For the rest of us who don’t have an iPhone (yes there are still some of us left!) it seems to always be a matter of compromise. Your (business) phone is good for what you bought it for, but you can’t help wishing those other bits and pieces that aren’t soo important, like internet browsing, were as good as well, an iPhone! Softwareload had a look at 2 Symbian solutions, Skyfire and Opera Mini.

Beggars can’t be choosers

OK, fair enough, if i were that bothered about all the extras i could have just got an iPhone! But i didn’t, and why should i suffer for not succombing to the pressure of biting into the forbidden “iFruit”?! Admittedly, being the proud owner of a Nokia e71, which really does satisfy my business needs (easy calender syncing, sending and receiving emails etc), i can’t really expect an all singing all dancing performance when it comes to web browsing, but maybe if i had something like the new Nokia X6-00, i’d be pretty interested in knowing what my options were surfing-wise. Enter, Opera Mini!

Opera Mini – good things do come in small packages

With 30 million active users, Opera mini already boasts a pretty impressive fan base. And that isn’t without reason. The biggest plus about Opera mobile browsers is that can be used on virtually any mobile phone, including mine! Opera has gone out of its way to ensure its users the closest to desktop-like surfing as possible on a couple of inches worth of screen space. It offers tabbed browsing, a homepage with all your saved favourites in a panel view, favourites, history, a menu bar very similar to that of your desktop browser and even an integrated Google search bar. Obviously, appearances depend a bit on design and screen space, but i was pleasantly surprised how clean and fast the Opera Mini beta version ran on my phone. It’s packed with lots of useful features (and that at the beta stage!) such as password manager to save repeated logins etc, and an automatic pda version recogniser, for websites that have taken the time to break their content down for more mobile-friendly versions, such as Facebook and Twitter. The only “downside” is that the current beta version doesn’t support embedded flash videos, so watching your favourite YouTube clips direct from the browser might prove tricky. Mind you, for most symbian devices there’s a separate app for that anyway ;)

Skyfire – pretty flashy

Imagine how chuffed i was when i managed to watch my first video on the web on my phone! Agreed, the Nokia e71 really isn’t the most comfortable phone for doing so, but it’s the principle of the matter! According to the Skyfire website, the mobile allows you “for the first time ever, on your phone, you can watch any video, connect with friends, listen to music, shop, and browse the web using the full-featured PC versions of your favorite websites. With free mobile media browser, Skyfire, mobile browsing just works – speedy page loads, full video, images and audio”. And it really does live up to its promises. Video streaming is no problem whatsoever (bearing in mind that video streaming via a 3G connection can lag a bit), the browser is fully flash and windows media compatible and even runs Silverlight 2.0. Skyfire comes with all the extras offered by Opera, as well as some nice added features like a customisable activity homepage feed, including all your Gmail, Yahoo, Tweets and Facebook updates with built-in online/text share options. Skyfire also utilises an integrated search and URL bar with predictive text entry to cut down on typing.

The round up

So it turns out beggars can actually be choosers! Thank you Opera and Skyfire for that! When it comes down to choosing which browser to use on your mobile, it really depends on what your after. Opera offers a slicker desktop browser experience, with tabbed browsing, slightly faster rendering and slightly sharper picture definition. If your looking more for streaming and video compatibility on the go, and down mind a more Windows-esque drop down menu setup, Skyfire obviously wins hands down. Mind you, what with both taking up very little phone/card memory you might as well install both! I’ll spare you the terribly cheesy “how do you like them apples, Apple” jibe!