!

  27.5.2009 21:21 #2

• veyron

  I hope it comes out soon for the blackberry curve. Looks better than Opera Mini.
  
  I wonder if this will allow the Curve to run flash in the browser?

  27.5.2009 21:28 #3

• lawndog

  I've been using for several months now on a Blackjack 2. Which uses windows mobile 6.1 as their OS. Had a couple issues with it on slow start up and would lag on opening pages a couple months ago, but they fixed this about a month ago.
  The phone came with internet exploerer and that was VERY limited as to what pages I could view and operate.
  
  @ Lothros what are you using to browse the internet since you seem to dislike Skyfire. I'd be open to give it a shot.

  28.5.2009 08:33 #4

• SProdigy

  Originally posted by lawndog: I've been using for several months now on a Blackjack 2. Which uses windows mobile 6.1 as their OS. Had a couple issues with it on slow start up and would lag on opening pages a couple months ago, but they fixed this about a month ago.
  The phone came with internet exploerer and that was VERY limited as to what pages I could view and operate.
  
  @ Lothros what are you using to browse the internet since you seem to dislike Skyfire. I'd be open to give it a shot.I guess I'll have to give it another shot. I tried it a few months ago on WM 6.1 and the browser was WORSE than IE. Opera is good for WM, but is not FREE, which for the little browsing I do is not worth it.

  28.5.2009 11:44 #5

• damncrap

  I have had Skyfire on my Windows 6.1 phone(Sprint Mogul) little over a year now along with Opera, Mini Opera, and also Iris. While I dont like the way it zooms in or the fact that when you move the page around the text and images blurr and have to readjust, out of all of the browsers I have on my phone I always end up using SkyFire. Its the only one that works on EVERY site. I mostly use Iris which everyone with a touchscreen WM phone should try out but have a copy of SkyFire aswel for when Iris falls short. Opera zooms in and out nice and scrolls nicely too but at some point Opera and Iris will always get the dredded "out of memory" error and close. Thats when SkyFire comes in which I have never seen this messege, not even once. It also plays flash and audio which is cool without the installation of flash player. If they have improved the zoom function and the way you scroll around the page then this prbly is the best now.

  29.5.2009 17:48 #6

• ThePastor

  I tried skyfire a few months ago and I just really hated it. I think it's a proxy browser which seems to me as if they are going to the page, reformatting it for your phone then sending it to you. This just caused unbarable lag for me. I suppose that if you just really, really need compatability then this would be fine, but there's got to be better solutions out there.
  IEmobile is not that great either, but it was much faster and the upgrade (wm6.1) was a VAST improvement.
  For rudimentary browsing it seems sufficient.

  29.5.2009 19:14 #7