Skyfire's New Beta - UK and Probably World Availability

Good news from Skyfire. Beta 0.85 of the Skyfire Browser has been released! Best of all, it's now a direct mobile download and registration is no longer required. 
Until today Skyfire was only available to users in the US and Canada.  With direct download and no registration I'm thinking anyone in the world should be able to use it now. The Skyfire website mentions that UK users will be connected to a new UK server but doesn't say anything about other countries.  Can someone outside of the UK, US and Canada try installing Skyfire and see what happens?

I installed the new Beta on my N95-3 by simply visiting get.skyfire.com with the phone's built in WebKit browser.  You can also download it from the same URL to your PC and install it with PC Tools. The first time I installed I got a warning that I must un-install ny existing Skyfire Beta first  After canceling the installation and removing Skyfire Beta 0.6, I restarted the download and install, which seems to have succeeded.  I was somewhat put off by the message "Component Symbian OS Pipe is missing, Continue Anyway?" that appeared while installing but I ignored the message and pressed on and Skyfire works.

Registration isn't required, but it allows you to backup your bookmarks and history on Skyfire's servers so that they are preserved across upgrades and when you change phones.  Existing Skyfire users can log in when they start Beta 0.85 for the first time, new users can create an account from within Skyfire.

SkyFire is a proxy based browser that is currently available as a native application for most Windows Mobile 5 and 6 (touchscreen and non-touchscreen) and Symbian S60 3rd edition phones.  It uses Firefox as its back-end rendering engine and pages look stunning.  Skyfire's best feature is great support for web based animation and video.  Unlike the Flash support built into S60, which is limited to obsolete Flash 8 .flv files, Skyfire supports the latest Flash 9 plus Microsoft Silverlight and can play virtually all web based Flash and Silverlight content.

I'll post a full review of Skyfire 0.85 later.  For now here are the release Notes:

Skyfire 0.85 Release Notes

Released: November 21, 2008

Skyfire brings the PC internet experience to your mobile. Watch videos on YouTube or Hulu, connect with your friends on Myspace or Facebook, shop on Amazon, or listen to music. If you can experience it on your computer, you now can do it with Skyfire on the go.

Skyfire is fast, easy to use and available for free for many smart phone models.

Skyfire 0.85 Beta adds (standard) VGA support for Windows Mobile devices and brings the feature set for our Symbian client in line with Windows Mobile. Skyfire will continue to maintain both platforms in future releases.

We greatly appreciate your participation in our beta community. Your support and feedback on the forums at http://support.skyfire.com/forums/ helps us to constantly improve the product.

What’s new in 0.85 for both Windows Mobile and Symbian:

• Simple Download: This is big for us and we hope for you as well. Now, there is NO requirement anymore to register in order to download, access, and use Skyfire. With this release, downloading is as simple as pointing your existing mobile browser to http://get.skyfire.com. We detect the device and provide the installer for your phone.
• Optional Registration: Once downloaded and installed, you can use Skyfire right away. Browse away, create bookmarks, and check your history. Everything will work.
  Why create an account? So you can retain Bookmarks and History in case you lose your phone or have to switch phones. Furthermore you can post and participate in the Skyfire user forums.
  Already have an account? You can still access your existing account by simply logging in on your device. Or, create a new account. Or, migrate your account between phones. It’s now all done from your phone on the Skyfire start page.
• New UK Data Center: We are looking forward to providing better service for our UK based users and are currently building out a new data center. If you are in the UK you should automatically connect to the new data center and experience better performance. If you are not based in UK, then you will automatically connect to the US data center. Please bear with us as we work out some of the kinks – especially with account migration.
• Overall Improvements: Client and Server robustness,

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posted by Dennis Bournique
November 21, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
7 View Comments