Upstart mobile browser Skyfire this weekend rolled out its Beta version 0.6 to select testers in the US, using the Olympic craze to highlight the browser's native support of Microsoft's Silverlight.
Skyfire's default page provides a link to NBC Universal's glut of Olympic content, and no Silverlight plug-in needs to be installed, giving users almost immediate access to hours of video content. Add to this the browser's full support for Adobe's Flash, and Skyfire opens the user's handset to hundreds of hours of free video from Google Video, YouTube, Hulu and other content providers that deal in Flash.
While videos typically run at a very reduced frame rate, they are still highly watchable. In BetaNews tests, Silverlight videos ranged from slideshow slowness to nearly TV-quality speed, audio was never interrupted. YouTube ran comparably to a broadband-connected computer nearly every time.
The browser experience is very Opera-like, returning shrunken full pages that are navigated with a magnifying frame. Page rendering speeds in BetaNews tests this afternoon were comparable to Opera on the same handset (Windows Mobile 6 T-Mobile EDGE network). Skyfire has also drawn comparison to Safari on iPhone, but differs in that video rendering does not take place in-phone and depends heavily upon the reliability and speed of the user's chosen network.
Working with this beta, it becomes obvious that Skyfire is designed more for touchscreen devices, because of the awkward nature of free-floating cursor navigation with a joystick. Many times, an item a user may want to click is very difficult to mouse over. It's very easy to miss text hyperlinks, so tapping the joystick to try to zero in on links becomes a frequent hassle.
Skyfire supports Nokia S60 3rd Edition, and Windows Mobile 5 and 6. Both versions can work on touch- and non-touch-enabled devices. Signups for the private beta require a United States phone number in addition to the requisite supported device.
