Skyfire’s a new gecko-based browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, and if you’ve got a Windows Mobile based phone, you’ll want to request access to the beta ASAP (the beta program requires a US phone number, unfortunately). It’s not quite ready for prime time, but it is definitely something to track as it moves toward 1.0.

Here are some screen shots of Skyfire in action:

Splash Screen as Skyfire Beta Loads

Optaros.com in full screen view. Note that the flash carousel of images works just as on desktop browser

Zoomed in to enter username and pass in login page

Viewing Flash Video from YouTube

You can get more detailed discussion (and more screenshots on what looks to be a larger screen device) in the recent Ars Technica review, which ultimately concludes:

Although SkyFire has a long way to go before we can determine if Oberhofer really has it right, the concept deserves attention. SkyFire is relatively strong considering the short amount of time that it has been under development, but it can’t really compete with Opera Mobile 9.5 on Windows Mobile devices yet. SkyFire has a decisive advantage for users who want to watch Flash video, but for practically everything else, it’s still more of a proof-of-concept than a fully-functional web browser. We will be sure to give it a second look when it exits beta.

I haven’t yet found Skyfire replacing the phone’s built in Pocket IE for day to day browsing, but I think it easily could once it hits 1.0.

One is its occasional glimpses into the future (see here and here). Another is its refusal to expose my location to Google Maps.

One I haven’t ever figured out is the fact that whenever I travel in Europe (usually Switzerland and Germany) I get tons of SMS messages. They seem to be “Cell Broadcast” messages, meaning they aren’t sent directly to me but to everyone – but my phone seems to pick those CB messages out of the stream only while in Europe.

Here’s a screen shot from my last day in Europe on my most recent trip – in 24 hrs I got 230+ sms messages:

Opening up one of the messages, here’s what they look like (it is typical of the others):

What’s going on here?

Looks to me like I’m getting notified every time I go from one tower to another?

Most importantly, can someone show me how to turn these off? I’ve never found a setting which seems to apply – maybe I need to edit the registry?

All I know is that I don’t think I’ll ever buy a Windows Mobile device again.

3G iPhone in 2008? Maybe.

OpenMoko Neo1973? Maybe.

Something running Android that I can hack at? Bring it on.

First, it never works with the Google Maps “My Location” feature. Here’s all I get:

On top of that, I’m still getting the occasional moment where my cellphone decides it is the future.

This morning my phone briefly thought it was 2009:

Seems to be related to a cell tower somewhere in the vicinity of Chelsea / Everett – just North of the Tobin bridge.

Am I the only one seeing this?

Anyone else see this happening on their Windows Mobile device?

One theory is that I’m hitting a rogue cell tower somewhere in my commute which tells the device it is a later date. But I’ve got “auto update” of date/time disabled, and I’m pretty sure I’ve had this happen even while travelling in other cities and states, so it isn’t specific to one cell tower.

It causes all the event notifications to fire, since they are now overdue, and causes all kinds of other general weirdness, like emails coming from the future.

If only Windows Mobile were open source . . . Guess my next phone will be an OpenMoko.

This means I can turn on internet sharing on the phone and get online from my laptop while on the Acela between NY and Boston, without the tether cable.

I’ve got a Dell Latitude D810, running Kubuntu Feisty Fawn, and a cheap IOGear USB Bluetooth adapter, model #GBU221.

The “bluetooth” package in the Ubuntu universe repository is a metapackage which installs the “bluez” utilities – I have that installed as well.

All I had to do to get online via Bluetooth connection was:

1. Start bluetooth on the blackjack, since I don’t normally leave it running
2. Start internet connection sharing on the blackjack
3. On the laptop, do: hcitool scan (this looks for nearby bluetooth devices – note the address of your phone, which is a hexidecimal string like 12:34:56:78:90:ab)
4. Issue the command: sudo pand -c
   
   , using the address discovered above
5. Issue the command: sudo dhclient bnep0

Of course, once you know your phone’s address you can skip step 3.

I also tried the various instructions for tethering to USB and using the Gnome PPP application, but for me this would connect and automatically disconnect. Bluetooth’s preferrable for me anyway as that way I have one less cable to carry.