Alas, the never ending search for a desk top browser experience on the smallest of screens, your phone. Once again prompted by updates, I’m having a look at the Skyfire browser for Windows mobile.
With this latest update I’ve decided to go a bit deeper into the application, so let’s see how it goes.
Skyfire is one of those browsers that is not completely dependent on your device, but uses cloud technology to serve you a compressed version of the web through their own third party servers. Much like Opera Mini, and recently, the Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta.
First up I’d mention that this will work equally as well from a storage card as installed to your device, so if you are being miserly with storage space [like me] you’ll already appreciate this. You may also notice, from the screenshot above, that since Skyfire came out of beta, it’s received even more update love. Every tweak helps right? It’s good to know that this is a well supported application,
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The first screen or option you’ll be presented with is a choice to make Skyfire the default browser, I chose no for now, knowing I can change that later, to test with other apps. First up though, I want to see how it performs on it’s own. One of the most striking things about Skyfire is what it comes with/ the default bookmarks, that give you access to all sorts of services with no set up at all.
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There’s also a today screen plug in included in this iteration, a nice touch. One of my little negatives with Skyfire has always been the fact that you cannot import bookmarks to the browser in any way. Well unless it’s a very elusive option. You will have to manually enter the URL of all of your most read sites, something that may be off putting to a lot of users.
BUT, and it’s a big but, for usability and intuitiveness, Skyfire goes all the way up to eleven for me. The amount of settings/options you have to configure are as minimalistic as I’ve seen
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Everything else is configured through the browser interface and shortcuts, and it’s really self explanatory. All of the menu shortcuts go no deeper than two levels, keeping with the simplicity of the program. Performance though is what everyone is going to judge this app on, so I.ve done a screen cap video that gives a relative speed comparison for you to look at.
Overall, performance is the key, Skyfire plays video, is really quick to load and even runs JAMM 3.0 with it’s animated home page, no other WinMo browser does all of that. Another performance not here is that it’s doing all of that on my Tilt/HTC Kaiser. If you are looking for a better internet experience on Windows Mobile you have to give this a try
Skyfire is available for free, for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices
