mini*

HazyTodd

@justinsane: I'm the original author of this article. Point taken, and I'll update it with a valid comparison in the morning. Opera Mobile may be quick, in fact, I just loaded Hulu in 6 seconds, NYT in 14, ESPN in 10, and Netvibes in 6, but I still appreciate the Flash support of Skyfire. I'll revisit the test on the Tilt tomorrow morning with a full 3G signal (using a BlackJack II now) and update my article. -Todd Haselton

HazyTodd

@sxr7171: Exactly. Comparing Skyfire, a browser that uses server-side compression and reformatting, to browsers that process everything locally is unfair.

Safari and Opera Mobile would be a great comparison, while Skyfire and Opera Mini would also be a great comparison.

Don't conflate the two types.

justinsane

If they let Skyfire in the comparison why didn't they also include Opera Mini?

sxr7171

skyfire can do quicktime, wmv and flash video. just like on your desktop. online banking too! (but is it secure...?) in any case the finger scrolling is buggy on opera 9.5 mobile. i also get "out of memory" erros every 10 seconds.

skyfire is the more stable beta.

pure241

Wait. .. so making it faster is 'cheating'? heh, well, aside from some (what i consider) minor bugs with text entry, Skyfire is fast, but i can't find a winner yet. I've been using skyfire since beta 1 on my tilt and i end up going back to opera because of the 'finger-flick' scrolling.

The backside rendering thing is really a retarded argument since it has little to do with negative performance. But Opera is more 'browsing' friendly IMHO.

oh. and BTW. Skyfire is still beta and you need to have your # registered to them for it to work. Installing the cab without being registered won't work, nubcakes.

wooties

Mobile Safari ftw!

Although, I am really biased.

leetXcore

Congrats to Skyfire for not making it seem as though these phones are connected through a 14.4k modem. 30 seconds to load the NYTs website? That's absurd. Sacrificing a little convenience as far as text input goes seems a worthy trade for pages that load 5 times faster.

coketown

@AciSpades: LMAO, funniest thing I've read all day. I may just do the same. Might get misconstrued over the phone though.

"So what do you look like?"
"I'm feature packed."
"...."

chizelord

I have access to skyfire and opera mobile 9 and have been using the mogul. Opera mobile 9.5 is only a tad slower than skyfire, have a better interface, will support flash 9, and best of all, actually supports zooming and panning without reloading an image every 3 seconds, each time taking 5 seconds to reload. For me, skyfire is unusable because of it's backside rendering. Also when everyone is using it I can't imagine how slow it will be. If someone wants I can give them a copy of skyfire to test this out with. Email me at njgsng2004@hotmail.com

njgtechguy

Cheaters! Good catch Gizmodo.

Ken_Darrow

Someone on a forum im on found similar results with safari vs. opera 9.5. I'm absolutely loving safari so far, and would be completely satisfied if I could copy/paste with it like I can on opera 9.5 on my WM phone

igneous

@AciSpades: lol! You know what? I shall too!

Evangelion

u forgot VS. BLACKBERRY BROWSER

tsatsut

from now on, i'm going to describe myself as "feature packed"

thank you Gizmodo :D

AciSpades

NetFront kicks Opera's and Skyfire's asses.

JiltedCitizen

@tsatsut: I think the whole "that act like grown up ones" kind of DQs the BB browser, on account of what comes out of that browser resembles that which comes out of my ass... :(

mcdonnr

I hate, hate, hate safari on my mac. However, all it's weakness on the desktop (lack of customization, limited features, etc) are PERFECT for the iPhone where you want to take full advantage of the limited input options and slow hardware. Lightweight and streamlined is the way to go on the phone.

ppiddy

You forgot to mention that Skyfire tracks your surfing habits and is making statistics about everything you do in the program. That is something I won't sacrifice just to have flash support a couple of weeks before Opera Mobile does.

rospaya

Cheater? It's zippy and sweet, and it can load yahoo stat tracker. If they can figure out how to cut the initial app load time it will crush all other mobile browsers.

takoattack

How is it cheating? If it provides me with the end result I need in a way I'm happy with, I'm lost as to what the downside is. I use Skyfire heavily and I love it. The Opera 9.5 betas are pretty impressive, but the bugs are serious and weird. The browser constantly causes issues with things unrelated to it, like closing other applications, and disabling all of my phone's notifications. Eerie.

TurboFool

@TurboFool: "How is it cheating? If it provides me with the end result I need in a way I'm happy with, I'm lost as to what the downside is."

Funny thing is cheating is a way to get the end result you want and are happy with. Thats usually why people cheat.

Its "cheating" in the scope of this review because they are testing browser speed and skyfire uses backend rendering while safari and opera mobile don't. Its not cheating in the sense that backend rendering is bad its just an "unfair" advantage when you're comparing the browsers to one another.

spimoles

skyfire does the same as opera mini
so basically if skyfire is "cheating" then opera mini is also

personnally i would rather prefer opera mini above skyfire cause opera mini does give me a slight sign of security....

TBM-Fan

so i suppose when engines replaced horses we all became cheaters.

aeroworks

another Opera Mini fan here. Used them all, and that's the one I've stuck with over the last half a year of owning my Tilt.

fuderyuu

Currently, apart from the lacking functionality (most importantly, page saving / find in page), I consider Opera Mobile 8.65 the best on Windows Mobile - it supports Flash, more than 3 tabs, doesn't crash, has very good memory usage etc. Too bad the testers didn't bother including it in the test or, at least, mention its advantages over 9.51b1.

I *really* recommend my related articles - for example, my review of SkyFire. See [www.pocketpcmag.com] . Also, don't forget to check out my W3C presentation [www.pocketpcmag.com]

Menneisyys

Doesn't Opera Mobile do something similar to Skyfire (caching sites on their servers)? I've put it on my phone and I think I remember reading something about them caching heavy shit like images and routing traffic to their servers to render pages faster.

Captain Bringdown

OperaMini is the best.

bubuli