Opera Mobile 8.65

Opera Mobile has always been a popular browser among those who are willing to branch out from the Microsoft world and try something new. There's no doubt that Opera Mobile 8.65 is a fine browser -- if you're willing to pay US$24 for it.

The browser has a clean look that's much more intuitive than Internet Explorer's and ensures that you navigate from page to page in an extremely efficient fashion.

One nice feature of the Opera Mobile browser that simply shouldn't be overlooked is its ability to work in both landscape and portrait mode. While this may seem like no big deal when taken at face value, it proves to be an extremely useful way to browse the Web and maximize reading space on those sites that are a bit wider than average.

For example, browsing on ESPN.com in landscape mode proved to be far more efficient than in portrait mode -- I was able to view the page without being forced to scroll back and forth nearly as much.

What Opera Mobile does right and the others seem to miss is the integration of small improvements to create a great mobile browser. For example, if you want to do a Google search, you don't have to surf over to Google's home page -- you can quickly drop some keywords into the address bar, and Opera Mobile will automatically search Google for you. Even better, it supports Macromedia's Flash Player 7, which means you can enjoy a wide array of multimedia on the Web, unlike the Ibis browser.

But one of my favorite features is the browser's ability to capture links on a Web page and automatically send those to friends via Short Messaging Service, Multimedia Messaging Service or e-mail. I used that feature a few times and found that it worked just as well as the company claims.

Of course, Opera Mobile isn't perfect. The browser still suffers from the same problems most other Windows Mobile browsers do -- it can't display full Web pages without screwing them up in some way. And although landscape mode does help fix some of these issues, Opera Mobile still doesn't offer the full-page experience already found in Apple's iPhone Safari browser that would make browsing on a Windows Mobile device much easier.

The Opera Mobile browser's speed was on par with Internet Explorer and slow when compared with ibisBrowserDX. That said, the clean interface and easy navigation made using the browser much easier than all the other browsers and actually cut down the total time it took to move from one page to another.

The Opera Mobile browser is a great solution for users who want simplicity rather than a slew of features or lightning-fast speeds. But if connection time is an integral part of your browsing -- or if the US$24 price is too much for your current budget -- Opera is not the best software to use.

Skyfire Beta

Skyfire, which is currently in beta, may not offer the kind of name recognition the others carry, but it's simply one of the best free mobile browsers available.

Skyfire's most compelling feature is its support of Flash video, QuickTime video, desktop versions of Flash applications, JavaScript and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Although some of the browsers tested support some of those technologies, no other browser supports all of them.

For example, when I tried Skyfire out on Google Maps, it was able to handle all of Google's JavaScript without a problem. From there, I decided to test out YouTube videos on the browser. Again to my surprise, I was able to view clips from the site without any lag, much like I would on a desktop. And although I enabled JavaScript on the Opera Mobile browser, it couldn't reproduce Google Maps or YouTube content nearly as well as Skyfire.

Unlike the other mobile browsers tested here, Skyfire gives you a desktop experience on your mobile phone. Instead of disjointed Web pages that forced me to scroll back and forth and generally confuse the design of the page, Skyfire Labs's display was both smooth and useful. And while it would have been nice to have a slightly better zoom function so I could move in and out of Web pages easier, I was generally pleased with how the browser handled even the most sophisticated pages like ESPN.com. Skyfire Beta

On the other hand, Skyfire's navigation leaves much to be desired. With its wonky layout and a look that is far too simplistic and displeasing to the eye (my eye, at least), Skyfire smacks of hurried design, making me think the company decided to focus more on functionality than beauty. I was also a bit underwhelmed by the general lack of menu options.

Aside from that, Skyfire is not nearly as fast as its Web site boasts. Unlike ibisBrowserDX, which sports the fastest load times of any browser I tested, Skyfire can be extremely slow, especially on more complex Web sites. In fact, of the browsers reviewed here, Skyfire was slowest -- Opera Mobile loaded Web pages almost twice as fast as Skyfire, and ibisBrowserDX was almost four times as fast. That said, this product is still in beta, so there is some hope that speeds will increase when the final build is released. Skyfire has said that it plans on updating the browser as necessary to enhance the overall experience.

Skyfire offers the kind of functionality you don't typically see from a mobile browser, like support for desktop Flash applications and the ability to use AJAX. I can only hope that the interface and speed will get better by the time it leaves beta. (If you want to try it out, you can sign up to try out Beta 2 when it launches.) If it does, it's definitely worth downloading and trying out.