I have written in the past about lack of Tamil Unicode rendering support in all popular smartphones (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia). This week one of my colleague who uses a Windows Mobile 6.0 (HTC branded) phone showed me SkyFire browser. SkyFire is a free mobile browser that uses a proprietary proxy server technology to encode all Web contents (Text, Images, Videos, Flash, Silverlight) at their server that gets rendered in the Mobile client. Because of this technology the individual device limitations don’t affect their ability to render any language.
(Mobile IE not able to render Unicode Tamil)
(Windows Mobile running Skyfire displaying fine Unicode Tamil web pages)
SkyFire is a great technology and seeing Tamil being rendering seamlessly makes me happy. But I am sceptical on the success of SkyFire – First, Mobile devices processing power are increasing every day to support iPhone-Safari like true desktop browsers itself without need of a proxy server; Second, I don’t see a viable revenue model on how SkyFire will make money to run the operations especially the high server costs. Nevertheless a cool technology for now. If you have a Windows Mobile give it a try, better than waiting for IE 6.0 in Windows Mobile or WM 7.0 :-)
@Senthil, I am afraid native Tamil support is available in iOS greater than 4.0 and that doesn’t work on iPhone 2G. About Skyfire for iPhone, I am not sure on its availability for iPhone2G or features.
Sir,
I am using iPhone 2g. I am not able to read tamil blogs in tPhone safari browser. If i use skyfire brower will it render the tamil fonts properly in iPhone . Kindly help me.
Thanks,
Senthil
ஒபேரா மினி உலாவிகளிலும் தமிழை ஆழகாகக் காட்டுகின்றது. இதைவிட தமிழ் ஆதரவுள்ள நொக்கியா 2730 போன்ற தொலைபேசிகளில் தங்குதடையின்றி தமிழைப் பாவிக்கலாம். தமிழில் உள்ளிடக்கூட முடியும்.
Most of the Nokia phones these days do support Tamil (reading and writing). I am using Nokia 2600 Classic to read my mails and Tamil blogs.
However, the youtube/flash/AJAX features in SkyFire sounds interesting.
The motorola’s entry level phone (costing around Rs. 1500) also supports Tamil (even in SMS).