Move Over iPhone, Skyfire 1.0 Has Arrived

For those that haven't been keep track of Skyfire, the new mobile browser promises to deliver a rich Internet experience to smartphones. And the official 1.0 release going live today goes a long way towards delivering that promise. Skyfire 1.0 supports most popular web standards such as Flash 10, Silverlight 2, JavaScript, and AJAX among others.

What does this mean?

It means Skyfire will render websites just like you see them on your PC with all the bells and whistles. You can modify documents in Google Docs and even view video from Hulu without skipping a beat, something that even the Safari browser on the iPhone and iPod Touch is unable to do.

And you don't sacrifice speed. Skyfire is fast, loading web pages much faster than the mobile version of Internet Explorer. Of course, it needs that speed since it will be downloading the full version of pages rather than the mobile versions.

Skyfire 1.0 includes a superbar that works even while Skyfire is connecting to the network, so you can type in a web page URL or search string while it is booting up. It also includes enhanced navigation and zooming capability.

After playing around with it for a few days, I'm impressed with how far the browser has come since its initial release. There are a few areas that still need improvement. Zooming in and moving around a web page in the zoomed mode still aren't quite as smooth as what you can do on the iPhone. But considering how Skyfire delivers the full web like no other mobile browser, I can definitely take a few kinks in the system.

The Skyfire browser is a must-have download for Windows mobile users or anyone with a Symbian Nokia E or N series phone. It means no more mucking around with scaled down mobile versions of your favorite websites. You'll be surfing the real web. And Blackberry users will be happy to know that a closed beta is already underway for the Blackberry and an open beta should be coming at a later date.

You can download the Skyfire browser at get.skyfire.com and follow the latest news on www.twitter.com/skyfire.