SkyFire - My Initial Impression
Posted by Doug Smith on 03/6/08 in Software
I know some of you have already been using SkyFire for a while now. There have been several reviews done on it. You can do a search on YouTube and turn up some good videos of SkyFire in action or simply go to SkyFire.com. But I wanted to give you all my initial impression of how well SkyFire is working on my Tilt. And my initial impression of SkyFire is AWESOME! I have been very impressed with its fast page loads in a non 3G environment. With that, you can read my “mini” review and first impression of SkyFire by clicking the read more link below!
Device: AT&T Tilt running a custom ROM. EDGE Network availability only. SkyFire mapped to my PTT Button (makes it really convenient!)
Download and Installation: I had finally received an email from SkyFire last week which I confirmed, and then received a text message with a link to download SkyFire to my device. As you can see from the photo, the program was 448K. I had no trouble downloading and saving it to my Storage Card. For my initial impression of SkyFire, I installed it to main memory to make sure that there would be no hiccups that sometimes are related to running programs from a Storage Card.
Program Startup: This is really my one true gripe with SkyFire. It takes generally 15-20 seconds to load. It takes Pocket Internet Explorer half that time to load. Granted there is a lot less to load on PIE than on SkyFire, but trust me, with SkyFire, this will be the last time you have to wait! Read on!
Home Screen & User Interface: As you can see from the photo to the right, SkyFire is very well laid out and easy to navigate. On the top taskbar from left to right you have a full screen icon, two forward and back page icons, refresh icon, home icon, screen zoom icon, and address bar icon. To the right of the SkyFire logo, there is a search box. Underneath that is the three tabs.
Featured tab is just that, SkyFire’s Featured links. There are five different sub-tabs listed under the Featured Tab: News, Sports, Social, Shop, and Video. I have done some looking but as yet, not been able to add or subtract any links from each group. The other thing I don’t really like is that this is always your home screen. I have not found a way to change to any other home screen. It’s not all that bad, but I just know that I am going to navigate away from it as soon as I start the program. It would be more efficient if I could start SkyFire on the bookmarks tab where I will immediately navigate to anyway. The Bookmarks and History tabs are all what they say they are. Nothing worthy to report.
The menu tab on the lower taskbar has a very limited amount that can be accessed with it. Under the Action Option, you can access the Smartfit Option which I didn’t like that much and that Drag Controls. I thought I would have some more control over User Interface under Settings, but that option only allows you to clear cookies and remove history. To exit SkyFire, you must navigate back to the Menu Page and select Exit. Hitting Ok on your device will not close the program which is how I have that button mapped.
I thought I would lay this on you, here is an example of TiltSite without Smartfit enabled:
The second picture on the left is how TiltSite looks with Smartfit enabled:
I personally do not like Smartfit because of how well SkyFire zooms in and out and how fast the page loads are.
Page Loads: All I can say is that they are Unbelievable!!!! I had thought for sure that when I first loaded the program and how long it takes to load that it would take forever to navigate from page to page but it does not. Page loads take an average of 3-5 seconds on Edge! That’s full page loads and not portals or mobile enhanced websites! And the pages look great too! I was very surprised. For instance, MobilitySite has several animated banners and ads and they load and look very good on SkyFire. YouTube also works great on SkyFire. I just cannot say how happy I was with how fast pages loaded.
Now here is the kicker. You now can have a true Full Web experience right on your mobile device! For the first time ever, I can now load banking and financial webpages that would never load on PIE even in HTML mode. Many of the secured webpages would not work. Also, I was never able to get Wordpress Admin to load correctly and now I can approve comments, or do what ever admin that needs to be done right from my mobile in a full Web Page experience.
A lot of how well SkyFire works is based from how fast the page loads are. When you have a small screen, the user interface to zoom in and out of big pages depends on fast page loads. And Skyfire seems to have their act together!
Conclusion: I am very excited about surfing the Internet on a mobile device again! SkyFire has seemly taken the impossible, (PIE) and made it possible to cruise the Internet unrestricted with speed and ease of navigation. I do have some gripes with SkyFire, which you will see at the bottom, but from where we came from, and where we are now, I think the “Sky” is the limit!
PROS:
- Page loads are amazing!
- Very fresh look, well laid out.
- Access Web Pages like never before, true online surfing experience!
- Embedded Video works very well!
- Zoom in and out works great.
CONS:
- Program Startup takes a long time.
- Cannot change home page.
- Cannot Change Featured links or tabs
- Must navigate back to homepage to access bookmark listings.
More to come.
Written by Doug Smith · Filed Under Software
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Great writeup, Doug. I’m eager to see how this will look on my X7501.
I use Skyfire a lot too, and tend to agree with you. Unlike you, I use SmartFit a lot. On my Q, I find that I have to scroll left and right constantly to read most pages. Also, for now I’m a bit hesitant to use Skyfire for banking or finance websites, given that it is a proxy browser and I don’t know enough about the developers to know whether to trust them. That is a shame, because I’ve never been able to get Amex Mobile to work via PIE or Opera Mobile. I don’t need Skyfire for banking, as the BoA mobile site does work well.
It is slow to start, but frankly it’s no slower than Opera is on the Q9h.
I have the motorola Q9H and am anxiously awaiting Skyfire. I signed up for the beta back in January. Does anyone have any idea how long it takes to receive the invite?
How does this compare to netfront? I’ve been using netfront for a few weeks now and it is just brilliant. It’s so much faster and than PIE and better in every way with zooming, fast page loads, lots of options. Its more or less like browsing on the PC.
Mar 8th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
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