Skyfire is an innovative mobile browser that does its best to bring a full-web experience to mobile devices by adding desktop-like features and enhancements that are otherwise normally left out of standard mobile browsers.  The company recently launched a .8 beta version of its browser for Windows Mobile that builds on its already impressive feature-set. 

If you’ve never experienced Skyfire, it was the first mobile browser to support full-web PC browsing- including rich media content.  It supports things like Ajax, Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media, and others, allowing for things like video streaming, flash-based advertisements, games, etc.  “We don’t like to think of ourselves as a mobile Internet browser,” said Skyfire CEO and Co-Founder Nitin Bhandari. “Skyfire is a full feature Internet browser on the mobile device.

In the past, people who wanted to enjoy a PC web experience on their handsets had to sign up on a waiting list for Skyfire.  According to IntoMobile, the latest version of the Windows Mobile Skyfire browser is available to anyone as a free download.  “Leaving private beta is a huge step for us,” continued Bhandari, “We have accomplished our goals of the private beta – launch, listen, improve. Demand for Skyfire has been extremely strong and we are excited to bring this more evolved product to more devices and users.”

Making use of today’s standard web technologies such as Ajax, Flash, etc., means that sites that are media rich such as YouTube, Facebook, ESPN and others are now accessible in their entirety.  Skyfire processes all web-page data through its own proxy servers and then pushes that data back to your mobile device. Because Skyfire’s servers are doing all the heavy data-crunching, the Skyfire browser can serve up multimedia content, like embedded videos, with the ease and speed of a full-blown desktop browser.

The .8 version is available for both touchscreen and non-touchscreen version of Windows Mobile devices, and includes these general updates:

•    Better video quality
•    Ability to make Skyfire the default browser
•    Faster launch and auto-reconnect
•    Improved zooming
•    Ability to download content
•    In-line text entry

For now, Skyfire seems to be the closest thing yet to bring an iPhone-like internet experience to the rest of us, and with editions of the browser coming down the pipes for other mobile platforms in the near future, it should only get better.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 7:45 pm under Uncategorized.

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