Skyfire 2.0 beta for Android video preview!
By Chris Ziegler 
posted April 29th 2010 1:27PM
posted April 29th 2010 1:27PM
The browser touts compatibility with Flash videos, too, so we headed over to YouTube to try our hand at it; it immediately detected the presence of a video and popped up the so-called "SkyBar" at the bottom of the screen, where you can press the Video button to load the video in a new window. It doesn't work embedded in the page, but considering how small your phone's screen is, that's really for the best -- you get the full-screen experience, and in our testing, it looked fantastic. One downside is that you don't seem to be able to scrub videos while they're playing, but maybe this is something these guys can get patched up for the final release. Follow the break for our full video!
Update: One annoyance we've noticed is that pinch-to-zoom works in "steps" -- it's not smooth, which makes it pretty weird to use, but remember that Opera Mini doesn't support it at all.
good, time to install Android on my 2G iPhone then Skyfire..
LOL
@AppleDrank why exactly would you do that? you can play youtube videos on iphone just like here ... just click on it and it plays in video player
@Formul
YES, ONLY youtube videos NOT ALL the videos on the web.
I wanted Skyfire yesterday, but I got it today! :)
@AppleDrank Try watching live play off games on an iProduct with HTML5.. Windows Mobile users have been using this for years.. Quicksilverscreen and Tv-out works surprisingly good..
Having choice is awesome!
I want to be able to choose my browser.
@Kamalot
How does this compare to Opera mini (forget about the abckend data crunching)
Can I stop the screen from auto rotate so I can use this in bed?
@Kamalot
Didn't you read Steve jobs' letter? You don't want flash at all, so why do you even need the choice. He knows better than you about what you want, so don't even fight it.
@fernandez21
I don't understand Steve's recent Anti-Flash letter. He mentions mouseovers, but tons of sites require mouseover interactions done in HTML and CSS.
The problem is that developers have been designing interfaces for the mouse, not fingers. The tool used to create the interface elements, HTML / Flash or even C don't make the interface poor. The Interface Designer is to blame, not the tool.
@Kamalot
That letter was such bs, even though on some points I agree with, he should US decide if we want to deal with those issues. LMAF at the "closed" arguement coming from the king of closed systems.
Also it's my understanding, not a developer so not sure, but I thought adobe owns the player, but not the format completely, meaning you don't pay royalties for using flash on your site and that there are several flash developer tools made from companies not named adobe, it's just adobe makes the best tools and owns the player so by brand association people assume the adobe tools are the best.
@fernandez21
After a bit of 'research' (googling), it appears that Flash is indeed much more open that Apple's iPhone, or even their desktop software.
http://www.openscreenproject.org/
@AppleDrank this browser is much better than opera (ok everyone can crucify me now). opera has never rendered pages right. though i really thing FFMobile (Fennec) will be the absolute best of all the browsers im using the pre-release version now and it is good.
@jetblast7
I have Opera mini 5 for general surfing. It renders most pages well or close to perfect. Not all, but the speed makes it my everyday browser. Engadget loads in less than 5 seconds on my 3.5G connection and I surf from Asia Pacific. The other browsers can take upwards of 10-30 seconds surfing international sites.
I also have Opera 9 AND Opera 10. I use Opera 9 when I need more features, javascript etc etc. 10 I keep around because more it can load more complex websites that 5 & 9 can't. These would be pages with heavy scripts running.
I use skyfire for more media heavy sites (flash). Performance wise, it's slower than Opera and rendering can be quite horrid at times but it gets the media part going quite well. So there's a use for it.
It's good to have choice so that you can use what is most suited at the time for what you need. If Apple released mobile safari as a free download for other devices, I think it would replace my Opera 9. I'd still end up using mini 5 for the sheer speed.
"Rendering is about as reasonably fast as you can expect it to be (on our Snapdragon-powered Nexus One, anyhow)", really you Engadget people so smart. Skyfire rendering everything (Page,sound,video and even flash) on Skyfire-side-server. So yes, your Snapdragon got to do nothing with that. Do I need to mention that Skyfire is already existed for WM and Symbian? (I Guess not)
@Sp4mer Regardless of where the HTML renders, it still needs to render on your screen, dude. Relax.
@Sp4mer chris dont feed the troll
@Chris Ziegler ok I apologize for how it sounded like. I meant it in a good way. Anyhow what is rendered on the screen isn't taugh compared to the native browser. Also, Thanks for letting us know about Skyfire (it is one of my fav browsers in the mobile-worlds.) :)
pretty good, using it on 2.1 on rooted mytouch. better than dolphin.
playing with it right now. i approve of this browser.
looks good so far.
@ssgadget
DROID Does.
looks nice.
next stop, iPhone, then the world!
Had SkyFire on my 5800 and X6 for a while, It plays Flash video faultlessly. This looks great too.
It looks good thus far. Pages load less quickly than in Opera on my HTC Hero, but the Flash video bypass is a great feature.
On fix I would like to see is an easier way to get back to the homepage with all of your bookmarks. I don't believe there is a way to do it without opening a new window.
Black Dynomite needs to switch to android and drop this jive turkey iphone asap!!
@BlackDynomite
DYNOMITE!! DYNOMITE!!
They need a new phone, Droid Dynomite!
@ssgadget
Thanks Skyfire for this Perfect and Magical Web experience on my Android phone.
Very Impressive.
It embarrasses the Android browser? Try embarrassing safari.
Nice, too bad Steve would never approve it.
@techlord
Opera was approved.
Also, as an aside, the browser is a bit busy. That's just a minor quibble, however.
very nice
@ssgadget Yet another reason to avoid the iPhone 4G.
@futurerheza Who still uses a PC when there's an iPad out. I threw my PC out about two weeks ago it was just collecting dust.
Playing with it now on my DROID. Slick!!
@ssgadget
SkyFire is awesome. Looks like a nice step forward vs the version I was using on WinMo.
I already installed and uninstalled it. It was very slow to bring up pages and had trouble with Gmail when in desktop mode. And when I exited it, Sense UI had to reload. So I'd say they've got a lot of work to do before this comes out of beta.
@dkratter14
I too had problems with it being incredibly slow. I'm still using an old cupcake rom so this is probably the problem.
@budice4ever So you never have any REAL work to do?
Kickass!
...I mean Hitgirl!
color me impressed
@ssgadget
I think Mozilla's mobile browser was going to be called "Finnac" or "Finnec" or something?
When exactly this this Skyfire come around? Or has it always been around?
Chris, you should be ashamed of yourself, you clicked on an Engadget Ad. I'm sure that's against your ad publisher's TOS! ;)
In all seriousness, this browser looks great. I wish my iPhone's Safari browser had such features :'-(
no option to play high quality YouTube videos
@chienb
If only we already had an app that did that...
Nexus one default plays HQ YouTube finee
@chienb that's because it's playing the HQ feed automatically
@TheLondonExchange Two totally different things. Fennec is still in pretty early stages, but I must say, when it comes out I think it will be the best.