Do you have iPhone (News - Alert) envy? I do. In fact, just this past Sunday I walked into the AT&T store and I browsed TMCnet on the iPhone and was blown away at how easy it was to surf on this phone compared to a Windows Mobile 6 device. I then asked if there was a firm ETA on the 3G iPhone (there isn't). As I walked into the nearby Starbucks with my family, I debated with my wife the pros and cons of switching to the Apple device from my HTC 6800 on Verizon (News - Alert).

I was close to deciding to switch to Apple (you already know I hate the soft keyboard) when I received a text message invite to try the Beta release (0.6) of the Skyfire browser. I had heard incredible things about the browser and any improvement over Pocket IE is  welcome.

After downloading the new browser, I immediately visited TMCnet, since it is a rich site with Flash, Java and other technologies that can make mobile browsers choke. To my surprise, TMCnet came up almost as fast as it does on a laptop with an EVDO card. This led me to surmise that the browser works with a back-end server to handle compression and other matters. In fact, the limited Beta program reinforces this assumption.

The Skyfire browser is actually a graphics viewer: everything in the browser window is just a small graphical version of a browser being rendered elsewhere. What I like about it is the fact I can immediately see an entire Web page, and can quickly double-tap to zoom into for comfortable reading.

Because the resolution of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices is far inferior to that on iPhones, it isn’t possible to read as comfortably. The cure for this problem is a technology called SmartFit, which prevents the need to scroll left and right (horizontally) to read text — it limits the margin size on articles and other Web text.

The Safari browser on an iPhone allows the use of two fingers to expand and contract the zoom levels of the device. SkyFire allows a rapid double-tap which will zoom in a predetermined amount, with the ability to further customize the auto-zoom level.

Perhaps the biggest improvement offered by SkyFire is the ability to drag a finger up and down on the screen to focus on different parts of the Web page. You no longer need to navigate using arrow keys or anything else. This is the way browsing should work, at least on a touch-screen device.

Another major benefit of this browser is the fact that it has an actually useful start page, with an “Info” section listing Yahoo!, Wikipedia and The New York Times in the top three spots. Next to this tab is another for Sports, Social, Shop and Media.

The Media tab has sites which work well with the browser. Surprisingly, YouTube videos look very good. You certainly won't confuse the quality of these videos with the ones you see on your PC, but they are still very good. (Obviously your experience will vary depending on connection speed.)

SkyFire also provides access to last.fm for streaming music. Attempts to access Pandora (News - Alert) or Slacker were not successful, however. Links in the Media tab include Break.com, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Yahoo! Video, Flickr, Veoh, Photobucket and Blogger.

Perhaps most compelling about the SkyFire browser is two other high-level tabs used for bookmarks and history. These items are synced with the company's servers, with login and password so the information can be accessed from any browser.

Another plus is the ability to search from the start page and see results from Google or Yahoo!. In addition, when using a program like Google (News - Alert) Reader, the browser does not divulge it is running on a phone and subsequently you get a full screen experience. You do not get the often crippled mobile version of popular Web sites. Google Reader becomes very useful when you can approximate desktop viewing in such a fashion.

One problem I encountered is the inability while using SkyFire to forward a link via e-mail. There also is no way to view the URL of the page you are viewing. Having such a powerful browser with no ability to share links is akin to having a Lamborghini in a parking lot or heavy traffic.

But the good certainly outweighs the bad. For example, another feature the browser offers is help in filling in text fields. Once you click on a dialog box you get a relatively large standard box at the bottom of the phone where you can enter text in a more legible fashion. You can also benefit from Windows Mobile 6 suggested words which come courtesy of the auto-complete function.

The SkyFire browser needs some improvements, such as being able to view and e-mail URLs. It also needs better battery management, because the browser maintains a persistent connection to the server. It is for this reason that the program has an exit button, recommended to conserve battery power.

In addition, the connection with the server is frequently severed. This could be done intentionally to conserve power but the program requires you to restart it before the connection is reestablished. This action can take five seconds or more.

Obviously it would be great to be able to reconnect to the server without restarting the program. It would also be nice to have an auto-disconnect feature that kicks in at a predetermined time to save power. One minute increments would make sense. I would further have a setting to disable or allow Web pages to auto-refresh.

Since the browser is graphical, it doesn’t allow cut-and-pasting of text. To offset this, I suggest a function which allows the zoomed text or even all text on a page to be auto-copied to the clipboard.

It is worth mentioning that the SkyFire browser is pretty stable. During about twenty or so sessions, it locked up the phone once. This is a small price to pay. Plus, in my experience, Windows Mobile devices tend to lock up even when not running Beta code.

Overall, the SkyFire browser is fantastic. It brings some of the best features of the iPhone Safari browser to the world of Windows Mobile. The ability to take advantage of leading-edge technologies like Flash means you can actually use many sites which were previously off limits to mobile browsers.

Speaking of mobile browsers, you will soon be able to use this program on other platforms. To date, only Windows Mobile devices in the United States are supported.

I recommend this browser and suggest each download be accompanied by at least one spare battery purchase.