Skyfire has released an update to its ground-breaking mobile browser which lets smartphone users see web pages as they would appear on a PC, including multimedia content such as Flash and Quicktime.

Essentially a bugfix release, Skyfire 1.1 has been tweaked to improve page load times and features updated plug-ins for Flash, Silverlight and QuickTime content. It adds support for WML, the markup language used in older WAP pages.

Skyfire also said it has improved scrolling and zooming on the Symbian version of the browser, and fixed an issue whereby the Windows Mobile version would sometimes quit on startup.

Using Skyfire on my Windows Mobile 6 handset, I found little visible difference in the new version. However, pages did seem to load slightly faster over a 3G network connection, with the checkerboard background pattern showing less often when I scrolled to a part of the page that was not in the browser cache.

Embedded videos on sites such as V3.co.uk and the BBC's news site also seemed to display more smoothly. In fact, it still amazes me with just how good the video playback is with Skyfire.

To set against that, Skyfire does seem to burn through the battery life on my handset when it is in use, and this is one thing that the new update hasn't addressed.

I also fired a quick email to Skyfire asking them for any news on the promised BlackBerry version of the browser - no reply so far.

26 Aug 2009