Times change. If Internet was the main tech revolution of 1990's, mobile communications is the revolution of our time. The next step will be to fully merge these two concepts and allow users to browse the web via their phone at very cheap rates. Today, we look at the various offerings found on most phones. Our hope is that we will familiarize you with some of these solutions and so the next time you buy a phone, you actually also check what browser it's using. That will be a good step towards making carriers and phone manufacturers aware that the mobile web users exist!
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2005-10-04
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I currently work for an MVNO and have been testing out a lot of mobile browsers lately. I'm using a SE K600i and the SE browser is just not up to stuff available on the web. Opera Mini is a god send though, since it just works (but not as great as Opera Mobile - hopefully they support SE soon). I also have an Alcatel OT757 using Openwave and its great but I find it a bit slower compared to the other browsers I have used. Since a lot of these phones are java oriented, I guess the logical route is to have a java-based browser like opera-mini, make it standards compliant, have SSR technology, and with GPRS/EDGE/3G getting more popular more than ever, we'll truly have a mobile web.
Member since:
2006-01-26
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Nice article!
If you have a general interest in mobile internet, my bachelors thesis is on WAP v1.2, and can be found on http://home.student.uu.se/arer6411/filarkiv/uppsats.pdf
Arvid
Member since:
2005-07-06
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Interesting some of the comments. I particularly like
"The consesus is that if you are using a smartphone or good-enough browser, stick with it, except if you pay lots for GPRS or your native phone browser is really bad, in which case use Opera Mini."
The consensus? Which consensus? Who makes up this consensus? Or is that a "some people said" or "it is said that" to add more to what is in effect just a personal opinion?
OpEd pieces are fine; just don't present commentary as something that it isn't.
Member since:2005-07-06
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The consensus? Which consensus? Who makes up this consensus? Or is that a "some people said" or "it is said that" to add more to what is in effect just a personal opinion?
OpEd pieces are fine; just don't present commentary as something that it isn't.
If you're a reviewer who is relatively up-to-date with the market this is perfectly acceptable to write, and informative to boot.
Member since:
2005-07-06
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"That will be a good step towards making carriers and phone manufacturers aware that the mobile web users exist!"
They do? Since my provider offers a WAP flatrate, I gave the mobile web a chance for a few months and was completely dissatisfied. I doubt a different browser or http instead of WAP would have a made any difference: I found that the usability was constrained on the hardware side, a tiny display and a numeric keypad made it a very unpleasant experience, combined with slow transfers.
I could see myself using the mobile web with a properly sized PDA, pen input and access technologies like WLAN or UMTS/3G, but that is far out of my budget, when instead I can just use the notebook I own anyway and look for a WiFi hotspot.
Maybe in two years, when we have affordable UMTS/3G flat rates and devices like the XDA mini S don't cost an arm and a leg, yes - but for now, I stick to a tiny RAZR I use for phone calls and text messages only.
Member since:2006-01-26
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If you expect "the web, but smaller", WAP will definitly dissapoint you. On a day-to-day basis, WAP is excellent for small, focused tasks that can be represented as moderate amounts of textual information. Checking timetables, news headlines (you know that OSNews is avaliable both as WML and XHTML MP?), surveillance (it's easy to whip up dynamic WML pages that poll allready computerized system) and occassional time killing.
For most other things, WAP is at best functional as an emergency or special-case solution. (you can read/write mail, IRC, search google, do banking).
But anyhow, if you have a charged laptop and are in the vicinity of an open wifi-hotspot that is always the most confortable way.
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I thought Pocket IE was a decent small screen browser...then I tried Opera. Wow, it has really improved since I used to (try to) use it on my Zaurus.
This short overview has made me want to give NetFront a try.
While this sort of review may not be helpful to those who already know a lot about the subject, it is nice and convenient for those of us who don't know a lot about the options.
It would have been nice if you had mentioned the price of the different browsers. I think Opera and NetFront are about $30 each. Not a ton of money but a lot for something that I personally only use about an hour a week.
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Member since:
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You forgot the web browser shipping with arguably the most popular and best smart phone out there (the Palm Treo 650), Blazer (http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo650/blazer.epl)?
I think that it is a great browser.
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Member since:2005-06-28
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Mozilla's Minimo is not a phone browser and it can't be one before the year is 2011 or so. Minimo requires about 24 MBs of RAM just to start up. Compare that to Openwave/Teleca's half a MB, and Netfront/Opera's 4-5 MBs and you will see that it's seen as a beast for this particular industry. Minimo is heavy even for most PDAs today, let alone phones. This is one of the reasons why Nokia went with KHTML and not with Minimo, even if initially showed interest in sponsoring it.
Member since:
2005-12-23
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I still don't understand how Opera Mini could come out so low on the list. Is there something I'm not getting?
Heck, it requires very little memory compared to just about everything else, especially compared to the amount of stuff it handles. Yes, it does actually support some JavaScript.
Do PIE, Openwave, Obigo, SE and the S40 browser handle pages as well as Opera Mini does, with as little memory use?
Member since:2005-06-28
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Actually, some of them, do.
What I don't like about Opera Mini is its rendering mode. All tables are broken (EVEN the ones that fit perfectly on a small screen) and all text fields always take 100% of the available width of a screen. It just doesn't look as good as any of the browsers you mentioned.
Compare its rendering of osnews to the PIE or Obigo or Openwave browsers. Look how the black table menu looks like a mashed-up sentence instead of having nice thin table borders between the words, and how the input search field is unessasery long? Additionally, notice how there is no <p> spacing supported. ALL elements are one on top of the other! It looks really crappy. Even the otherwise terrible Motorola browser gets some of this basic rendering right.
Sorry, but while Opera Mini is important to pay less for GPRS, doesn't mean that it's as good as some other browsers, especially when talking about smartphones.
IMHO as both a user and a web developer, Opera Mini is overhyped atm.
Edited 2006-01-26 22:51
Member since:2005-12-23
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Opera Mini's rendering looks fine to me. And this browser works on most phones, is free, and even supports JavaScript to a certain extent.
This still doesn't explain how the series 40 browser comes out ahead either. The SE browser doesn't even support JS and CSS.
Did you compare Opera Mini's memory requirements to its capabilities?
You may think it's "overhyped", but I hardly think that is a reason to "punish" it and place it next to last, as if to make a point.
Opera Mini clearly has a use, and what it does it does well. Just because it isn't perfect for all browsing needs doesn't mean that it is the second worst browser out there. It even works with Gmail!
Member since:2005-12-23
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By the way, what's the problem with Opera's rendering anyway? So it does this and that, and you say that as if it's a bad thing! It looks perfectly usable to me despite those things you mention.
And that's the key isn't it? It is usable. I don't care if you don't find it "pretty". If that was a major criteria then Opera Mini should certainly have been much higher on the list!
I think some of your comments are somewhat self-contradictory, I must say.
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2006-02-04
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Its hard for web developers to create content for the mobile web, because there are a lack of standards. Each one of browsers mentioned in the article only implements a subset of dhtml/html/xhtml/wap. Opera is the most complete, but no one is going to write a website that only runs on Opera. Opera Mini is not helping the problem either, because its hard to predict their servers will format your page.
