Iris Browser escapes beta at MWC, now ready for WinMo devices

by Darren Murph posted Feb 19th 2009 at 8:02PM

While most of the mobile browser attention these days seemed focused on Fennec and Opera Mini, there's another game in town, too. Torch Mobile has just announced that its long-awaited WebKit-based Iris Browser has finally reached version 1.1.0, and it's now ready for use on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 platforms. Torch Mobile's making some pretty bold promises about this here software, claiming that its "advanced WebKit-based engine easily renders virtually any site on the web the same as if viewed on a PC." Of course, you know what a phrase like this means, right? You better get to downloading in order to see if it's legit. Go on, get!

Filed under: Software, Windows Mobile

Tags: browser, internet, Iris, Iris Browser, IrisBrowser, torch mobile, TorchMobile, web browser, WebBrowser, webkit, windows mobile, WindowsMobile

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Sven Johannsen @ Feb 19th 2009 9:05PM

Maybe they can build a browser, but they can't build a web page. Download process goes, go to our download page, enter some info, go to our download page, enter some info, etc. Let me know if anyone actually gets to a download. I'm interested in trying it, but my confidence is not high.

Highly Ranked

Brian @ Feb 19th 2009 9:10PM

Wow. Just... Wow. Five out of five stars for this one.

This browser is super, super fast when loading regular pages (ie large phpBB3 boards).

My HTC Touch struggles a little while loading Engadget, but so does my netbook.

This is going to steal the non-flash browser market overnight.

I re-upped it to my server so you guys don't have to share your personal info:
http://ts.nuclearfallout.net/g/iris-browser-1.1.2.cab

Neutral

zephxiii @ Feb 20th 2009 11:46AM

You sir, are THE MAN!!!!!!

Neutral

SimbaDogg @ Feb 20th 2009 3:15AM

eh...i would say this browser has decent speed, and decent usability. but the most recent versions of opera mobile are superior to this in just about every aspect for me. text wraping, quick zooming and others. the overall interface for iris, just like the other previous versions, stinks. its completely non-finger friendly. considering that many of the future HTC devices (i think the BEST sellings windows mobile phones) are coming w/out 5 way D pads, that will make this browser even less usable for me. u can get away w/out being finger friendly by being able to use the dpad...but w/ this, you're def gonna need to bust out the stylus. and one thing i really would not like to do.

otherwise, panning around on pages is easy enough, as finger friendly as it gets. but i quickly deleted the beta when compared to op mob. i dunno if i'll even bother w/ the full version (last beta i had was released only a week ago, so i dunno how much would change in a week).

Neutral

DssTrainer @ Feb 20th 2009 3:51PM

This browser already blows Opera away in speed and speed!
Opera, as it gets more powerful, also gets slow as can be. Iris loads and zooms more like the iphone.. Opera takes a good 3-5 secs to re-render when zooming in or out on my touch. Iris is like 1 sec

Some minor things
- typing in the address bar doesn't change "SPACE" to ".COM" on the keypad like IE and Opera do
- when entering username/pass for something like a forum, opera and ie are smart enough to change to ABC mode on the password field if the default setting is T9, and then changes back to T9 when leaving the password field.

Iris is on its way.. just need to get the little nuances down

Neutral

Anomoly @ Feb 20th 2009 9:20PM

maybe i got a bad DL from the site, but i tried to visit engadget via Iris and it was really slow and not even close to usable, the homepage search bar took many times to register when i hit "search" - Maybe it's because i'm using the HTC Touch but Opera mini and Mobile fly on this thing.

Iris is pretty but I would say this looks a lot more like an "alpha" than a final. Its very very slow and zoom and readability is not functional.

As far as usability i would say:

1.Opera Mini/Mobile
3.Iris
4.Skyfire
5.IE

Once opera gets flash support nothing is coming close -

Neutral

RCC2k8 @ Feb 19th 2009 9:28PM

Any idea of whether IRIS works on non-touchscreen devices?

Neutral

jbearamus @ Feb 19th 2009 9:33PM

Definitely shows promise. It's pretty quick at loading pages with a few exceptions, however; I still think it has a way to go before it can really compete with opera and skyfire

Neutral

BryanL @ Feb 19th 2009 10:17PM

Very snazzy looking browser on the HTC touch pro.

The page renders are the best I've seen yet in VGA, and the navigation uses an interesting approach. You can pan using your finger, or after a second or two of panning, a little box pops up (typically in the corner of the screen opposite your finger) and it represents the web page. If you access the box, it gives you an outlive of where your screen is relative to the page. Impressively nifty for jumping around large pages.

