Wow.  Some very good news for everyone who passionately hates Pocket IE.  Or lets just say for all Windows Mobile users, to round it off.  Skyfire is a new browser for Windows Mobile (and Symbian soon as well) getting demo-ed this week and already getting a very warm welcome: Engadget Mobile calls it ‘game changing’ and Dieter Bohn at WMExperts says it ‘Beats the pants off the iPhone’

The demo video (at the Engadget link above) is very impressive.  Skyfire will play all Flash content – so it can, for example, run YouTube videos and work with Google Maps within the browser!  Pretty slick.  And boy do they emphasize its Flash-handling capabilities in the video – I think I heard them use the word ‘Flash’ a good 20 times – wonder who that’s a little swipe at

The SkyFire teams told me “Our goal is that if Firefox can render it, then your Windows Mobile phone will render it the exact same way.”

Since Skyfire is a server-side solution, it looks like it can deliver on that promise as well – though as Dieter’s post points out, there are some clear Pros and Cons to a server-based solution.

Based on the short video, I’d say Skyfire’s capabilities look great.  Its look and feel doesn’t knock my socks off though – seems like most of the buttons and navigation tools are all still quite small and clearly geared towards using a stylus, as they do in the demo.  I would’ve expected to see a bit more finger-friendliness in there.  The demo was also done on an EVDO connection, so it would be interesting to see how it fares on slower connections as well.

Skyfire is currently in private beta (sign up HERE) and due to go public beta this quarter. 

This looks like definitely one to watch.  Now if only you could uninstall PIE ….

Via: WMExperts and Engadget Mobile

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