After months of private beta, Skyfire, a free mobile browser lauded for offering support for Flash, AJAX, and other goodies generally reserved for PC browsers, has opened its doors to the public. Just in time for the resulting stampede of new users, they’ve also introduced a fresh release of the browser for Windows Mobile complete with a handful of new features.
(Update: Though they’ve taken the beta public, Skyfire is still only for US residents for the time being. We asked them when it would open up to folks outside of the states, and while they couldn’t pin it on a specific date, they did say it would happen “in weeks, not months.”)
Amongst the new gems within todays v0.8 release is the “Super Bar”, a beefed up version of the standard address bar. Borrowing an idea made popular by the Opera and Chrome browsers, the Super Bar takes on the search role whenever a keyword is typed in rather than a URL. If you typed in “Cake recipes”, for example, Skyfire would return (delicious) tab-seperated results from both Google and Yahoo. As the Super Bar features auto complete, you’d probably only have to type “Cake Rec” before it could finish the rest for you. Furthermore, you can opt to put a Super Bar directly onto your WinMo Home Screen to act as a search/address launch pad.
The new release also introduces content sharing by way of SMS. If you come across a page you want to send to a friend, two taps in the menu will bring up a text message pre-prepped with a forwarding URL short enough to fit while allowing some room for explanation. They’ve also optimized Skyfire across the board while adding in a few new options: video playback quality has been improved, text automatically resizes to fit the width of the screen when zoomed, and content from the page can now be downloaded to the device’s storage.
Overall, it’s a solid update to an already impressive product. Supporting Flash, Silverlight, Quicktime, and Windows Media, Skyfire’s playback capabilities alone more than make it a stalwart contender in the cross-platform mobile browser battle, so new features are like little bonus incentives to further pull me away from Opera Mobile. While version 0.8 is currently only available for Windows Mobile, Skyfire assures us that the S60 release isn’t far behind.
You can now get Skyfire, sans waiting list or beta codes, at their site.
Flash on a phone? Sounds too good to be true – but I’ve already got this downloaded to my phone’s SD card. This I gotta see!
It’s true! http://vimeo.com/1051743
I’ve been using it for several months and really enjoy it for just casual surfing on my phone. It’ll be interesting to see if the sudden influx of users throws a wrench in the works at all.
uhmm i prefer my PSP
The most underrated company of ‘08. I love these guys! 300×300 24bit compressed + optional audio is all that gets sent to your phone no matter what your doing. Native mobile browsers will never be able to compete while still trying to maintain battery life. With very little work companies can bang out apps and just say, “Use Skyfire”. Its the real web after all. Its not great for everything, but for simple AJAX applications with multimedia it rocks.
No Blackberry support?!
If anyone at Skyfire is reading this and wants to help, please drop me an email (davezatz@yahoo.com). I registered for the S60 private beta (and haven’t been activated for the next wave), so now the website is not letting me login and download the Windows Mobile version. I’m penalized for sharing a SIM with too many phones, please help! :)
I’ve been using this as a secondary browser for a bit. The plugin support is really cool. However, Skyfire could learn a lot from Opera when it comes to building an easy to use browser.
Just to follow up.
Now that I can actually log in, I have to say I’m blown away by the new build.
.8 is like a completely different browser than .6. It’s fast, smooth, video is about as flawless as you could expect, being streamed on a phone. They have addressed, nearly, every problem I had with the last build.
Anyone with a Windows Mobile device is cheating themselves if they don’t download this browser.
ah with this update the sip keyboard doesnt pop up automaticaly when selecting a text area and it covers what i am typing.
Using it on a Sprint Mogul with 6.1
I’ve been using Skyfire for about a week. I’m a fan! Glad it’s opened up to the masses now. Can’t wait to see their progress.
This is an impressive looking mobile browser. Will definitely have to test it out.
The real probelm {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/vhWbHh2Vg2_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”The real probelm ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/dtTBaNaCEi”}}}
“Open to everybody”?? It is US only at the moment.
I saw your “update”, but you should have updated title, currently it is misleading. Lots of people would look at the title, then immediately go to Skyfire site to check the browser out (like I did) and become very disappointed unless they are US residents.
Too sad that there are still companies, acting on the internet, that still thinks in terms of geographical borders. Can anyone explain any reason why Skyfire needs to be limited to US?
ya i wrote about this on my blog a week ago…love it on my vx6900 … http://www.vincenttobiaz.com
Me, UK resident, REALLY annoyed that I can’t get a hold of Skyfire for my Windows Mobile powered HTC TyTn II. Grrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really, what an amazing browser! when you are playing e-radio, it will mute it when you are receiving a call (!)
Skyfire officially launched for smartphones in the UK on December 9th — to get it, point your compatible handset browser to: http://www.get.skyfire.com