IDG News Service’s Elizabeth Montalbano quotes Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner as saying in “a recent interview” that “We are working … to provide an Opera Mini-based solution with a major operator in the U.S.,”.  The report goes on to say that the deal will be bigger than Opera’s recent partnership with Virgin Mobile, that the browser may not carry the Opera branding and that the deal involves Motricity, which provides content delivery services, mobile portals and/or storefronts  to all four major U.S. carriers; Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Which carrier will it be?  That’s hard to say, my initial thought was Sprint which did a smaller deal with Opera to bundle Mini with the Samsung Instinct S30.  And Virgin Mobile U.S.A., which is a joint venture of Sprint and the Virgin Group,  is offering Mini as a free download on eight handsets.  But Sprint and Virgin call it Opera Mini rather than re-branding. I think they would do the same with a wider distribution deal.

Verizon is a possibility, there is a BREW version of Opera Mini which is used by India’s Tata. Or T-Mobile which has the lowest data APRU of the four carriers and already  bundles Opera Mini with a number of handsets in several European markets.   But my money goes with AT&T for several reasons.

1.) AT&T’s 3G data network is being  stretched to the breaking point by the iPhone.  The operator recently dropped unlimited data packages for prepaid users and reportedly has a tiered access system model with iPhones getting the highest priority, followed by contract customers, then prepaid users. Opera Mini greatly reduces bandwidth use and delivers a decent browsing experience even on slow connections. It would allow AT&T to handle more data users without increasing bandwidth.

2) AT&T is the only one of  four major carriers that does not default to transcoding web content for feature phone users.  Opera Mini offers the claimed advantages of transcoding (reduced bandwidth and the “full” web on basic phones) while providing  much better rendering and a superior overall user experience compared to any transcoder.  Improving the browsing experience on feature phones would increase data package adoption (and revenue) while keeping bandwidth demands down.

I’m a big user and fan of Opera Mini and I’d love to see it get wider adoption in the U.S..  I believe that the first U.S. carrier to adopt it will gain a considerable competitive advantage.  But which one will it be? Please share your thoughts in a comment.

If you have a BlackBerry and aren’t using Opera Mini 4.2 you are missing out on what is in my opinion, the best BlackBerry application.  Mini is a small (under 170KB) application that implements a full html web browser that rivals and in many cases exceeds the performance of the best smartphone browsers. And yes that includes Safari on the iPhone. Compared with the built-in BlackBerry browser, especially on older models like my 7100i, Mini is so overwhelmingly superior that since installing Opera Mini on the phone I have  completely stopped using the BlackBerry Browser.

What makes Opera Mini such a great browser on BlackBerries?

• Speed – Mini talks to the Internet through a very sophisticated proxy provided by Opera. The proxy does all  the hard work – parsing tag soup, re-flowing pages, resizing images and interpreting JavaScript. What gets sent to Mini after the proxy has done it’s magic is a compressed binary that requires relatively little processing power to render on the handset. This means that web pages, especially large complex pages with many images, load and render much faster than they would using the phone’s built-in browser.
• Website Compatibility – The BlackBerry browser has trouble rendering many desktop Web pages; hangs, errors and rendering issues are common.  With the BlackBerry browser you are pretty much limited to made for mobile sites and simple desktop ones. Opera Mini can quickly load almost any site.
• Mobile View – Opera Mini has two different viewing modes. The default is “Desktop View” which shows a miniaturized version of a full sized web page (image, top). You move around to find an interesting section and then zoom in to view just that section full sized.  This mode is good for viewing wide content like tables and the detail in images. The other mode is  “Mobile View” which resizes images and reformats text into a single column so that horizontal scrolling is never needed. Mobile view may not be as pretty as desktop view, but it sure is efficient, especially for pages with lots of text. Desktop View does try to minimize horizontal scrolling by resizing individual columns to page width, but you still need to scroll horizontally as text flows around images and continues in a different column. Horizontal scrolling is a time waster, as is navigating the zoomed out view to find the main content of a page. With Mobile View reading long articles is very efficient, no scrolling is needed, just an occasional  tap of the space bar or “8′ key to scroll to the next page.



