Skyfire Web Browser for iPad Review

At this point, all of us know the story: Apple and Adobe just refuse to play nice with one another. Both sides trade barbs (deserved or not), feelings are hurt, and the consumer misses out. From the iPhone’s inception, users have clamored for a way to view Flash content on their shiny, new iDevices. With the release of the Skyfire Web Browser, it looks like the wait is over . . . sort of.

In addition to promising the first iOS platform for flash video consumption, the developers also claim that Skyfire is a browser with “the best integration of social features for a quicker, more informative and most of all fun internet experience.” In our experience with similar browsers, this has generally been a pie-in-the-sky claim, but in the case of Skyfire and its diversity of social and accessibility features, we are believers.

At first blush, Skyfire includes all of Safari’s basic functions but has refined them. Bookmarks are more intuitively listed and easier to manage, and multiple tabs are more elegantly displayed and navigated.

In addition to the standard features, Skyfire also includes a number of social options, with small, mobile, pop-up versions of Facebook and Twitter, accessible with a single button tap, from within the main browser. Likewise, your Google reader feeds are available in the same fashion.

To make matters even better, the developers have included a number of options for saving and sharing pages, from the ability to e-mail links, to Instapaper and Read Later functionality. Plus, the app comes with a handy toggle that forces sites to display as a mobile or desktop version, depending on your preference.

Of course, the browser’s bread and butter is its much-touted ability to display Flash videos. In our tests, this feature was promising, but often hit-or-miss. To start with, those expecting a full, in-line flash experience will be disappointed. On pages in which flash video is present, you must tap a small button on the lower-left corner of the screen, and Skyfire will attempt to decode the video over the cloud on its servers.

If the decoding process works, a small, seemingly reduced resolution version of the video pops up for you to view. Skyfire is clear that not all websites are currently supported, but they are working to expand their compatibility. They even provide a list of supported sites to view before you buy. In general, compatibility was fair (7 of the first 10 sites we tried worked). Sadly, some major Flash content providers, such as Hulu, are permanently unavailable, and Flash games are not supported.

Even on compatible sites, however, video only displays inconsistently, and we often had to send the video to the cloud multiple times before it worked. Even then, the video would sometimes come through as grainy or choppy, and there was often a sizable delay--usually upwards of 30 seconds--before content became viewable, depending on the size of the video.

Despite its technical imperfections, Skyfire takes the first step toward muting the cries of those who miss their Flash videos, and it is the first comprehensive web-surfing app that gives mobile Safari a run for its money as our everyday browser.