Waves

Ever since I discovered Opera Mini, I had installed it on my first mobile (K300i) and now the latest Opera Mini 5 beta is present on my Nokia E51. Few months ago a new browser came up for S60 3rd Edition Mobiles named Skyfire. The main selling point of this browser was almost full support for javascript and Adobe Flash with near desktop experience; which enabled us to watch YouTube videos on the mobile!

I had been using both browsers side by side for a few months now & came to feel that Opera Mini is a lot better for daily use and Skyfire is better for those one off toughie websites that must work with javascript and other stuff enabled.

Here’s an example: Recently, I started accessing my twitter account through Dabr from Opera Mini. The mobile UI rocks and zoom in and zoom out is instant. It happens in the client side. Opera Mini has an intelligent mix of client side and server side operations, whereas, all operations from Skyfire require an active internet connection. At best, internet access from mobiles through GPRS still remains patchy & hence, Skyfire should have that intelligent mix of operations and where possible, operations should be done at the client rather than server.

Opera desktop’s goodness of Speed Dial has arrived on Opera Mini 5. It’s awesome and saves you tons of clickety-clicks, which are irritating on a mobile. The whole menu system has been completely revamped. UI is smooth and fast (which is a downside with Skyfire)!

The best feature of Opera Mini of all is tabbed browsing. That blows away any other mobile browser on the planet. Being fast and loading heavy pages on separate tabs is a pretty awesome thing. By long pressing on a link, you can open them in new tabs inside Opera Mini. Hence, the Dabr + Opera Mini seems to beat any other twitter competition. Saved pages are really saved pages. They can be accessed even when there’s no connectivity.

Recently we had to book tickets to watch a movie at Mayajaal and Skyfire displayed the website amazingly well. Opera Mini suffered there. Similarly, Opera Mini rocks in opening popup windows (when clicked explicitly), whereas Skyfire fails. All in all, if you are going on a long journey with conservative power, Opera Mini is the way to go. Or if you want near desktop experience on your mobile for all websites, then Skyfire is the way to go.

Skyfire Gripes:

1. No tabbed browsing.
2. No landscape view of web pages and videos.
3. Phone heats up after about 15 minutes of usage. Doesn’t ever happen with Opera Mini.
4. Compared to Opera Mini, it is very heavy on battery.
5. No option to logout from your Skyfire account. You have to manually delete the “Preferences” file to logout.
6. The assumption that an active internet connection is always available.
7. Proxy server support and proxy authentication i.e. HTTP code 407. I have been asking this for so long that I’m beginning to feel that this feature won’t come at all.

Opera Mini Gripes:

1. No flash support.
2. Javascript should be supported better.
3. Zoom in to images is dismal. I hope this issue will be corrected when Opera Mini 5 comes out beta.
4. This browser also doesn’t have support for proxy servers and proxy authentication.

What are your opinions on these two browsers? What browser are you using on your mobile phone?