Review from http://www.brighthand.com

A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial commenting on how horrible browsing the Web is on most mobile devices. Amazingly, there’s already a solution for this problem, at least for some users. It’s called Skyfire, and it is far and away the best web browser for Windows Mobile I’ve ever seen.

This application offers just about all the features you need to access “Web 2.0″ sites, like dynamic Flash, advanced Ajax, and Java. It’s good enough that your main limitation in browsing is going to be the size and resolution of your smartphone’s screen, and Skyfire is even able to compensate for that.

I was able to spend some time with an early beta, and I found I genuinely enjoyed putting this application through its paces.

Pushing the Limits

Internet Explorer Mobile is a decent web browser. Limited, but decent. So if Skyfire is going to be worth our time, it’s going to have to be able to do things the default Windows Mobile browser can’t. That’s why as soon as I loaded it on an AT&T Tilt I went straight to YouTube.

Skyfire acts generally like the iPhone browser. When you open a site, what you see is it shrunk down to fit on your smartphone’s display. You can then tap on the screen to zoom in on sections of the page.

When I went to YouTube, what I saw was the full site, not a stripped down version. I selected a video and the page opened, and the video immediately began to play, with full motion and sound.

And all this happened really, really quickly. I went to New York Times site and the home page loaded in less than 4 seconds.

But I wanted to keep testing Skyfire, so I next went to Google Maps and looked up my house. Again, what I saw was virtually identical to what appears when I look at this site on my desktop computer.

Naturally, I tried out Brighthand too, just as successfully.

Reading Articles

As I said earlier, when you open a web page in Skyfire you see it shrunken down to fit on your smartphone’s screen. Because the smartphone I tested this application on has a QVGA screen — as most Windows Mobile devices do — I could read the headlines of articles on news sites, but not the text.

That’s why you need to expand sections of the page to make them readable. When you do this, though, in many cases news articles become wider than what’s being displayed. Fortunately, you aren’t forced to pan-and-scan to be able to read these.

This browser offers a feature called SmartFit, which reformats the text on a page so that it’s as wide as your smartphone’s screen when you’re zoomed in on a section of a page.

The Skyfire people warned me that this is one of the features that still needs considerable effort before it’s fool-proof, but it worked fine when I tested it.

The Basics

Skyfire offers all kinds of advanced features, but the basic ones haven’t been forgotten. It has a full-screen mode, for example, and you can store cookies and bookmarks. It’s even possible to bookmark a specific location on a web page.

It also works on all the versions of Windows Mobile 5 and 6, which includes devices with a touchscreen and those without. When Skyfire is being used without a stylus, you control an on-screen pointer with the D-pad.

Naturally, it also offers both landscape and portrait modes. But before anyone asks, I haven’t had a chance to test this application on a VGA screen.

An Important Note

One of the reasons this browser is so fast and full-featured is it’s server based. When you’re opening a web page with your smartphone, it’s actually being opened on a Skyfire server, which then sends an image of the page to your device.

The advantages of this are numerous, but there’s a drawback, too: privacy. Because your web browsing will be done through a remote server, it’s possible for Skyfire to keep track of all the sites you visit and all the data you enter, including passwords, credit card numbers, etc.

I spoke with Skyfire CEO Nitin Bhandari about this, and he assured me that his company takes its customer’s privacy seriously. Still, this is something you should keep in mind.

It’s a Beta

As impressed as I am with Skyfire, I’m not blind to its flaws. However, the vast majority of these I chalk up it currently being a beta.

For example, I watched a long clip on YouTube, and after a few minutes the audio and video were slightly out of sync. The application also crashed on me once while I was activating SmartFit. But these are the sort of things I consider “teething pains”, and will likely be cleared up before the full version is available.

There’s also currently an important feature missing, but it’s high on the developer’s To-Do List: multi-line text entry. Currently, you can type in a single line of text, like a few words you want Google to search for. You can’t, however, put a post in the Brighthand forums. You can’t even piece it together line-by-line. Attempting to enter text into a multi-line text field gets you a pop-up windows saying this feature is coming soon.

