Little by little we are advancing in our special Browsers on Android. Today we bring you Skyfire, one that seems perfect for use in terminals with bombastic names such as Incredible, Optimus 3D or Xperia Arc. It is an original browser, strongly committed to integration with Facebook, which becomes almost one more layer while we browse.
Skyfire menus offer buttons so that, at any time, we can share the page on Facebook that we are visiting, mark it as a favorite, write on walls, etc. so it is perfect for fans of this social network (which is not my case). It has more than a million downloads, and four stars after more than 65,000 ratings.
The thing is not there, since Skyfire offers many other interesting options, although unfortunately, also too great an inconvenience as if to ignore it. And you run into it as soon as you start the application … but only if you are one of those who read the terms of use.
Fluent in everything except during zoom
Browsing with Skyfire is as comfortable as it can be in Chrome. I have not seen major differences in loading or rendering times, except in two respects. When using multi-touch, zoom is smoother in ChromeWell, in Skyfire you see jumps, but it is a mere aesthetic question.
The other aspect is when watching videos, where there is a big difference: Skyfire optimizes Flash, converts it to HTML5 and reduces loading times significantly, compared to the native Chrome player, or the YouTube application for Android. Also, if a page contains a video, Skyfire shows a preview in its bottom menu and we can access it directly. This fails a bit when there are multiple videos on a page, because it only offers the shortcut for the first one.
Bars, menus and tabs
The menus are out of the way and take up just the right amount of space. The best menu It includes the address bar, which shows the title of the web once loaded, as well as a mini search box and shortcuts to the previous page, the initial page, favorites, tab selection, normal / mobile view and options. This menu is hidden when you scroll down, although it always keeps the Android notification bar in view, which is not a bad thing.
The lower menu It is shown or hidden by pressing the Menu button on the terminal. It includes all the features of the browser’s social layer, and I’ll talk about it when we get to the Facebook aspect of Skyfire.
The tab management it is visual, showing thumbnails. With each tab that we open, the menu button is updated, indicating the number of tabs that we have open. In Myself HTC Desire with 2.2 Froyo I have managed to open 9 tabs, but it has a trick. From the sixth tab, Skyfire erases the first tabs from memory, so to actually open them what it does is load them again. Thus, the tab change is not smooth when we have many open.
Another of the menu buttons allows on any website switch between normal mode and mobile version. In the event that the web shows a different design depending on the type of device, we can switch between one and the other directly. It would help me to put in normal mode all those who insist on going alone to “mobile” mode.
Facebook fans: Skyfire makes it easy for you
Skyfire’s social layer is a almost full integration on Facebook. The lower menu offers us quick access to a multitude of utilities to get the most out of this social network. With QuickView, we have our Facebook profile one button away, with the list of updates from our friends, inbox, events, places, contact list …
With Fireplace, we have a filtered list of our Facebook feed that only contains links to pages, images and videos published and shared by our contacts, so we can visit the links recommended to us on Facebook in the browser, with great comfort.
On Popular Pages At the moment you have links to the most shared content on Facebook, giving priority to the recommendations of our contacts, which will appear at the top of the list.
Related Ideas allows you to explore from the themes of a web. By clicking on “ideas”, Skyfire analyzes the content of the page and displays search results from Facebook, Twitter and other sites related to that content.
Finally, we have a “Like” button with which to mark the page we are visiting, whether that page offers the option or not. The same button is used to update to “I don’t like it” if you change your mind.
Searches, favorites management and history
The search is another of the strengths of Skyfire, I love how it is raised. When we carry out a search, whatever the method, it appears a top bar with icons of various search engines. By clicking on them we obtain the results offered by that search engine with the same search terms. Very comfortable and fast.
The favorites management it is very simple and effective. It shows thumbnails of the webs and it is synchronized with the favorites you have in Chrome. In the same view from which we see the favorites we have access to the history tab, where the pages are grouped by visit day. Nothing revolutionary, but functional and more visual than what Chrome currently offers. Nor is there much room in which to innovate in this regard.
An insurmountable snag
When opening Skyfire for the first time we came across the big downside of this browser, on the other hand excellent. The first paragraph of the legal notice ends with this sentence:
Skyfire software connects to Skyfire servers to render web pages and content. When you use the browser, Skyfire has access to, and in many cases will monitor, your use of the browser
That is, the company Skyfire receives information about each website you visit. And it is not an option that we can change, since it is one of the main features of the browser. Skyfire optimizes the websites you visit to reduce your weight without losing quality. But the price to pay seems too high to me, especially if there is no way to disable this feature. Well yes, using another browser. Pity, otherwise it was a great option, but this does not motivate me at all.
In Engadget Android | Special Browsers on Android
Download | Skyfire on Android Market (free)
Official site | Skyfire
