I first reviewed the Skyfire mobile browser back last summer (check out the video demo below) and thought it was quite good. Many of you know that I use a Samsung Ace with Windows Mobile. I paid $25 for the Opera Mobile browser but frankly I rarely use Opera and have been using Skyfire nearly 100% of the time.

To be honest, the Skyfire browser freaking rocks. Last week I had a family pickup at the airport and while waiting for them to arrive, I opened Skyfire, loaded up YouTube and Hulu and watched all the videos I wanted in perfect streaming. I’ve written full blog posts in Drupal on Amtrak using Skyfire.  Oddly, I can’t seem to activate the Javascript functionality in WordPress from Skyfire.

Today the company has announced the 1.0 release of the Skyfire browser. The company notes 1 million installed browsers to-date.

The only gripe I had with the browser was that each time you loaded it, it seemed to call home and “authenticate” which meant I lost where I was. This appears to be corrected in the current release.

I still believe that Microsoft would be smart to acquire or partner with Skyfire and replace the nasty IE mobile browser with Skyfire or Skyfire-like browsing. It really makes the Windows Mobile OS much more powerful.

Here’s my video demo from last summer:

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As some of you know, I have a Samsung ACE mobile device which runs on the super fast EVDO from Sprint. Before I continue, let me just say how sorry I am that those of you with the iPhone 3G are having trouble. The ACE uses Windows Mobile OS and comes pre-installed with the IE mobile browser. This is a complete piece of crap – Microsoft should be ashamed to have included this with the mobile OS (which overall has been pretty good).

I spent $25 for the Opera Mobile browser a couple of months ago and love it. It has allowed me to write posts on CN from anywhere and since I have an actual keyboard, it’s easy. The one thing the browser lacks is Flash accessibility.

This weekend I have been playing with a new mobile browser from Skyfire. The Skyfire browser opened in beta earlier this year and it’s REALLY slick. It can do practically anything a desktop browser can do. And frankly the speed is the fastest I’ve seen so far. And just last week they announced Microsoft Silverlight support.

Skyfire recognized that I don’t have a touchscreen and installed the appropriate version. If you have a touchscreen, you get a mac-style menu on the top.

Here’s my short video demo of the Skyfire browser in action:

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