Skyfire 1.0 for S60 & Windows Mobile Launches: Great if You are a Fan of Aliased Pixelated Screens

Skyfire 1.0 on an HTC Advantage X7500 Windows Mobile Smartphone

So, Skyfire announced…

Skyfire launches 1.0

…for Windows Mobile and S60 based smartphones and provides a list of new features in…

What’s new in Skyfire 1.0

So, here’s what I ran into:

1. Downloaded and attempted to install it on a Nokia N96 where Skyfire 0.8x is installed. Skyfire’s website correctly identified the phone but refused to install on it after the download. I tried it a couple of different times over several hours with the same result.

2. Downloaded and installed it on an HTC TyTn Windows Mobile touchscreen smartphone. The installation took so long that I thought it was frozen. Fortunately, I had it plugged in to an A/C outlet and waited a few minutes until the installation actually proceeded and complted. Unfortunately, Skyfire’s proxy servers appears to have been so overloaded that site were either rendering very slowly or not at all.

3. Downloaded and installed it on an HTC Advantage X7500 (faster processor than the TyTn). Installation proceeded relatively quickly here. But, the apparently lack of anti-aliasing (jaggy screens) make viewing on the small TyTn annoying an is unbearable on the large scree X7500.

Skyfire 1.0 Aliasing on HTC Advantage X7500

You can see an unresized and unretouched segment of Skyfire running on the X7500 screen above. The word “Skyfire” is shown rendered by both Windows Mobile (top) and Skyfire (bottom) in that particular screen segment for comparison.

I also found that I had to shut down every open app on my TyTn just to launch Skyfire 1.0.

As you might guess, I’m not very impressed by Skyfire 1.0.

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