Skyfire Mobile Browser

by Antonio Wells Apr 30, 2010 9:35 AM – 7 Comments

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Experience the world’s hottest mobile browser with Skyfire (BETA) for Android. Check out the all new SkyBar™ which features: Flash Video, Explore Content, and Social Sharing of Content.

Price: Free

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

Finally play Flash Videos on mobile web browsers!
Choose to load full desktop webpages or mobile optimized versions
Multiple window browsing (up to 8, easy toggle)
Pinch to zoom (on Android 2.0 and above)
Clear session history easily upon exit to maintain anonymous browsing
Facebook social integration

Cons

Claimed super boost in web browsing speed was not there
Some Flash video sites show “Install Adobe Flash” versus sniffing out the Flash vid
Voice Search gone

Features:

Skyfire Mobile Browser Android App brings full web browsing to mobile phones on many platforms and now on Android. The key feature it offers over any other Android Web Browser currently is the ability to view Flash Videos (something missing from fully capable mobile web browsers for some time now). Now you can play sports highlights from ESPN, news clips from the New York Times, high quality Vimeo vids, and music videos from Vevo (although I still found quarks in playing back some of these Flash video websites… says “Install Adobe Flash”).

Incorporated is the SkyBar along the browsers footer which entails: Video, Explore, and Share. Video sniffs out Flash video on a webpage and pops up a window when/if it finds a Flash video it can play. Explore searches trending topics based on the topics you’ve recently searched or created. Filtered are Videos, Trends, Tweets and Images. Share pops up easy sharing via other email and social apps installed on your Android phone.

A cool feature allows you to toggle browser HTTP Header types you send to a webpage; sometimes you may want to full desktop version and not be forced to view the mobile-only version. Or you may choose to view the mobile-only version for faster page load and less scrolling… either way it offers that choice by tapping the Android-slash-monitor icon in browser header.

Like other awesome browsers for Android it supports Pinch to zoom (on Android 2.0 and above), Copy and Paste, Find on Page, multiple window browsing, Bookmarks, Downloads, even a Report Broken Video feature.

Gripe Alert: Like Opera Mini for Android is supports cloud browsing, meaning webpages and assets like images are compressed on Skyfire’s servers thus sending you a smaller, faster to load page offering a boost in browsing speed; however it was not experienced in our evaluation. It was similar if not slower than the default Android browser.

Video Review: Skyfire Mobile Browser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbePzC574L4

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Home Page

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Viewing AndroidTapp.com

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Tabbed Multiple Windows

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Full ESPN Webpage with Flash Video

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Flash Video Preload

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Playing Flash Video

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Explore

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Share

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Toggle Browser Header Type

: Skyfire Mobile Browser History

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Bookmarks

: Skyfire Mobile Browser Page Options

Usefulness:

The app is very useful for its core capability of mobile web browsing and puts the icing on the cake with all the goodies like full web browsing, playable Flash videos, content exploring and social sharing features.

Frequently Used:

If used as your default web browsing it could potentially be used multiple times daily.

Android Advice™: How to Set Skyfire as my default Browser?

Easy way: when first installed, any action that requires a web browser such as web link or Google search will prompt a window asking which browser you would like to use. Check below “Set as default” then choose Skyfire.

More involved way: say you chose the default browser when presented with the popup and want to change it later. Go to Settings from home screen » Manage Applications » Browser » tap Clear defaults » visit a URL or search to get the popup to return and follow the easy way above.

Android Advice™: I’m asked which web browser to use every time I search or click on a link, how to I remove that?

When more than one application type such as a web browser is install on Android, it gives choice on which you would like as default. See above how to set default browser.

Interface & Ease of Use:

Operating the user interface is slightly clunky but an adjustment will have you mastering it.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.5 out of 5)

Should you Download Skyfire Mobile Browser? Yes! Must Have Android App!

Developer: Skyfire

Tags: Android Apps, Android Web Browser, AndroidTapp.com App Review, Mobile Browser, Skyfire Mobile Browser, SkyFire Web Browser, WebKit Browser

Categorised in: Communication

7 Comments

By reddragon72 on April 30, 2010 at 12:47 pm:

clumsy, useless browser. I didn’t like it on windows mobile and I don’t like it now. Flash is going to be native on most phones in the next few months and all phone(with hacked version of flash 10.1) by the end of the year. Also this browser is a major security risk in my mind for the fact that anything you input, passwords and login info, is transmitted to skyfire servers unprotected, not to mention the company that owns skyfire can see all your info since it is not encrypted on your end. Also they tell you in the agreement that they collect all kinds of personal information for the purpose of “improving” the browser. The way I see it personal info is not required for improving the browser…

Reply
- By Surge 81 on May 3, 2010 at 2:20 pm:
  
  Skyfire 2.0 uses a traditional client-server architecture for most of your browsing: The browser contacts the Web server, pulls down the page, and displays it on your phone. So the security situation is identical to a traditional browser. (This is in contrast to Skyfire 1.x, which uses a three-tiered architecture for all browsing.)
  
  The exception is Flash content, which is rendered by Skyfire’s servers and relayed to your phone for viewing.
  
  Skyfire does not store cookies or passwords on the servers.
  
  Reply
- By Surge 81 on May 3, 2010 at 2:54 pm:
  
  I got this Info from research, and a Skyfire employee. In case your wondering.
  
  Reply
By Surge 81 on May 3, 2010 at 2:26 pm:

I love this App. It gives you more freedom than the regular Android browser.

Reply
By Ru on November 4, 2010 at 9:23 am:

Unnecessary. Flash will be available to phones and to jailbroken iPod touches later this year and earlier-to-mid next year, as capacities grow.

Having said that, I just noticed that someone has posted Flash capability to Cydia. Ironic.

Reply
By Androidgist on November 29, 2010 at 2:39 pm:

Skyfire might turn out to be useful sometimes (at eventual browser incompatibilities) but I wouldn’t call it a MUST HAVE app.

Reply
By fx on December 6, 2010 at 1:12 am:

all tha flash movies ar of poor quality.
the resolution is very small.
can i do anything about it ?

Reply