Skyfire 2 Opens Big on Android
Skyfire, the award-winning smartphone browser for Symbian and WinMobile came out for Android last week like a herd of stampeding wildebeests, commandeering the front page of nearly every popular tech blog with incredible reviews and cruising to the heights of the Android App Marketplace. Like another of our best-selling media favorites, we’ll soon post up a Case Study with a complete behind-the-scenes look at the making of Skyfire 2. But for now let’s consider what’s driving the huge buzz behind this revolutionary Web browser for Android, and how Skyfire taps into what Brian Meehan was talking about last month at ThinkMobile.
It’s Social
One of the keys to mobile app success these days is enabling users to share content instantly via the social Web. And surely that goes double for a mobile Web browser.
If we didn’t build Skyfire with one-touch access to your Twitter app of choice, Facebook Wall, IM service or email we would hardly consider it a finished application.
Lets You Explore
Skyfire fetches new media you’re going to love. Say you’re scanning a bit about umbrella-wielding Britney, hit the Explore button and Skyfire sifts through YouTube, Twitter, Digg, and other sites for yet more text/video/pics of, yes, umbrella-wielding Britney. :S It’s a handy way of letting users find more of what they’re interested in, and one more reason for them to set Skyfire as their default browser.
Killer Feature(s!!)
Now here are the crown jewels. What’s the first thing everyone looks for in a Web browser? Speed. And Skyfire delivers – full throttle. Hands down the fastest browser for Android, Skyfire renders pages far quicker than Android’s built-in browser or other third party apps, including just-released Opera Mini. So yeah, it’s crazy fast, but our Android developers went the extra mile to ensure flawless 1:1 page rendering and scaling – complete with pinch to zoom, another first on Android!
But the feature that’s got everyone hot and bothered is Flash video. Yup, thanks to some clever cloud-based wizardry, Skyfire is the first mobile browser to bring Flash video to Android. Any time you land on a page with embedded Flash vid, a tiny popup will let you begin streaming it to your handset in gloriously rendered full screen. And this is where the cloud comes in. Skyfire doesn’t blast your handset with battery-choking, processor-crushing Flash video. Instead, our servers instantly convert your Flash request to Web-friendly HTML5 video and beam the much lighter stream – 70% lighter! – back to your phone for smooth, desktop-like viewing pleasure. And HTML5 video is not only easier on your battery than Flash, but also friendlier to your bandwidth consumption over the network.
So right there, we’ve got not one, but TWO Skyfire-exclusive killer features no other app can match. And there’s more, but we don’t want to spoil it for you. If you still haven’t tried Skyfire 2 on your Android handset, it’s awesome and free… so run along now. Go get it!
