The Skyfire web browser, previously only available in the US and Canada, is now available in the UK, it seems. It's proxy-based (for pre-processing speed) and it runs on virtually any S60 3rd Edition phone. Commenrs and early reviews welcome. (via p@sco)
Read on in the full article.
It still doesn't support the E90, though 😞 : -( 😞
Whilst I should mention that I haven't actually given it a fair shout yet so don't be guided by my comments, make your own mind up, but my initial thoughts are that Skyfire just doesn't feel as polished at Opera.
There are some neat features but personally I'm not sure.
Nice concept. Wish it was 10 times faster. A few more editions should have it sorted. I'll stick with the new Opera for now. Which is where I'm posting now.
This installs on my E90 BUT i dont see any SkyFire icon in the applications folder :con?
after a brief few minutes browsing the bbc website, i was pleased with the speed of rendering the full page but when i wanted to read an article the zoom still left it too small to read comfortably. The only option i found was to zoom out. ?
Navigating the site also felt a bit clunky (well known technical term)
Roll on the next beta.
Update from earlier post, Skyfire has twice frozen on my N96 requiring battery removal to reboot. Now safely removed. I'll deffo stick with Opera 😊
Certificate error on Samsung i8510 😡
While browsing isn't as smooth as Opera, the abillity to play videos from pretty much any website (not just YouTube) at a reasonable rate is very impressive.
I'll certainly keep it for that functionality alone. Any idea if they plan to charge for it in the future? How do Opera keep OperaMini free, with the backend processing and bandwidth that it must need?
Argh, that's a good point, it's easy to have a popular product if you give it away but much harder to make money from it.
Opera is possibly looking for money from manufacturing licences? For example most of Nokia's new S40 phones have Opera Mini pre-installed, it could be that Nokia pays Opera a royalty for each phone.
Can a browser update the java script?
abilities of the device to make the sites look like a PC Desktop in E90 is first :the site thought its just any S60 with 240x320 screen and becauz the java script is limited "Facebook sux in E90".
argh, opera makes it money in the same way as the desktop opera browser and firefox. Google pays them for search and all the websites that are pre configured on the phone pay them too. It must be profitable as they have been doing it for a long time now.
Thanks for the info, Unregistered 😊 I hadn't thought of that, but I imagine that you are correct. I hope that it's profitable for them - it's a great app, especially for free and keeps my data usage at a more reasonable level too.
With the extra CPU/bandwidth required for the Flash processing, I don't know if Skyfire will be able to offer the same free service, though.
Thanks also Tzer2 - I have never followed S40, so don't really know what goes on in that space.
I think it works rather well, in the Uk it will even play the BBC iplayer, frame rate is not brilliant but still watchable.
Sure it is not as quick as rendering pages as Opera but it renderers faster then the s60 browser.
It only gets better with each new beta.
A great companion browser to both S60 and Opera
Not a bad browser. Works in India too 😊
I am just facing one issue... everytime I key in a URL, it takes me to a search page and shows me the search results, instead of directly taking me to the website. Am I doing something wrong?
Those with problems with sound when watching videos. I have n95 8ig and removed the PIPS STDIO Server, cleared cache and turned off and back on problem solved.
I'm well impressed - I can finally access my google calendars in the same way as on PC.
Well Done!
We made some updates that should mostly deal with the audio issues that folks were seeing in the UK. Problem entirely on our end, sorry about that. - Mike Rowehl (Skyfire)