Flash on your Phone
It’s pretty well documented at the moment that Adobe wants Flash on the iPhone and Steve Jobs doesn’t think it’s good enough.
What’s interesting about all this is that now the iPhone has sparked significant interest in web browsing via mobile devices, the race is on for developers everywhere to tap into that growing market.
Skyfire is a new mobile browser I only just came across and claims to be the first and only browser to present the web on your phone exactly as it would be on your computer.
Yes, that includes all embedded content including all flash applications and media, Quicktime, Java and Ajax.
It’s a Windows Mobile browser, but will soon also be available for the Symbian mobile operating system as well.
Currently in private beta 1, you can submit a request to receive an invitation for beta 2, coming soon apparently. For now you can check out the video presenting the features of Skyfire, the example sites used seem pretty impressive… Youtube for example is exactly as you see on a computer and you can play all the videos like normal.
The only issue I would imagine would be speed, without a decent 3G connection I can see web navigation being pretty slow and frustrating, perhaps the iPhone optimised style webpages are a better way to go for a compromise between speed and functionality.
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it really is an all amazing browser (it even has the adobe reader plugin!). it is slower than either Opera mobile or opera mini (but still is WAAAAAY faster than PIE) and the ease of use/smoothness isn’t as great. like deepfish, it has to actually connect to skyfire servers and then sends the data back to your phone (which is why it is so capable and doesn’t need a powerful phone to run well) so i would NEVER trust it with sensitive info like banking or credit cards…
Well, we are clearly not short on mobile browsers so huge screw up might be even more interesting. :)
I am really going to watch it, promising full support of everything at high speed while lots of smartphones can barely handle complex J2ME apps is daring.
That’s what I wonder too ;)
They promise a lot… Question is can they deliver all of it. :)