• Keyboard Shortcuts – Opera Mini which has a huge list of 1 and 2 key shortcuts like # plus 0 to refresh the page and # plus 7 to bookmark the current page. And then there is Speed Dial gives you quick access to your 9 favorite bookmarks by pressing * plus 1-9 (image – above, left).  Plus there are a bunch of 1 key shortcuts in desktop view; 2 = page up, 8 = page down, 4 = column left, 6 = column right.
• Offline Browsing – Opera can load very large pages. I routinely open web pages over 500 KB in size.  With BlackBerries using OS 4.2 or latter Mini can save pages in non-volatile storage on the phone’s memory card or main memory.  Saved pages can be viewed anytime even in no service areas like deep underground.  Actually you don’t even need to save pages to browse offline in Opera Mini thanks to its enormous and very efficient cache. You can have 20-30 big web pages with lots of images in the cache and jump instantly back and forth through them using the history menu, even in areas of no connectivity.  I used to do an hour  long rail commute, much of it in areas with no reception, and  used Opera Mini and Bloglines Mobile to keep up with the hundreds of RSS feeds that I follow. Before I got on my bike for the ride to the train station, I’d fire up Opera Mini, launch Bloglines and choose the  “nn Updated Feeds” which loads all the unread items from all my feeds as a single huge web page. When I got to the train station the huge page was fully loaded with dozens of items – about 30 minutes worth of reading. The tunnels are in the first part of the trip so by the time I finished that first page I was back in an area of connectivity.
• Bookmarklet Support-  Bookmarklets,  snippets of JavaScript stored in a browser bookmark,  are an extremely powerful tool for  making your mobile surfing faster and easier.  With two key presses you can subscribe to a feed in your favorite RSS reader, save a link to the current page on over a dozen different bookmarking services , translate the current page to a different language, display the current page’s HTTP headers, source code or Google Page rank and much more.
• Opera Link – Opera Mini and desktop Opera 9.5 and have Opera Link which synchronizes your Opera Mini bookmarks with the desktop for easy editing and as a backup.  If you switch to a new phone or have to reinstall your BlackBerry OS, as soon as you log into Opera Link all your bookmarks and Speed Dial shortcuts  magically appear on your phone.
• Support – Opera provides the best support I’ve ever experienced for a free product from a large company. On the Opera Mini User Forum, Opera employees promptly answer questions and solicit suggestions for future enhancements. When problems are reported with specific phones, Opera often finds a fix in a few days and puts up a new release to solve the issue.

Anoyances and Workarounds – Like every other piece of software ever made, Opera Mini is not perfect.  It has a few quirks and outright bugs, some of which are specific to the Blackberry.  Here are the top annoyances in Opera Mini and how to work around them.

