With lots of improvements over the alpha 2 variant

Jul 12, 2009 17:01 GMT  ·  By

BlackBerry users will soon have yet another browser to enjoy on their mobile phones, namely Skyfire, a software solution that has reportedly hit beta. According to the latest news around the Web, the browser has just been released to beta version 1.0.0.12304. Moreover, the news also point towards the fact that the fresh version of the browser comes with significant enhancements compared to the previous alpha 2 variant.

The changelog shows that the new flavor of Skyfire comes with a series of new features, including new keyboard shortcuts, which have been designed so as to be similar to the ones available with the native BlackBerry browser; the “Switch to Skyfire” option in the menu of the original Blackberry browser so that users can quickly launch the new software solutions in case they are navigating on pages better viewed on Skyfire.

Other fresh features that the beta version of Skyfire includes would be Text Entry in Thumbnail view, contextual zoom with camera corners, which offers users the possibility to zoom in on different areas of interest that the application detects, as well as faster zooming, reportedly capable of displaying text at all zoom levels, “without any redrawing of the screen.”

On the other hand, the browser's developers also remind us that the software is only in beta at the moment, and that there are still some issues with it that need to be solved, including “An error occurred while playing media” error message in streaming mode, Slow performance on 2.5G networks, though improvements are on their way, or the inability to control volume while in stream mode.

It seems that the application has a problem when too many users are browsing on it at the same time. This means that the performance of the browser is slowed a lot and that those willing to enjoy it won't be able to do so in case a certain number of users already use Skyfire.