Beginning next week, people who use Sony Ericsson’s P800 mobile phones can download a browser from Opera Software that will let them see bulky Web pages on their tiny screens. On other browser news, Mozilla 1.3 beta was released. Our take: No idea why the media are getting so worked up on Smartphone or Opera browsers for expensive phones, when the real competition and even real money is in the cheap phones that are accesible to most people. The high-end mobile phone market is barely a market. For example, Openwave has a great phone browser, displays XHTML-MP/WCSS/WML etc, however it doesn’t make headlines every time they sign a deal. And they are the biggest phone browser vendor worldwide. And then, there is always Access and AU, but they are never mentioned.
A Better Browser for Cell Phones?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I think your opinion is a bit biased, considering your husband works for OpenWave.
Yes, my husband works there indeed, but my opinion is not biased at all. There is no real market for the high end phones *yet*, they are way too expensive. 99% of the people are buying the down-to-earth models. And on these down-to-earth models, Opera doesn’t run.
Don’t tell me that everyday people have this phone:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/P800/
because I know none who has it, maybe except rich or gismo-hunting people.
From the CNET News article at http://news.com.com/2100-1033-984138.html?tag=fd_top
“Opera, based in Oslo, Norway, touts Small-Screen Rendering as a breakthrough because its browser reformats the design of pages made for desktop displays to fit on a smaller screen. This, the company said, eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling.”
Opera is saying that its cell phone browser can automatically reformat web pages made for full size monitors without the page needing to be rewritten for small screens.
How well this works in practice remains to be seen.
Price for the said P800 is around $880 to $1200 today. Excuse me, but this is not what most people buy. So, this article there on news.com, on a high profile news site saying that next week Opera will be available for download for this phone, are pretty much wrote the article for all 10 people who have bought it. Great.
These journalists over there, really irritate me when they write articles that do not correspond to most people’s interest. Why news.com never wrote about the advances in the mobile phone HTML browsers as found at Openwave, Access and AU (these are the THREE vendors who supply html browsers for real phones)? I mean, it is great for Opera having this browser, but 99% of the people will never be able to purchase a phone that can run Opera. So, what’s the deal? Why Access and AU never mentioned on news.com? Let alone OpenWave who are the worldwide leaders in the field.
Actually you can use the Small screen rendering with Opera 7.0. No need to actually buy one of those expensive phones to try it, just download the Windows version.
> Opera is saying that its cell phone browser can automatically reformat web pages made for full size monitors without the page needing to be rewritten for small screens.
OpenWave’s browser does that too. It is the only way to get around small resolutions. Even AvantGO for Palm PDAs do that.
People you should read Mozilla’s 1.3b release notes. There’s a new feature I find cool, it’s an algorithm that learns how to deal with autocomplete based on your use of it. And they need some inputs to make teh algorithm better. More info can be read here :
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ml/autocomplete/
—
http://islande.hirlimann.net
Price for the said P800 is around $880 to $1200 today. Excuse me, but this is not what most people buy.
Well, that’s true, but in all fairness, the P800 is a digital camera, PDA, cell phone, digital music player, and includes java support and support for viewing MS Office files. You can synch it with USB or Bluetooth. I think that that price range is quite good for something as full featured as the P800. I want one, but I need to save my money for a 17″ iMac. Write a review on one of those
Yes, it has all that, but then, the article should not be called “a better browser for cell phones”, because this phone is not your traditional phone.
Exactly it is much more than a cell phone. On another note, perhaps OpenWave doesn’t get that much press because it doesn’t have many exciting press releases. Looking at their news room page (http://www.openwave.com/newsroom/index.html) I don’t see any really exciting press releases for ahwhile. Perhaps they need a new PR Company? Maybe they should hire Edwina Monsoon?
(You must know what I’m talking about, you did live in the UK afterall)
Eugenia, your comments (“And on these down-to-earth models, Opera doesn’t run,” and “99% of the people will never be able to purchase a phone that can run Opera”) seem to imply that Opera requires highly technical, expensive hardware.
Is this based on knowledge of Opera’s hardware requirements, and if so what are those requirements?
Yes, the Opera browse requires higher-end hardware, it doesn’t run on the crappy chips than most phones are created with today. Basically, Opera runs wherever Symbian runs, and that is pretty high-end hardware:
http://www.symbian.com/technology/symbos-v7x-det.html
You say that these types of phones sell little compared to most phones and this is indeed true. However this site also covers PDAs and these types of phones are soon going to outsell PDAs, if you class the 7650 as a PDA it would have >50% market share.