• Missing Images – With large pages, over 100 KB, Mini runs low on Java stack space.  Which this happens it starts to skip images.  The text all loads but graphics and photos are replaced by gray rectangular pace holders.  There is no real fix for this but you can load more images by selecting “Low” image quality in the Settings menu and by turning off “Visual effects” and using Mobile View.  You can also use Opera Mini 3.1, an older version that splits large pages into multiple segments and is able to display all images.  Another issue with images is that in Mobile View, Opera Mini doesn’t display images that are less than about 20 px wide.  Usually these small images are relatively unimportant spacing elements but sometimes they impart critical information like star ratings on review sites.  The workaround is to switch to desktop view or to use Opera Mini 3.1 which doesn’t have this issue. Note that Opera Mini 3.1, while it avoids these and some other issues, is no longer supported by Opera and is a much more primitive browser lacking many of 4.2’s features like Opera Link, Desktop View and the ability to save pages.
• Mobile View Sometimes Isn’t – On some pages, especially Blogger Blogs and mobile versions of sites, the Mobile View setting is ignored and horizontal scrolling is necessary.  The only workaround is to use Opera Mini 3.1 which doesn’t have this bug.
• Mobile View Page Scrolling Bug – I think this only effects the older BlackBerry models that have a scroll wheel on the side. On these phones, scrolling up and down with the “2″,”8″ and space keys sometimes jumps two pages up or down instead of one. Workarounds are using Alt plus scroll wheel to scroll a page at a tine or switching to Desktop View.
• Connectivity Issue – Occasionally Opera Mini 4.2 gets into a state where it can’t connect.  When this happens the error log (Alt + “LGLG”) sometimes shows “DNS failure” or “Too Many Open Connections”.  Other data aware applications like Gmail, the Bolt and BlackBerry browsers  and even Opera Mini 3.1 continue to work without error. Toggling the phone’s radio on and off and even power cycling do not resolve the issue.  The only thing that seems to work is a complete reboot with Alt + Caps + Del on QWERTY models or a battery pull on SureType phones. Unfortunately, as every BlackBerry user knows, a reboot takes a couple of minutes. Fortunately this bug seems to occur fairly infrequently.

Opera mini is so much better than any other Blackberry browser that in spite of these minor annoyances I use it exclusively. It’s light years ahead of the BlackBerry Browser in terms of  speed, usability and site compatibility. Bolt comes close, but Mini still slightly edges it in speed. Plus Opera Mini’s usability is much better thanks to features like Mobile View, Speed Dial, Opera Link, bookmarklet support and a more extensive set of shortcut keys.

The best way to install Opera Mini on a Blackberry is with the built in  BlackBerry Browser.  Navigate to mini.opera.com and choose the first link labeled “Download Opera Mini!”.  Note, you will only get the download page if your BlackBerry Browser is in BlackBery Emulation Mode (Browser Menu > Options > Browser Configuration > Emulation Mode = “BlackBerry”) (image, bottom).  If you would rather install Opera Mini using Desktop Manager you also download a zip file containing the necessary  .alx and .cod files from .opera.com/mini/download/blackberry/

This morning I participated in a Q&A secssion with Martin Gutierrez from the Go Green Foundation, John Shen from Nokia Labs, and Jeff Burke and Mark Hansen from UCLA about PEIR (Personal Environmental Impact Report), an environmental initiative by UCLA researchers that Nokia and Go Green are funding.

PEIR is an application for Symbian OS 3rd Ed, Windows Mobile 6 and soon Android handsets. It measures your impact on the environment by using location data uploaded from your phone to create a  personalized report about your environmental impact and exposure.  In Southern California PEIR  is able to correlate  your location with particulate matter creation and exposure,  fast food exposure and transportation-related  C02 creation.  Elsewhere PEIR is limited to tracking transportation related carbon impact.

Users can view logs of their trips on the PEIR website.  The logs show your route on a map with detailed statistics on freeway usage and the C02 and particulate matter emissions you generated including the portion of your emissions that were generated in the vicinity of “sensitive” sites like schools, and hospitals.  Facebook users can add a PEIR Facebook app to their profiles which shows their environmental impact and exposure  and how they rank in comparison with their friends (image, above).

PEIR is currently in closed Beta.  If you are interested in trying it there is a  form where you can register to be notified when the Beta opens to new Beta users.  The PEIR Facebook application (which requires the phone app to work) is available here.

PEIR seems like a good way to raise environmental awareness and encourage individuals to think about the environmental impact of their behavior.  Nokia is among the “greenest” big companies and has done a lot to reduce the environmental impact of their production facilities and to remove toxic materials from their products, efforts that won them top ranking in Greenpeace’s “Guide to Greener Electronics“.  The company has also led the way in making mobile chargers more energy efficent. Kudos to Nokia for adding to their environmental contribution with support for PEIR.

