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There was a time when Skyfire on Windows Mobile meant full Flash all the time. The 2.0 version on Android reigned that in a bit, really only supporting Flash video and little else, something Android 2.2 users no longer need to worry about. iOS users, however, do still spend their days ruing websites with such content, and so that’s the market Skyfire is targeting next. The company has submitted a version of the browser for App Store approval, transcoding Flash video such that the phone only sees HTML5, with content coming in over H.264 adaptive streaming. As such, video is said to be compressed an average of 75 percent, in theory allaying any concerns about this thing being a bandwidth hog. In other words: there’s no reason for this to not be approved, right? Right! However, something tells us things may not be so easy… Continue reading Skyfire submits iPhone browser for App Store approval, we wait for the Flash to hit the fan Skyfire submits iPhone browser for App Store approval, we wait for the Flash to hit the fan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Dear community: When will AT&T Wireless push the Android 2.2 update (FroYo) which will hopefully include Adobe Flash 10.1 Player for the browser? Sincerely, markerline
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Let’s all feign surprise now, as Dell has just gone official with its worst kept, though perhaps sexiest , secret ever. The former Mini 5 has been christened the Streak and is launching at the beginning of next month. The UK will be getting the first bite at this cherry, with the rest of Europe following soon thereafter and the US a disappointingly distant third with a launch “later this summer.” If you’ve been living under a (Round) Rock, this is Dell’s big foray into the smartphone market: a 5-inch supersized Android handset, housing a 1GHz Snapdragon, a 5 megapixel cam, 16GB of built-in memory (expandable to 48GB via MicroSD) and a customized UI. Curiously, Dell’s opting to market the Streak as “the ultimate portable tablet pc” and would prefer that this device, albeit fully equipped to carry out cellular calls like a phone, not be called a smartphone. We got a chance to play with it during a briefing in London recently, and frankly, aside from the snazzier paintjob, there’s nothing new to report. Just like the prototype unit we’ve previewed to exhaustion , the device on hand was running Android 1.6 and Dell’s skinning team hadn’t yet laid on the goodies that we’ve been promised. The battery is the same 1,530mAh cell as before, and we even managed to get the browser to crash in the exact same fashion that our own Streak exhibits on occasion. Now that’s consistency. We’re not being told the specific Android version that the Streak will ship with, but a couple of flavors are being mulled over right now. Till we get more info, we suggest sitting back, relaxing, and perusing the gallery below for the roaring red number that’s currently on show. It won’t be available at launch — you can have any color so long as it’s black — but “a range of colors and designs” will swiftly follow to sate any aesthetic concerns. Video and full press release after the break. Continue reading Dell Streak official: exclusive to O2 UK in early June Dell Streak official: exclusive to O2 UK in early June originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 May 2010 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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The N900 already features one of the best pocket browsing experiences we’ve ever seen, but it looks to be getting a whole lot better today with the beta release of Firefox 1.1. Major new features include portrait browsing (awesome), form auto-complete, a context menu, volume key zoom, and — this is pretty neat — the capability to save pages straight to PDF, so it seems like the kind of thing you’ll definitely want to download, even if it’s not quite solid enough to earn gold build status. Oh, and if you don’t have an N810 or N900 handy and you’re amped to play around, you can download the little guy for Windows, Mac OS, or Linux, too. Firefox 1.1 beta for Maemo goes live originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
We just spent a few minutes playing with the beta version of Skyfire 2.0 for Android that was released today, and we’ll cut to the chase: this is easily the best browser we’ve used on the platform. Clearly we’ll need to spend more time with it to make sure it can handle all the typical sites you’d want to visit while you’re on the road — but loading the desktop version of Engadget is always a great barometer for this sort of thing, and this browser rocked it. Rendering is about as reasonably fast as you can expect it to be (on our Snapdragon -powered Nexus One , anyhow), and everything we saw displayed spot-on perfect (save for embedded Flash, of course), but if you’re in a situation where you don’t need to see the full page or it looks screwy, you can toggle it to send an Android user agent right from the app’s toolbar below the URL field. It works just about as well as Steel and the built-in browser on a G1 we tested, and Flash videos work just fine there as well. 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. Continue reading Skyfire 2.0 beta for Android video preview! Skyfire 2.0 beta for Android video preview! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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RIM’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis just announced in an analyst call today that the company’s next platform — coined BlackBerry 6 — will be available “in the next calendar quarter,” which we take to mean the third quarter of 2010. We weren’t able to see a video preview of the platform that was shown to analysts attending the event, but the demo apparently showed a touchscreen interface; a follow-up question from the audience confirmed that it’ll be available for both touch and non-touch devices, though. Interestingly, Lazaridis said that the company’s all-new WebKit -based browser is part and parcel with 6, pointing out that the rendering engine will have implications throughout the platform and the apps that run on it, not just on the browser alone; in other words, we wouldn’t expect a release of a WebKit browser from these guys for OS 5.0-based devices. Speaking of OS 5.0, the intention is that every device in RIM’s portfolio will eventually run 6, but not everything in the market today will necessarily be upgradeable — Lazaridis says that they’ll “do [their] best,” but he’s not making any guarantees. More on this as we get it. BlackBerry 6 coming in third quarter of this year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Our man Thomas Ricker was just wondering how long it would take before Apple determined the fate of Opera Mini for iPhone , and we’ve got some good news — it’s been approved and will be available for free on the App Store within 24 hours! Can’t say we were expecting that, since non-Safari-based browsers have typically been verboten from Apple’s little kingdom, but we’re certainly happy to be surprised. We’ll do up a full hands-on when we see it in the store, but for now check the demo video after the break. Update: We’re getting reports that UK and Australian readers are already able to download and enjoy this surprising little addition to the app store — be sure to give this iTunes link a shot and see if it works in your region, mmkay? Update 2: We just got our hands on Opera Mini for the iPhone, and the first thing we noticed is, in fact, how fast it renders pages. When we open the app, we are quickly introduced to the default Opera Screen, with links to Facebook, Twitter and the like. Opening a new tab is a single touch and loading virtually any homepage is quick. While scrolling through the loaded page, some images don’t fully render until you stop over them. Multitouch is enabled to some extent — you can pinch to zoom, and double tapping only fully zooms in and out, with really no inbetween. Something else we noticed that we’d been looking for in OS 4, is the ability to Find in Page. It works really well, and the words being searched are highlighted for an easy find. This browser totally kicks safari out of the water, and we’re definitely looking forward to updates for Opera Mini. Update 3: It looks to be live in the US now! Hit up that iTunes link and go wild! Continue reading Opera Mini for iPhone approved, will be available for free (update: hands-on) Opera Mini for iPhone approved, will be available for free (update: hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading about Opera Mini for iPhone approved, will be available for free (update: hands-on)
Web browsing fiends of the world already have enough reason to envy N900 owners on account of the built-in browser’s excellence and the availability of an official Firefox release — both with full Flash support — but if that’s enough, there’s now another name-brand option in the works. Well, sort of. You see, Chromium for Maemo isn’t an official port — but the Maemo community is filled with tinkerers, and that has inevitably led to the availability of a hacked version of the Debian release that apparently works quite wonderfully on the N900 (yes, including Flash) with a 100 score on the elusive Acid test. It’s said to be a little buggy at the moment, so hopefully that’ll improve over time; you’ve got to download and install the package manually rather than going through a repo, but as an N900 owner, odds are pretty good that you’re familiar with the tactic already. Perhaps Google wants to take this little project over? [Thanks, Sp4mer] Google’s Chromium project ported to N900 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading about Google’s Chromium project ported to N900
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