Smart phones may be horribly expensive today but all phones will end up with similar funcionality, it’s happening already with some Nokia models. This end of the market is where all the news is, the low end is yesterdays tech.
Smartphones also have other advantages compared to PDAs, while the P800 is horribly expensive most people will get it with a phone subscription and pay half that price, also that is a brand new phone and is likely to come down in price pretty rapidly.
As to why nobody has a P800, it’s only just out and still isn’t readily available. Expect people to get them though (especially in Europe) they are really cool. I must admit however that I *am* biased, I’ve been oogling over the P800 since it was announced and when I finally seen one at CES it was better than I imagined.
As for OpenWave, I really hope their browser is better than the one I worked with a couple of years back, of all the WAP browsers it had the worst user interface by far, complete pain in the a** to use. There was a new one announced (thankfully with a new UI) but I never worked with it. In their own market I think you’ll find OpenWave get plenty of news.
Steve,
If you have downloaded Opera 7.1 and are using it on any web page, press Shift+F11 to see it rendered as a small screen webpage like the way it is viewed in Cell phones.
Looks really cool.
It’s a EPOC based device, no wonder really it has Opera.
It had the P800 and the Sharp Zaurus as well. How I wish the next rom release of the Zaurus will feature this browser! Or at least have Opera make the *.ipk available.
better them than Microsoft.
Eugenia: Price for the said P800 is around $880 to $1200 today. Excuse me, but this is not what most people buy
Hm. I remember that not so long ago our CDMA operator here in Rio de Janeiro (Telefonica Celular) charged $300 for a WAP phone. Now they’re selling 1xRTT phones as low as $150. (Anyway, I’m looking forward to buy a low-end GPRS model)
The high-end $800 of today is the $50 wolksphone of tomorrow (yes, one of our GSM operators – Oi – is selling the Siemens A40 for $50 with all the non-prepaid plans, and it sells like hotcake). Yes, I know that most operators (ALL CDMA operators, at least here in Brazil) subsidizes phone prices, but…
Maybe I’m old fashion, but all this talk about cell phones and OSes (with or without security flaws), web-browsers, games, etc seems ridiculous to me. I work as a computer/technology consultant, but if I want to call someone, I pick up the receiver and dial.
Next thing we’ll hear about is a wireless phone with an AthlonXP2000+ in it. Sure it’ll weight 10lbs and burn your ear, but people will buy it because they can play UT2003 while driving down the highway with a drink in their lap and one hand on the wheel…
Hey, world marketing, we need more useless gimmick products!
Dude, thanks for the small screen trick. That’s great for web developers!
My mate ***** bought a P800 a few weeks ago on a business trip to Singapore – and lost if on a drunken night out a week later.
And there is the reason to keep your phone and PDA seperate (or at least have a cheap & nasty phone as well for times when you might well misplace your phone).
He’s replaced it with a BlueTooth compatible phone and an iPaq for just this reason…..
I think it has much to do with the differences between Europe and USA. In Europe people change their phones quite offen (f.e. in Poland you get a free stuff from your telecom after 2 years of service) and new function enter the market pretty fast. While in USA I saw my friends happily using phones you cannot see here for years.
Other thing is that this is a battle for the future. You got to be prepaired with all the apps when phones with these features massively hit the market. You cannot introduce the apps when people get their handies. They should be prepared and tested before.
I think the point is a good one. Open wave is the browswer of choice on most phones and truth is that very few people can afford or want to buy one of those next gen pda/phone things.
The press at large is focusing way too much on stuff that will happen 4 years from now after prices and services come WAY down and too little on what is really happening today. And that is a problem because the services, middleware and browsers that are there today will need to start generating a lot more attention and dollars or the products of tomorrow will lose their funding.
Now that said, that little opera browser is still pretty cool and if it does a good job at its intended purpose (diplaying stardard HTML pages on a tiny screen) well then some press is definitely justified.
think of the new nokia phones for example:
3650 will be HUGE among kiddies and the new nokia N-GAGE will run symbian plattform 60 (which will IMHO have a big impact on the phone market). I read a market prediction form SIEMENS concerning the future mobile market in europe and they are predicting a split between cheap phones and high-end organizer & phone hybrids. So I think there is market for expensive phones.
Finalley 80% of all mobile phones manufactured world wide today are manufactured by symbian members
florian