As we all know, Flash on mobile devices is nothing new. Flash Lite is on 400+ different mobile device models and 800 million total devices. It's hard to argue with those numbers. However, with the advent of the iPhone, netbooks, and new mobile operating systems such as Google's Android and Palm's WebOS, users are demanding an experience that mirrors the desktop. Others, such as Adobe and their Open Screen Project, want to take that idea a step further, and bring a seamless desktop Flash experience to mobile devices. The SkyFire mobile browser aims to lend a hand.

Before I begin, let me give you my testing variables.
Device: Samsung Blackjack II (SGH-i617)
Operating System: Windows Mobile 6.1 (QWERTY, non-touchscreen)

Over the last year, I have used SkyFire as a niche app to get around sites that don't offer mobile views in Internet Explorer Mobile. It's come a very long way to get where it is now, as the betas at times were highly frustrating to operate. Bygones being bygones, I've decided to break this review up into a few mini case studies, each more processor-intensive than the last. Then, I'll wrap up by showing some slick uses fpr SkyFire that may surprise you.

Case Study One - YouTube - District 9 Trailer
Upon launching SkyFire, the user is greeted with a custom home page containing updates to previously-configured social networks and tabs for bookmarks and history. The bookmarks come pre-stocked to provide quick access to the more popular mobile destinations, including a tab allocated entirely to video.

I'll show you what it's like trying to play the District 9 movie trailer on YouTube. On my mobile device, the center button can be double clicked to zoom, although this I figured this out by trial and error. The beta versions used, and labeled, the left soft key for zooming (which now only appears for zooming out once you've already zoomed in). Once I understood that, I was on my way. I searched YouTube just as I would on a desktop machine (misspellings and all), found the video I was looking for, and jumped right in.

There is a rectangular cursor that SkyFire displays around the selected content area. This is one of SkyFire's greatest strengths. I was able to interact with the default YouTube player without zooming in, due to how SkyFire recognizes and snaps to the divisions in a page's layout. Though only the High Quality button and video scrubber responded, I was able to watch the trailer without any problems. The audio even came through rather clearly. Another great feature is revealed when the user mutes the audio through SkyFire's menu, the YouTube video player recognizes it and displays the volume control to match your choice.

Results: Other than some of the buttons being unresponsive
when clicked, SkyFire made the mobile experiencemuch like the desktop. That's not bad, but it's time to raise the bar a bit.

Case Study Two - Big and Small
We've seen how SkyFire handles Flash in a very structured, grid-based HTML layout. Video is rectangular, so that's pretty easy. What would happen if we tried to run something more challenging, like PaperVision 3D, in a mobile browser? Well, with most applications, it would either crash, provide a moot link to download Flash Player, or just not render at all. Here's the test. Seb Lee-Delisle and Plug-in Media have created a PV3D site for the BBC children's television show "Big and Small."

It's full of colorful animated activities that showcase both vivid creativity in visual design as well as the solid programming savvy it took to pull off such an engrossing application. When the site is initially loading, the user is encouraged to interact with the flowers in the foreground, a well-placed diversion that keeps the user's attention (particularly in the target audience's case). In the desktop browser with a mouse, the application shows off some subtle, but compelling motion when the user moves the cursor. The perspective of the scene tilts and shifts slightly, the flowers sway, and the flower petals fall and re-grow in response to the user's interaction. While this smooth intro is effortless on the desktop, SkyFire begins to show some strain here. Only about 1/3 of the motion can be seen by the end user on a mobile device. However, the audio comes through clearly, at a reasonable volume, and doesn't show much buffering, which is more impressive than it seems. But this is just the 'front door' to the site, there are many more activities to try.

One activity in particular is called "hand-painting", where the user can click to create little painted paw prints on the paper in front of her. In the desktop browser with a mouse, the application shows off some of the same subtle, but compelling motion when the user moves the cursor as was displayed during the loading screen. The 3D camera angle, as well as the chosen character's arm serving as the cursor, also slide and rotate gently based on the user's mouse coordinates.

Choosing colors and slapping multi-colored hands still function the same way the desktop counterpart does when the user clicks the center button down, but the motion in-between is not captured. While the motion can't be seen in the mobile browser, it is in fact, occurring.The device's screen is refreshed after each click, showing the scene and the character's arm serving as the cursor in their respective new positions.

Despite just falling short of keeping up, after a few clicks, I was then able to select the Back button to see my finished masterpiece. All things considered, it was very similar to the desktop experience. It should be noted that it is unclear whether it was SkyFire or the device, that was responsible for the lack of sufficient rendering.

Results: When you think about what SkyFire was up against, I was happy with the experience. For a mobile browser to be able to handle an unpredictable, fast-paced, full-motion site such as Big and Small is a pretty tall order. But, SkyFire performed admirably. So, can it be pushed even further? The answer is 'yes'. But to do so, we'll need to bend a few pixels.

Case Study Three - PaperVision3D + PixelBender + Alchemy + Flash Player 10

Known for being a 3D and ActionScript wizard, Ralph Hauwert, alias UnitZeroOne, has created a test in Flash Player 10 that truly pushes the boundaries of the ActionScript Virtual Machine. Combining the latest version of Alchemy, Pixel Bender, Papervision3D. and Flash Player 10, Ralph created a test app that pushes around more than 300,000 3D particles in realtime, then projects and draws them to 2D on the screen using Flash.

If you view the example in a desktop browser, you can see the Flash Player doing it's best to keep up, particularly when switched over to Alchemy rasterization. Surely, it would cripple a browser on a mobile device, wouldn't it? To my utter disbelief, not only did the swf load with no browser lag, but with each click, I actually saw about 1/3 of the rendered motion in SkyFire!

Results: Unfortunately for this test, the application requires keyboard input to view profiling stats, toggle instructions, and to switch rendering modes between Alchemy and ActionScript. However, I think the results spoke for themselves as they exceeded expectations in the most unlikely of benchmark environments.

Some things you can do with SkyFire that might surprise you
Because you SkyFire renders the screen with surprising clarity (even after zooming), and can process streaming audio quite well, there is multitude of Flash content that SkyFire can bring to your mobile device.

gotoAndLearn

Full-featured Last.fm

Hulu

Adobe's Flex-based blog 'XD'

Adobe TV

In closing, the SkyFire mobile browser may have had it's share of issues in the past before it's 1.0 release, but they seem to be a thing of the past. It is one of the few pieces of mobile software capable of bringing a true Flash experience to your device, something not even the iPhone can do.

Read more from Kevin Suttle.