This year’s Tour de France is off to an exciting start. The biggest news is seven time winner Lance Armstrong’s coming out of a four year retirement at age 37 to ride his 12th Tour. Armstrong claims he isn’t riding to win this year but to support Alberto Contador, his Astana team’s leader. However yesterday Lance managed to join a late stage breakaway engineered by team Columbia-HTC. The 28 man breakaway finished 41 seconds ahead of the pack and Contador. Going into today’s stage Lance was sitting in third place, just ahead of his team leader. A strong performance by Astana in today’s team time trial has moved Armstong into second place less than a second behind leader Fabian Cancellara with Contador in third, 19 seconds back.

Cable TV channel Versus, which provides live Tour coverage in the US, has really screwed it up this year. The actually commentary, sourced from the U.K’s ITV, is by the legendary Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin and is fine. The ITV broadcast has well defined commercial breaks. But that’s apparently not enough for Versus who is interrupting the ITV feed mid sentence, sometime at critical points in the coverage to interject even more ads. When coverage resumes it does so with 30 seconds or more of commentary lost!

If you can’t watch the tour on TV or want to find out what you missed due to an ill-timed Versus commercial interruption there are a number of mobile web sites offering live text coverage of the Tour.

Velonews ( mobile.velonews.com ) The U.S. based print cycling newspaper has live coverage on their mobile site. In prior years Velonews’ coverage has been first rate in terms of commentary but the site had problems keeping up with the huge traffic the Tour generates. This year they are using a new platform from coveritlive.com which seems fast and robust and includes photos. The table based layout makes horizontal scrolling necessary on screens that are less than 320 px wide, though (image, top). Rating: Content Usability

Eurosport (m.eurosport.com/cycling/) The big European sports TV network has added live mobile coverage this year. Unfortunately, the mobile version truncates the coverage, cutting off all but the last 20 minutes or so’s comments. Not good if you can only steal a glance at the Tour occasionally, like at work, and want go back and see what happened earlier. The site loads very slowly at times and the updates are rather cryptic and lack niceties like a tabular leader-board found on the other sites. Rating: Content Usability

BBC Mobile (news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbc_sport/cycling/ ) The BBC provides the full text of their live coverage from the the beginning of the race to the end. The BBC commentary was a bit sparse in prior years but this year I think it’s the best of the bunch with frequent factual reports that seem to catch the critical moves. This is light weight version that should work on all phones. Rating: Content Usability

BBC PDA (news.bbc.co.uk/solpda/ukfs_sport/hi/other_sports/cycling/) This is the BBC Mobile live text stream enhanced with photos, bits pulled out of Twitter, including one today by Lance himself, and  user comments. If you are in the U.K. you can text a comment to 81111 or call 606 to leave a voice message. There is moderation with only selected comments being used, probably a good thing. The comments add a lot to the experience making this my favorite mobile site for live Tour coverage. Rating: Content Usability

What about CyclingNews.com? The number one cycling website isn’t offering any live mobile Tour coverage this year! The old live.cyclingnews.com/wap/ link returns a 404 “Not Found” error. That’s pretty strange as CyclingNew’s live commentary is by far the most extensive on the web and is very popular with cycling fans around the world. Actually, you can easily view the desktop live coverage with Opera Mini and probably other full-web mobile browsers. To try it start at http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/96th-tour-de-france-gt/stages/, scroll down to the current stage and click the Live link. I don’t know who dropped the ball on the CyclingNews mobile site this year. It’s probably related to CyclingNews’ just completed and much needed total redesign of their desktop site. Perhaps integrating a mobile version with the new content management system is delayed and the mobile version will appear eventually. But not having it up for the biggest race of the year is really bad form.

