Up and coming mobile phone web browser by Skyfire has just made its debut in the UK, lighting up the heavens along the way.
Said to have a PC-esque browsing experience, their newest web surfer enters its beta rollout stage over ‘ere. *cough* *about time* *cough*
Boasting decent flash comparability and faster than Opera like speeds, it comes along with support for Symbian and Windows Mobile.
All with most of the web page’s compression work done at their server end, it’s much like another mobile web browser in that respect.
They’ve already successfully rolled out their beta in the USA and Canada, with the UK version now having added customisation with the likes of the BBC and eBay.co.uk on the front page.
Just to highlight their commitment to these fair isles they’ve opened up a data centre, just to locally improve page loading times. This is something Opera has yet to do in this country, so bully for them.
We’ve also seen some footage of speed tests of late against that other browser with the results being very hot indeed. Dan also bumped into them at the Symbian Smart phone show this year; check them out on MIR Show – Week 43 – Skyfire Secrets.
Or try it at http://get.skyfire.com/ and let us know your thoughts on the matter.
Wanted to comment, started and realised it was going to be a long long response based on some conversations I had yesterday. So I've blogged it over at http://www.exponere.com/2008/12/skyfire-new-ste… feel free to comment, pull bits from etc… it's under a CC license anyway
I've been using Skyfire on my N95-1 for a couple of weeks now alongside opera mini, I'm afraid it really doesn't shine in comparison. It takes roughly twice as long to load the average page, then takes at least 2 clicks to zoom in to a readable level (am I missing an option?). I really like the way opera moves the viewable area around to frame a paragraph- Skyfire only does this on the initial zoom.
Skyfire does have it's benefits though, it is able to display large photo albums and flash content (opera either gives up after half the page of photos, or simply can't display the content). Opera Mini is quick and I think to catch up on the morning news from sites such as MIR, Skyfire does have it's place though and is better for flashier pages such as Youtube or pages with a lot of multimedia content. Firefox for S60 on the other hand…
Wanted to comment, started and realised it was going to be a long long response based on some conversations I had yesterday. So I've blogged it over at http://www.exponere.com/2008/12/skyfire-new-ste… feel free to comment, pull bits from etc… it's under a CC license anyway
I've been using Skyfire on my N95-1 for a couple of weeks now alongside opera mini, I'm afraid it really doesn't shine in comparison. It takes roughly twice as long to load the average page, then takes at least 2 clicks to zoom in to a readable level (am I missing an option?). I really like the way opera moves the viewable area around to frame a paragraph- Skyfire only does this on the initial zoom.
Skyfire does have it's benefits though, it is able to display large photo albums and flash content (opera either gives up after half the page of photos, or simply can't display the content). Opera Mini is quick and I think to catch up on the morning news from sites such as MIR, Skyfire does have it's place though and is better for flashier pages such as Youtube or pages with a lot of multimedia content. Firefox for S60 on the other hand…
I am happier going through the US, means I stream Hulu.com ;-). The thing to note about Skyfire is that it's service rather than a browser, so the pages are fetched onto a Skyfire server and redrawn for the phone. My only gripe was the speed but it sounds like they are working to rectify that
Wanted to comment, started and realised it was going to be a long long response based on some conversations I had yesterday. So I've blogged it over at http://www.exponere.com/2008/12/skyfire-new-ste… feel free to comment, pull bits from etc… it's under a CC license anyway
I've been using Skyfire on my N95-1 for a couple of weeks now alongside opera mini, I'm afraid it really doesn't shine in comparison. It takes roughly twice as long to load the average page, then takes at least 2 clicks to zoom in to a readable level (am I missing an option?). I really like the way opera moves the viewable area around to frame a paragraph- Skyfire only does this on the initial zoom.
Skyfire does have it's benefits though, it is able to display large photo albums and flash content (opera either gives up after half the page of photos, or simply can't display the content). Opera Mini is quick and I think to catch up on the morning news from sites such as MIR, Skyfire does have it's place though and is better for flashier pages such as Youtube or pages with a lot of multimedia content. Firefox for S60 on the other hand…