Hot on the heels of last night’s rumors of Nokia chatting it up with Facebook, Skyfire has announced v0.9 of its S60 browser, bringing Facebook and Twitter integration right to your start page. The new version of this server-assisted web browser also brings in feeds from other social services, such as YouTube, Hulu, Digg, and more into a stream on your personalized start page. You can customize this to include feeds that you want, while disabling those that you don’t.
The Facebook integration is the next best thing to a dedicated Facebook app, in my opinion, as I can update my status directly from the start page, without having to go to the Facebook mobile site. You can also use Skyfire to easily share any web page with your Facebook friends, which is rather cool, and the first time this is possible from a phone, that I’m aware of. While browsing, simply choose Options – Send – Share Online to post whatever page you’re currently on to your Facebook stream! You can also send the page to a friend via SMS, if that’s easier.
This new version of Skyfire for S60 is also smaller in size, so it will take up less of your phone’s storage, and allows you to download media files. As before, Skyfire still lets you view rich web content such as Flash, Silverlight, Ajax, etc. You can download this new version directly from Skyfire here.
While I really like the idea of Skyfire, I’m still annoyed by a few aspects. You are able to create a user account, for free, and customise your links and preferences, which are stored online. This is great if, like me, you have multiple phones that you switch between, but you cannot set this up from a desktop browser, like you can with my default destination, Keytoss.com. You *have* to do it all from your phone. Also, I noticed that Skyfire still takes up to 20 seconds to launch on my Nokia N79, which is far too long, in my opinion.
Either way, given that Skyfire is still in beta, at v0.9, it’s a great showing, and has plenty of features. What about you? Do you like and use Skyfire? Why or why not?
