What took me so long to discover this gem?? Well, suffice to say, I was actually a bit sceptical at first to switch from the in-built Safari browser and the Opera browser. Safari was still preferred at first due to its nativity to the iPhone. It ran at blazing speed. Of course when i visit any sites that have tonnes of Flash video content (especially those that ran predominantly Flash videos), Safari just simply does not work. At least not until all website decide to adopt the HTML5 format, then we will see richer content on our iPhone Safari.
My use of Opera was because back in the good old days when I was using a Nokia phone, Opera was the best browser available compared their Nokia's pathetic browser. I use it still purely because of sentimental sentiments. Also, it is good to see some Flash (static-ized) adverts here and there on some website that makes the site looks a little more complete and not handicapped. Of course, Opera also offers a very intuitive tab system that lets you switch between pages easily (unlike Safari, which is quite cumbersome).
Right until recently have I noticed that the Skyfire browser is already up to version 3.0. So I was thinking, "by now, it should be pretty stable and useable". So I downloaded it, loaded up a favorite site full of flash videos (which previously can only be browsed using a desktop computer, or an Android smartphone for that matter), and lo and behold, the videos loaded up beautifullly in near HD quality!
Now of course, this Skyfire only does flash videos and not for interactive flash content (i.e. no games or flash apps). As for flash advertisements, it works pretty much like Opera does. It shows you a static picture which is cached from Skyfire servers with no animations. But like Safari, if the website you are visiting uses HTML5 contents, then you will see the jscript animations work just fine. For flash videos, if it is a Youtube video, you can directly click on the video and load it from Youtube servers. Same for any videos that has started supporting HTML5 standard videos. But for those that don't, Skyfire will cache the videos requested, convert it and load the videos right to your iPhone for viewing. Neat!
Skyfire's handling of multiple pages opened is pretty much the same as Safari. You click on an icon to open new page or to switch pages, and then you get a scroll which page you want to view. I would have much preferred the way Opera handles, with tabs. With that being said, iPhone does not leave much screen real estate to efficiently handle the tabs. And the way Skyfire handles the screen is something to be admired too. Once you load a page and start scrolling the page, everything else disappear leaving the site you are browsing in its full glory. You will not accidentally touch on the back button or the reload button, etc. And if you need the menu to come up, just scroll all the way to the top or just touch the bottom of the screen where there is a hidden shade. Very impressive indeed. (Opera offers this option too). Also, like Opera, Skyfire offers to load the websites in its full version or in the mobile version (this depends if the website you are viewing has a mobile site).
Skyfire also allows you to easily share whatever you are viewing to Facebook and Twitter. It also has a Facebook Like button that you can click on to easily let people know what you like.
Of course, Skyfire is not without its downside. In case Skyfire servers breakdown from any reason, you will not be able to view those videos you want. Like when it was first launched (version 1), the response for this app was so overwhelming that they had to suspend sale of the app for a while because their servers could not handle the requests for videos that came. And also, there are still a lot of sites that they have not added to their support. Some could work and some might not work. But with version 3, many site have been added and hopefully your favorite sites are supported.
I recommend that you try it out for yourself and see if it suites your needs. You can purchase it from the appstore for $2.99 here [LINK].
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