APP WATCH: Skyfire for iPhone hits the UK25 November 2010
Browser plays Flash video, but only via US servers
It's been talked up for some time by us, but now you can finally get hands-on with the Skyfire browser for your iPhone in the UK.
Why should you care? Well, it's an iPhone browser that positively embraces Flash. You can generally access a Flash page and watch it, with Skyfire's servers translating the video to HTML5 in the background. So you get the Flash, but the problem of dealing with it is shifted elsewhere. Nice workaround there.
But according to Electric Pig, it's not quite as perfect as it initially sounded for us UK punters. Ok, you can stream BBC radio live as a nice bonus, as well as being able to view embedded videos in BBC news and sports reports, plus similar Sky videos. But there's a rather annoying regional 'quirk'.
The servers are in the US, so effectively, you are in the US too as a viewer. So you can forget the likes of 4oD and Lovefilm, not to mention, SeeSaw, Demand Five, ITV Player and UK TV shows on YouTube. That's more than annoying and might make you think twice about paying the £1.79 price for the app.
Skyfire is working on country-specific servers, but in the meantime, it's the US way or no way.
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