OSNews Rounds Up The Most Popular Mobile Browsers

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=13446">http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=13446</a><br /><br /><i>"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!"</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2006/20060127-browserreview.jpg" /><br /><b><i>Netfront Browser</i></b><br /><br />Eugenia Loli-Queru has done a pretty good job giving a quick overview of the mobile browsers available today. Of course, this is unlike most other software reviews. It isn't like users can just go and download the one that sounds best and install it. It has to be available for your phone, not all of which even allow the installation of alternate browsers.

[Menneisyys]

Nice article. However, I find particularly the PIE section a bit (hmmm...) on the positive side (for example, it states "it does the basics pretty well and on most pages it manages a very nice rendering with beautiful ClearType fonts"). I don't understand either why it's referring to NetFront 3.3 (the screenshot shows version 3.2 and 3.3 is still at beta) or exactly which Technical Preview it's referring to. If the latest (TP 1.03), then, what it says about its JavaScript compliance (""Netfront 3.3 supports tabs, some CSS and some javascript) is also pretty outdated (TP 1.03 has really excellent JavaScript support - see for example the JavaScript compliance tests here (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&amp;title=one_of_the_best_alternative_web_browsers&amp;more=1))

Mentioning the "oldtimer" Thunderhawk (and prolly even Minimo) would have been nice too.

[Eugenia]

Point of the matter is, Netfront 3.3 is not released yet for PPC, I don't review beta software for the most part. Netfront 3.3-final only exists on the new Sony Ericsson phones which I don't have access to. I emailed the Sony Ericsson PR team about this article a few weeks ago, they never replied.

>Mentioning the "oldtimer" Thunderhawk (and prolly even Minimo)
>would have been nice too.

These are not phone browsers. They are PDA browsers. Sure, some PDAs are also phones today, but for the most part, these were created primarily with PDAs in mind. Besides, both together they don't make up for more than 0.1% of the phone web browser market...

[Menneisyys]

Point of the matter is, Netfront 3.3 is not released yet for PPC, I don't review beta software for the most part. Netfront 3.3-final only exists on the new Sony Ericsson phones which I don't have access to. I emailed the Sony Ericsson PR team about this article a few weeks ago, they never replied.


That's OK - you refer to NF 3.3 in the body of the text, this is why I asked - wasn't sure which Technical Preview (as far as Pocket PC versions are concerned) it's about (different TP's are pretty different - for example, JavaScript compliance-wise).

[Eugenia]

BTW, a friend just told me that he tried the latest Netfront 3.3-beta on his K-Jam PPC-phone and it doesn't connect via GPRS to the net. It works via Bluetooth, ActiveSync and WiFi, but not directly via GPRS. A bug?

[pocketpcadmirer]

BTW, a friend just told me that he tried the latest Netfront 3.3-beta on his K-Jam PPC-phone and it doesn't connect via GPRS to the net. It works via Bluetooth, ActiveSync and WiFi, but not directly via GPRS. A bug?

It can be. Remember, the application is still in beta

Sunny

[Spenser]

Am I right: Avantgo 3.7 - which I prefer - only works with PIE?

Jochen