Skyfire, a Mountain View, Calif., start-up that competes directly with Opera Mobile browser, announced Wednesday its public beta for Windows Mobile phones. This is good news if you’ve been waiting months to join Skyfire’s impacted private beta program, says C/Net.
Skyfire has also upgraded from version 0.6 to version 0.8, with performance improvements and a better start screen with shaded boxes and icons. The headline content–world, business, sports, elections, and a weather widget–is all fed by Yahoo, though it’s not an exclusive partnership.
Skyfire’s SuperBar combines the address bar and search into one. It offers suggestions to complete your query as you type, but unlike Opera Mobile 9.5 beta (which has separate search and URL fields), Skyfire doesn’t remember your URL history.
Video streaming in Version 0.8, delivers decent full-screen quality with streaming that matches sounds and images with fewer hiccups than before, says C/Net. You can now also download images and PDF content, send stories via SMS, and type text directly into Skyfire, instead of typing into a separate entry field like in previous versions–something that hasn’t yet been implemented in Google Android.
New users can get the new beta for Windows Mobile phones by pointing the mobile browser to www.skyfire.com (although the site has been down most of the morning).
