Skyfire » Daniel M. Hendricks

Skyfire, mobile browsing unleashed

I have been looking for a decent web browser for my Windows Mobile phone lately. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend why Windows Mobile 6 came with IE 6. It’s quite frustrating to use – slow, featureless, clunky, and did I mention slow? I tried Minimo, and although it supports tabs, I thought the navigation on my Motorola Q9c was clunky. I went to download Opera Mobile, but the download page says it’s for touchscreen Windows Mobile only, so that wouldn’t work for me. I then did a Google search for “windows mobile web browser” and one of the early hits was for Skyfire.

I downloaded and installed it on my phone. I was nervous, because I forgot my SD card and my internal storage was very low. Amazingly, the download was a little over 500k, and there was enough room on my phone for it to install.

I launched the browser and was pleasantly surprised. It was fast, easy to navigate, and the rendering was phenomenal. I had always thought the download speed on my phone was slow, but I think it was a problem with IE 6, since pages render very quickly on Skyfire.

The only problem I had was when the installer asked if I wanted to install a search widget onto my home screen. I approved, since it sounded handy, however, it totally mangled my theme, so I eventually switched back to my previous theme (easy fix). Beyond that, I think the browser is great!