Skyfire 4.0 for Android has some new customisable options in their ‘Skybar’, which is like a favourites menu that gives you quick access to Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, a “share” button, and sports, news and finance feeds. But! They’re going to start charging Android users for their excellent video playback feature.
Skyfire, the mobile browser that will magically transcode Flash vids into an HTML5-friendly format, is coming out on the iPad, complete with said magical Flash transcoding abilities.
newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http://www.viddler.com/player/47896bad/","customParams":{"flashVars":"fake=1"},"width":570,"height":360.25,"ratio":0.5625,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"viddler","wrap":true,"agegate":false} );
Apple’s deigned to let Skyfire, an iOS browser that transcodes Flash videos into iPhone-friendly HTML5 on the fly, into the App Store, and it’s available in the US now. In my testing it worked pretty darn well. Yup, porntubes on the iPhone.
One prime attraction of Android? That super-quick—especially on Froyo—native browser. But if you’ve got a need for speed, is it possible that there’s a better option out there? Yes, actually.
A couple of Symbian and Windows Mobile Skyfire users emailed us this week to let us know that they had received notification that the browser was no longer going to be supported in Australia as of July 1. Which sucked, obviously. But despite the wording of the notification, it’s not the end of Skyfire in Australia.
Skyfire makes one of the best browsers for Windows Mobile, a fully Flash compatible app that draws on Skyfire’s server-side compression to make browsing bearable on slower connections. Today, they’ve announced that they’ve gobbled up kolbysoft, the company that makes alternative Android browser Steel. Sounds promising, right? Skyfire’s CEO feels the same way:
Love that Skyfire can play any Flash videos, and optimise websites to load incredibly fast, but hate that it, well, kind of looks like ass in the process? So does Skyfire! Which is why they’ve release version 1.5. It’s wonderful.
You name it, we’ve got it: Sexy search tools! Google Voice! Upstart app stores! Maps, with stuff on them! Radio! Emulators, from the future! Fresh new browsers! It’s all in a day’s month’s work for Windows Mobile.
The Javascript performance of BlackBerry’s browser is atrocious, so thank Jebus for Skyfire—it’s just hit beta for BlackBerry, with keyboard shortcuts, contextual zooming, and bugfixes galore. They’re still having overcapacity problems, so skip for mission critical browsing. [Crackberry]
