Just when the upcoming SkyFire seemed to have the mobile browser vapourware market all sewn up, Opera have released a preview video of Opera Mobile 9.5 - and very impressive it looks, too.
The new version brings greatly improved rendering speeds (the video takes great delight in showing how quickly Opera renders the Guardian home page compared to Internet Explorer - accompanied by suitably ponderous music).
Also new is a full-screen display with a hidden GUI activated by tapping a transparent area, smooth zooming and panning across large pages and the ability to send bits of web pages via SMS and MMS.
Californian developers SkyFire are running a private beta of a new mobile web browser that they claim will offer a ‘desktop’ browsing experience with full AJAX and Flash support.
Details are sketchy at the moment - the private beta is US-only and even there SkyFire are being pretty tight-fisted with the invites - but the browser seems to work a little like Opera Mobile, using a proxy server to compress and optimise pages to better suit a small screen and slow connection.
SkyFire currently works only on selected Windows Mobile devices, but full Windows Mobile and Symbian support is promised.
As soon as Pocket Picks can get it’s eager mitts on a copy we will give you a full review but until then, check out this demo video:
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