Quick.as is a new web and mobile portal or start page. It offers a single search box that lets you search with a dozen different search engines on basic phones and over a hundred different search engines ranging form Google and Yahoo to the Shenzen Stock Exchange and The Pirate Bay on the desktop and phones that support JavaScript Quick.as is not a meta-search engine, you have to choose a single search engine for each query,

Quick.as claims to detect your phone type and location and deliver appropriately formatted pages and locally relevant results. I found that both features generally worked as advertised. On an N95 and an Android phone I got Google’s mobile web search and Yelp searches defaulted to San Francisco. However a Yellow Pages search for “sushi” dumped me on the Yellow Pages mobile homepage where I was prompted for both “Search Term” and “City/State or ZIP”!

Quick.as has a small link directory of popular news, sports, social network, email and online banking sites. These links point at non-mobile sites even on the mobile edition of Quick.as. If you set up an account on the Quick.as desktop site you can delete and edit the quick links and add your own.

I think that the concept of Quick.as is good but I’m a little disappointed in the mobile integration. Login is by email address and a 7 character password. Login is persistent for only 2 weeks. Email addresses are a pain to type on mobile because of their length and the “@” sign. The relatively long password and short login retention are both mobile unfriendly and unnecessarily paranoid for a site that stores a simple list of links. Mobile usability would be improved by allowing users to pick a short ID and password and by persisting logins until explicit logout.

Another mobile usability issue is that Quick Links are the same across desktop and mobile and require a PC to setup and edit. This excludes the huge and growing number of mobile-only users, especially in the developing world. Also I believe that most users will want a different set of bookmarks on mobile than on the desktop. Either links to mobile vs. desktop versions of sites or to different sites entirely.

Quick.as was submitted for review by @andrewjb44 Thanks, Andrew.

Filed in: Wap Review Directory – Portals/WAP

Ratings: Content Usability

Ready.mobi Score: 1 “Bad”

Mobile Link: m.quick.as

Technology/Mobile/Smartphones/Symbian

SymbianOne mippin.com/symbianone News blog covering Symbian games, development tools, usage case studies, market analysis and employment opportunities. Source Anything Geospatial
Content: Usability:

Technology/Internet

the css blog m.thecssblog.com A nice collection of very good CSS tips and tutorials in blog format. Large (up to 160 KB) pages may be an issue for some mobile browsers. Mobile view by Mobify. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory
Content: Usability:

Technology/Tech News

LBSzone mippin.com/lbszone Tech news site specializing in location based services including; GPS, RFID, map mashups, PNDs and local search. Source Anything Geospatial
Content: Usability:

News/International/Europe

The Independent m.independent.co.uk/ Mobile edition of The Independent, a U.K. national daily newspaper. The site carries the full text and a few photos from close to 100 articles from the paper’s News, Opinion, Sports, Travel, Money and Entertainment sections. Source: @microflash
Content: Usability:

Travel-Transit/Air/Airlines

WestJet Check In mobile.westjet.com Mobile online check in for Canada’s WestJet. Source: Anything Geospatial
Content: Usability:

Entertainment/Mobile Video-Audio

SearchTube.mobi searchtube.mobi Browse and search mobile formatted videos on YouTube and Blip.tv. Source: Tappity
Content: Usability:

Travel-Transit/Rail

Cross Country Trains m.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/ U.K. intercity rail information from Cross Country Trains which operates in Britain, Wales and Scotland. The site has schedules, live service updates, information about each station including a map and directory of services and amenities and click to call phone numbers. Registered users can purchase train tickets on the mobile site. Source: @microflash
Content: Usability:

Travel-Transit/Destination Guides

Living Prague livingprague.mobi Prague travel guide by an English tourist who became a Czech resident. An insider’s guide to the city with recommended hotels, restaurants and attractions and money saving tips for visitors to Prague. Source: Tappity
Content: Usability:

Entertainment/Life Style/Men’s Interest

Men’s Health mag.2mymob.com/mens_health_workout/ Health and Fitness articles and videos from print magazine Men’s Health.
Content: Usability:

