April 30, 2010, 7:25 AM — Flash on (or not on, more accurately) mobile devices is such a hot topic these days. I'm sure you've read Steve Jobs' screed against Flash by now (if not, you should). It's pretty clear the iPhone is never going to get Flash, but things are looking better over in the Android camp. We're still waiting for Flash for Android (coming later this year, possibly in June ) but in the meanwhile there's a work around, at least for Flash video.
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Skyfire is an alternative web browser for Android that launched in beta yesterday. When you hit a web page that has Flash video embedded, a small toolbar pops up at the bottom of the browser with a "Video" button and a tiny thumbnail of the video in question. Click this and the video opens full screen and in portrait mode and voila, you're watching Flash video on your Android phone.
Well, sort of. What's really going on (as I understand it) is that Skyfire's servers are reading the Flash video and converting it to H.264 video that your phone can handle, and streaming that to you. When everything works properly, that's more or less an academic detail to the user; you still get to see the video you want to see. But it does mean that you're relying on Skyfire's servers to be up and humming along. It also means that this solution only works for Flash video so some sites that use Flash for navigation still won't work. (Any site that requires Flash for navigation doesn't deserve your attention anyway.)
It's important to keep in mind that Skyfire is in beta. I found a lot of sites where the video still didn't work, including some biggies like Hulu (there's an in-app option for reporting sites where you had problems so we can help Skyfire improve). When it does work, though, it's a great experience since the video runs full screen rather than trying to run inside a web page. Skyfire says it'll tailor the video depending on your bandwidth; if you're on a slow connection it'll compress the video so that it'll still stream smoothly albeit at a lower quality. Pretty nifty.
Beyond video, the browser has some other nice features too. One is the ability is to spoof the user-agent on the fly. This means you can request the full or mobile version of a site depending on your needs (specifically you can choose from "Android," "Desktop," or "iPhone"). Skyfire also supports having multiple web pages open, sharing links on various social media sites, and discovering related video content via tapping a button.
Skyfire is free and definitely worth a look as long as you don't mind being a beta tester. I did my testing on a Motorola Droid and the browser seemed pretty stable though, as mentioned, not every Flash video site worked. You can get Skyfire here or check out the demo video below.
Of course this same system of converting Flash video on the fly ought to work on the iPhone (Skyfire is also available for Windows Mobile and Symbian). The question is whether or not Apple would ever approve the browser for the app store.
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