Skyfire: new mobile competition for Opera
Skyfire, a Mountain View, Calif., start-up that competes directly with Opera Mobile browser, announced Wednesday the opening of its public beta for Windows Mobile phones. This is good news if you’ve been waiting months to join Skyfire’s impacted private beta program. In addition to going public, Skyfire has upgraded from version 0.6 to version 0.8, a move that brings significant performance improvements and a more fleshed-out start screen design. On the start screen, Skyfire has shifted from a spindly design of bare text links to a fleshed-out look that includes shaded boxes and icons. The headline content–world, business, sports, elections, and a weather widget–is all fed by Yahoo, though it’s not an exclusive partnership.
Vastly improved streaming video quality is another feature that gives Skyfire an extra dose of credibility. Skyfire has introduced SuperBar in version 0.8, a field that combines the address bar and search into one. SuperBar helpfully offers suggestions to complete your query as you type, but unlike Opera Mobile 9.5 beta (which has separate search and URL fields), Skyfire doesn’t remember your URL history. Nevertheless, it’s one new feature that helps elevate Skyfire from a scrawny mobile browser with potential to one that is a viable browser alternative. Skyfire beta is available for those of you in the private beta program through a program update; new users can get it for Windows Mobile phones by pointing the mobile browser to skyfire.com.
Source: Cnet
Comments(19)
Shame it’s still US only!
new what ? XD opera competition ? hahahaha lmfao
Renders flash/java faster then opera version and can view youtube without any flash addons needed
[quote]unlike Opera Mobile 9.5 beta (which has separate search and URL fields)[/quote]
Opera Desktop doesn’t need a separate search field, so I doubt that Opera Mobile does either. Just type “g awesome” into the url field and it’ll auto-search Google for “awesome”.
Other prefixes include y (yahoo), e (ebay), w (wikipedia), and a bunch others. I doubt that the Mobile version is any different to the Desktop in this regard.
too bad windows mobile is the past.
“too bad windows mobile is the past”
The past? What’s the future, the iPhone crap?
Cmon…
qoute: Just type “g awesome” into the url field and it’ll auto-search Google for “awesome”. end quote
That function is an kick ass idea
Lame!
Opera Mobile and Opera Mini are still the best mobile browsers available.
Those of you saying Opera Mobile is better have clearly not used this browser. I’ve had it on my AT&T 8525 for a couple months now and it’s great. The best browser I’ve used that’s the closest to a standard PC browser.
opera mini sucks ass, unfortuneatly for me as I have a java based phone so I can’t run any better browser. Skyfire kicks ass but it’s US only and no java version :’\
yeah, skyfire is the TRUTH… ive had it since last Feb and its the best… memory heavy, but if you tried it, youd understand and its worth it
I’ve been using this since the first beta release. It works very well but only if your phone had the ram and processor spped to support it.
How about a decent browser for PalmOS? kthnx.
I hate these registrations that require your phone number.
They’ve been collecting these phone numbers for how long? a year? since their first beta? And since they say “if you are in US you’ll receive SMS message” I suspect they receive some “bonuses” from phone companies who charge phone owners 20 cents per f’uking message!
Oh and guess what they gonna do with your phone number? they’ll sell it to the telemarketers, who will eventually use up your phone minutes.
Screw you skyfire.
Any idea where to get this if you are in the UK?
oh yeah and it looks like it will only work right now on a phone, not PDA
Skyfire – decent band.
tried downloading….. bad archive…. don’t bother registering