Business/Banking and Payments/US Regional Banks

CEFCU cefcu.mobi/ Mobile site of the Citizens Equity First Credit Union serving 230,000 members with branches in Central Illinois. The mobile site has branch and ATM locations and hour, click to call numbers for each branch and special offers. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory
Content: Usability:

Shopping

Urban Outfitters m.urbanoutfitters.com The youth oriented clothing chain Urban Outfitter’s mobile site offers online shopping, a store directory,sharable “wishlist”, company blog and links UO profiles on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr. Making purchases requires an Urban Outfitters online account which can only be created on the Urban Outfitters desktop site.
Content: Usability:

I think this is a mobile first. Ameren, an electric power utility serving 1.9 million customers in Illinois and Missouri has launched a mobile website that lets customers check the status of service outages. You can search for affected areas by zip code or county. You can also report if your power is out and get real time updates on the progress of restoring power to your specific home or business. The site also has customer service phone numbers (unfortunately NOT click to call) and electrical safety tips.

Nice idea, assuming the mobile site really is updated with status changes in a timely fashion. If the power is out then your desktop PC and WiFi access point and in some cases land-line phone service is going to be out too. Using the mobile site to report a problem or get a status update should be faster than holding for an overloaded telephone support center. I wish all public utilities including power, cable and land line phone companies provided a mobile site like this for outage reporting and status updates. Source: Mobility.mobi

Filed in: Wap Review Directory – Search/Local

Ratings: Content Usability

Ready.mobi Score: 3 “Fair”

Mobile Link: ameren.mobi

When I covered Google’s resurrected IGoogle for the iPhone, I complained that Google’s overly aggressive browser detection and redirection  was blocking users of other advanced mobile browsers like S60 Webkit and Opera Mini from the site.

Today, I noticed that Google seems to have made a subtle change to the way it handles unrecognized and unsupported browsers. It’s now possible to force the advanced mobile version to be delivered to any browser.  Visit google.com/m/ig?uipref=6 to try it. You need to use that exact URL, anything else gets redirected  to the WAP version.

Now obviously, the iPhone/Android specific site will not work in just any mobile browser. At a minimum your browser needs to support JavaScript. There are probably some dependencies on features found only in the Safari or Android browsers, so some things may not work. But the iPhone/Android site does seem to work perfectly with Skyfire (image, below) and with some minor usability issues in Opera Mini 4.2 (image, above). It works  partially with Opera Mini 3.1, Ozone, Bolt,  the S60 WebKit browser (image bottom)  .

Admittedly I’ve only tried it with six Gadgets; Google’s Gmail, Reader, News, Calendar and Finance and Logika’s TwitterGadget.  All work as expected with Opera Mini and Skyfire and all but News work in the S60 Browser. The iPhone – iGoogle pages are formatted for a minimum screen width of 320px so you do need to use landscape on QVGA phones to avoid horizontal scrolling. The sole exception is Opera Mini 3.1 which re-flows everything to screen width.  It’s not pretty in 3.1 but is usable.

I tried the iPhone iGoogle with all the other other mobile browsers I could find that support JavaScript with the following results. All except the BlackBerry Browser were tested on a Nokia N95-3 NAM.

If you try this in other full-web mobile browsers like Pocket IE, recent BlackBerry browsers and the Telca and NetFront browsers found on Samsung and LG touch screen feature phones please leave a comment letting us know how it works.

Kudos to Google for opening up this back door so that users of unsupported browsers can try this advanced mobile site. Is it useful on any of these browsers? Actually I’d say that it is, particularly with Skyfire, Opera Mini, the S60 browser and Bolt.  Not everything works in every browser but the overall user experience is still better than with the generic version of mobile iGoogle.

The fact that it works as well as it does suggests that Google’s GWT, the open source JavaScript framework which iGoogle for the iPhone is likely built with, is actually able to detect and optimize mobile content for many more mobile browsers than just Safari and the Android browser. I wonder if anyone outside of Google is using GWT for mobile web development and trying to support browsers beyond the iPhone and Android?

