Word dropped this morning that Torch Mobile, makers of the Iris Browser, had been purchased by Research in Motion. That's great news for BlackBerry fans, who have been in dire need of a browser for, well, ever. However, this is bad news for Windows Mobile. We just heard back from Torch Mobile spokesman George Staikos, and the response is unequivocal:

The company will no longer continue developing for Windows Mobile or Windows-CE.

Bad news, indeed, if you're set on using Webkit. The good news is that we still have a number of more-than-decent browsers available, including Skyfire, Opera Mobile and even Internet Explorer, which is slowly getting better. And we're still looking for the mobile version of Firefox in the coming months.

Via Crackberry and The iPhone Blog

Torch Mobile has announced a free "commercial release" of its Windows Mobile web browser based the open-source WebKit browser. The Iris Browser, version 1.1.0, includes "big performance gains," Flash Lite support, reduced memory usage and accelerometer support, according to the company. In a market that's suddenly become crowded with third-party web browsers, the latest Iris version joins Bolt and Opera 9.5 (and eventually Firefox) in the mobile browser race. Iris isn't exactly a newcomer to the field, with the original Beta version having been released about a year ago.

Version 1.1.0 features performance gains and reduced memory usage. The release adds support for Adobe's Flash Lite ActiveX control, and for the accelerometers found on HTC phones. It also includes "preliminary" RSS (really simple syndication) and SVG (scalable vector graphics) support, according to the company. According to WindowsForDevices.com Iris is touted as performing well even on devices with minimal resources, thanks to a fast rendering engine, efficient storage of bookmarks and cookies, and a cache optimized for low disk usage. Follow the break to see how well Iris v1.1.0 version 1.1.2  performed on the HTC Fuze along with a few screen shots.

Note: I wrote this review on Feb. 21, 2009, originally using version 1.1.0. While testing this version, an update (version 1.1.2) was released by Torch Mobile. We have just learned that yet another Beta version of Iris has been released, version 1.1.3 that Fuze Mobility is reporting corrects the screen freezing problems experienced with previous versions. Read on for our impressions over this rapidly changing mobile web browser.

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The internet browsing experience on Windows Mobile is almost laughable when compared to new players in the game like Apple's iPhone/mobile Safari experience. Fortunately, some third-party players have seized upon this weakness in the Windows Mobile experience and have brought to the table some very exciting products - the Iris Browser from Torch Mobile, for instance.

Iris Browser Beta 2 is now available for free download here, and with Beta 2 comes numerous improvements. According to the Torch Mobile Blog, the improvements include better performance, smaller memory footprint (by 10%), user interaction improvement, greater stability, and web page rendering improvements.

Jennifer Chappell over at TreoCentral, our sister site, has included more information about Beta 2 and further describes the Iris Browser as being iPhone-like in experience. Knowing how great the iPhone browser is, this would be fantastic to have a similar experience on Windows Mobile.

A quick download and install will show you that while that's not quite the case here, it's not half bad. We'd like to see a little more intelligent text-wrapping on the zoom view, but all in all Iris is looking pretty good -- definitely worth keeping an eye on.