Video Overview

Here’s a short video demonstrating Skyfire in action. You can see it below.

Ii shows off the high points of this new application, including its speed and the ability to play Flash video.

The demo also includes a bit on the SmartFit feature.

Coming Soon

Skyfire has just announced a private beta for Windows Mobile phones in the U.S.

The company promises it will introduce a version for Symbian smartphones in the coming months, and other platforms and countries are on the product roadmap. It’s keeping mum about what these are, though.

You can sign-up for the private beta by visiting skyfire.com. There is no charge.

I happen to come across this great ringtone which is from the add for Nokia 5310 in India. Check out the advertisement:

Nokia 5310 Ringtone

Here is yet another Interface that looks like the Iphone, it looks interesting . Its going to be released soon by rhov23 from xda-dev

Video Preview :

Checkout the new drivers release for the devices with Qualcomm 7200 chipset, i’ve found the file below, which should contain a new User Interface code name MANILA.

Rapidshare

manila.1.0.0103.0

This does not work @ the moment so plz dont try it yet, the file is provided so developers / hackers can play around withit and release a version that’s compatible on our devices

PocketUFO v1.25

The Pocket UFO is a remake of the popular game of the last century X-COM Enemy Unknown (UFO Defense) for the Pocket PC devices. The game is a turn-based strategy with the RPG elements. The excellent graphics and exciting gameplay are attracting the gamers all over the world till present. This game is absolutely FREE

Features:
- 9 landscapes.
- 11 enemy types.
- 3 armour types.
- More than 40 ammunition objects.
- Amazing gameplay.
- Excellent graphics.

PocketUFO v1.25

In 1993 Bullfrog released a squad based, Isometric view, real time strategy game that took the gaming world by storm. It incorporated elements of shooting, resource management and tactical planning in order for players to accomplish missions. This was back in the time when Windows 95 was non existent and most games ran on DOS.

The overall objective of the game?, nothing short of Total World Domination. You play a young executive in a Corporate Syndicate that aims to control the world through assassinations, mind control of key personnel and utter banditry. For each mission you accomplish you take control of a country and earn your keep via taxation of the general populace. Be wary however that an over taxed population can lead to revolution. Attempting to foil your plans are rival syndicates with their own agents in place that are out to eradicate with extreme prejudice your own agents. To aid you in your quest are weapons and body modifications that you can add on to your agents. These mods and equipment however aren’t acquired right away as your team of scientists will have to research them for you (that’s where the tax money comes in)The missions are basically 4 types: assassinate, mind control somebody into submission, protect personnel or pick up items.

One great thing about the game is that the missions aren’t following a straight-line plot, the player could choose to side step a difficult mission for an easier one in order to build up monetary resources, personnel or research modifications. This in turn added a certain level of strategic planning to the game play. A total of 50 missions await you. The game can currently be downloaded from an abandon-ware site : here (be sure to scan with an anti-virus software before running)

You can play it right away in Windows XP by clicking on synd.bat after extracting using an .rar extractor (7zip worked for me). For the purists who want sound, you can download Dosbox at sourceforge and run it in this environment.

The game has it’s own cult following, even though Bullfrog folded up some of these guys have put up an open source project at sourceforge that hopes to port the game to current OS platforms.

After the success of Syndicate it was followed by Syndicate Wars. The sequel however failed to live up to the success of it’s predecessor.

Peter Molyneux, one of the creators of the game said in a recent interview that
he would like to develop the next generation of Syndicate (and other popular Bullfrog games) but only after some licensing
complications are sorted out (EA owns the rights to Bullfrog’s game titles after it was bought out, plus his company Lionhead Studios house got purchased by Microsoft) So here’s hoping that there is third installment of the Syndicate franchise that fans can look forward to.

Will update here when a working PPC version is released