Related Posts:
Ozone Browser For S60 and UIQ 3

Just posted at mTrends , the latest Carnival of the Mobilists is now available for your enlightenment and enjoyment.  Host Rudy De Waele has highlighted 16 of the week’s best posts on mobile topics by bloggers from around the world.

Topics include app stores, the impact of mobiles in education and social change, widgets, advertising, mobile statistics, Bluetooth marketing, feature phones vs. smartpones, Intel and Nokia’s new alliance and the launch of two new services promoting networking between mobile entrepreneurs.

There’s a lot more in this Carnival too.  take a look, I’m sure you will find something there of interest. And thank you Rudy for including my post on using the Bing API to create a mobile search engine.

Visit the: Carnival of the Mobilists #180

It seems to be raining mobile browser updates.  Yesterday Bolt issued a major update  and it looks like Skyfire did a bug fix release on Monday.  There are quite a few fixes in it.  Here are the release notes.

Skyfire 1.0 update – Release Notes (Windows Mobile and Symbian)

Released: June 30, 2009

Since our Skyfire 1.0 launch, we’ve fixed a few bugs and are releasing this new update. We encourage you to upgrade today by going to http://get.skyfire.com with your device.

1.0.0.12114 Symbian

1.0.0.12113 Windows Mobile touch and non-touch

What’s new in this 1.0 update?

• Reduced Memory footprint. We reduced the memory footprint of Skyfire for both Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. This should help folks reporting issues on memory constrained devices.

Fixes in this release

• History is presented in the proper order.
• Cookies in the UK data center are handled more reliably.
• Sharing links via SMS are handled more reliably.
• Reconnect correctly loads the last page in history plus we’ve improved reliability.
• Site specific issues have been resolved for Rooftopcommedy.com and thefind.com.
• Zoom buttons behave properly and disappear after a couple of seconds.
• Default browser setting works more consistently.
• Text entry on Symbian has been improved with one caveat below.

Known issues in this release

• Multi-line text entry on Symbian: Skyfire might exit the text entry mode when the user is choosing a word from the predictive text list. Plus, using the down key might NOT get you out of text entry mode. If this happens, use enter or center OK. Issues 7149 & 7112
• Superbar state on Symbian: sometimes when you enter into the superbar with the cursor, existing the Superbar via the ‘cancel’ option will navigate to the previous page. Issue 7158
• Change connection on Symbian: Choosing the search WLAN option might not change the WLAN connection. Issue 6633.
• Samsung Jack (AT&T): Because of a security policy on this device, it will not allow uninstall of Skyfire if there is not SIM card in the phone. Simply insert a SIM card.

I’ve installed the new version on my N95-3 without problems.  Interestingly, the version number is 1.0.0.12214 rather than the 1.0.0.12114 mentioned in the release notes.  Typo or a new silent release? In any case, as expected from the nature of the update, there are no obvious changes.  Everything I said in my Skyfire 1.0 review still applies.  Skyfire is the best way to watch web videos on a S60 or Windows Mobile phones, but the tiny fonts at the default zoom level make it less pleasant for sites that are mainly text.

The reduced memory footprint should allow this version to run on phones like the N73 that didn’t have enough RAM to work with Skyfire 1.0. Elsewhere on the web; @kiyo21 reports that pasting text from the system clipboard into the “Enter URL” field now works on S60.  I can confirm that.  A commenter at All About Symbian noted that entering text in web forms seems slower in the new version.  It IS slow although I don’t know if it’s any worse than before.  Skyfire users, what are your experiences with this upgrade?

Related Posts

Skyfire 1.0 Reviewed
Skyfire 0.9 – WVGA Support, Twitter and Facebook Integration
Skyfire Browser Beta 0.85 for S60 – Full Review