Another merit badge for iris is the menus. The best part of the menus are the sheer amount of options; some not yet seen in other browsers, and they are easy to get to... However, they use the windows mobile menu system, which is both good and bad. It's good because its snappy, but bad because it takes up a lot of screen real estate while navigating, and you can't hide the bottom menu bar while in "Full Screen" mode.

Navigation is somewhat similar to opera mobile, double click for zooms, but it's craps shoot to predict which level of zoom it transfers you to. You can access the zoom menu from the menu bar, but it feels a little clunky to use in that manner. it'd be nice to see them offer qwerty shortcuts to enabled devices.

The visual history is decent, but hard to see, and the renders are just decent (probably to manage file cache). The bookmarks are easy enough to use, but the menu isn't very finger friendly, but this could also be due to my touch pro's VGA resolution.

Large page loads do take a while for Iris, and feel like they might be a little behind opera mobile on larger pages, but the caching is much better. You'll only see quick glimpses of the all too familiar checkerboard caching system. Small and easy to render pages load fast and without issue.

Iris is a great mobile browser, and on par with Opera mobile, but not as polished. Depending on how you browse, Iris might leapfrog it's way to be your main mobile internet experience, but with the sad omission of flash support, there's still no one definitive browser to streamline your mobile browsing needs.

Neutral

RCC2k8 @ Feb 19th 2009 10:19PM

It does work on WinMo Standard devices too. It even makes use of the accelerometer in the T-Mobile Shadow (2009).

Neutral

SoCoolCurt (PSN: KillaKornbread - XBL: SoCoolCurt) @ Feb 19th 2009 10:20PM

awesome. i loved this browser in the beta but i had to stop using it because it would always lock up and not reopen (without a reset) if i went away from the app for any amount of time. i'll update it and give it a shot, maybe its better this time. i love using iPhoneformatted sites and this browser is perfect it. so i'll try it again and if its not great still, i always have Opera Mobile.

Neutral

Sven Johannsen @ Feb 19th 2009 10:59PM

Thanks, Brian
Maybe it was because I only entered name and e-mail, thought those were the only asterisked items. Saw no reason to give them my phone # or mailing address. I may try again to see if it was just to early.

Neutral

ai4281 @ Feb 20th 2009 2:48AM

i'm trying this browser now, and I don't think it's as good as they say it is... pages render pretty slowly, and it's prone to crashing. So far, nothing beats Opera mobile 9.5 in terms of speed, stability, and usability. Skyfire comes pretty close to Opera, but I'm worried about security concerns with skufife, since rendering is done in their servers.

All other webkit browsers (safari, chrome) are fantastic, but iris continues to disappoint.

btw, I typed this on Opera mobile on my touch diamond ^^

Neutral

Dean @ Feb 20th 2009 1:47PM

"btw, I typed this on Opera mobile on my touch diamond"

That explains why you wrote "skufife". ;)

Neutral

NuShrike @ Feb 20th 2009 12:53AM

Much better than Skyfire for general page loading and compatibility, and much better than the last public Iris release. Google responded with iPhone style interface for most of the www.google.com/m pages (unlike Opera Mobile), but couldn't find the editable Google docs.

Page scrolling was fairly fast and lot less checker-boarding than Opera Mobile -- almost as fast as Opera Mini in experience.

Link activation is annoying because have to hold finger on link for a second+, but maybe it protects against accidental activation from finger-scrolling.

UI isn't as good as Opera Mobile, but I give them benefit of beta-software doubt.

Neutral

jizzy @ Feb 20th 2009 3:11AM

pure garbage sure the pages i looked up where big but damn even engadget took soooooo long but i use opera mobile alot so it dont come close all it did was say low mem like 5 times and shut down 7 times down load it and try ign.com it just cant load it so if your a internet whore dont bother stick with opera mini

Neutral

Brian @ Feb 20th 2009 12:29PM

I've been using the browser for a few hours and my only complaints are:
1) No easy way to manually zoom in and out (giving us the option to use the rocker / slider switch that usually controls volume would be nice)
2) No flash support (this was never promised... but I'm still longing for it
3) I left it on overnight and my HTC Touch was slow as molasses in the morning. Looks like the program doesn't quite have memory management down pat.

Still... 4.5 out of 5, consider the major UI revision is on it's way.