Eskil Sivertsen

Browsing from hell...

Monday, 28. August 2006, 12:40:06

mobile browser, mobile web access, opera mobile, opera mini, nokia, khtml

I greatly enjoyed The Register's Andrew Orlowski's review of Nokia's own mobile browser on the Nokia E70...:

A special circle of Hell needs to be created for the souls behind Nokia's new web browser. This is the fruit of the decision to develop an alternative to Opera Mobile based on the KHTML engine used by KDE's Konquerer and Apple's Safari. The kindest thing to say is that it makes for a great demo, showing off stamp-sized portions of full web pages in their glorious colour.

At least they probably have good parties in hell...

Seems like more and more people are realizing that not only is the KHTML browser not very good; it makes for a very bad user experience in terms of navigation. Once the initial wow factor of its full page view and mini map has settled, using the browser for Web browsing is really a slow and awkward experience. I have it on my new Nokia N73, and I have really tried to use it, but it simply takes too much work. So I use Opera Mini for the speedy Web checks and Opera Mobile for the heavier stuff, like banking and booking tickets.

But I guess in hell you have all the time in ~~the world~~ hell, so the browser doesn't really have to be fast, nor does it have to be user friendly. After all, hell is supposed to be... well... hell.

Read the full review here. It gets even better!

Opera Mini hits ONE BILLION page loads - and I really need to peeOn a more serious browser note

Comments

graste # 28. August 2006, 15:14

Is Opera installed on the Nokia N90 series mobile phones? On the Nokia website there is only written something like XHTML browser. When I buy myself a new mobile it should have a decent browser or at least the possibility to change the default browser.

Words # 29. August 2006, 08:54

Ain't The Register great. But not as great as OperaMini!

jakob # 30. August 2006, 02:13

Opera Mini is great, especially if you want to make cheap international phone calls using Jajah. http://www.jajah.com/mini

I call European cell phones for 15cents a minute from the US! Fixed line phones for 2cents a minute.

Man I love Opera Mini, and I can even access my phone book from it, when dialing with JAJAH.com/mini!

peterboy # 1. September 2006, 07:42

That's funny opinion. I guess there will be (are) two religions for mobile browsing, one that insists on breaking the original layout for narrow mobile device and other that prefer seeing the page as it was originally planned.

The new S60 browser put me well in the latter category, the browser is the best since cutted bread and the first mobile browser that made me feel that one could really use mobile phone for serious browsing. The E-phone is reasonably fast (not lightning but not very slow either), the sharp display is stunning (qvga just isn't enough) and thanks to 3G/WLAN, the network speed is reasonable.

I doubt the new browser is for the less capable phones but the future does finally look brighter for mobile browsing. (or perhaps I'm just too sick with WAP and cannot handle the WAP-look-a-like browsers.. ;-)

WhineWhine # 1. September 2006, 09:10

Let me guess... peterboy works for Nokia, right?

Phones today have tiny screens, and trying to view pages designed for desktop on a phone is simply a pain. Maybe larger screens will be the norm in the future, but by then, Opera has probably come up with something far better than the terrible, terrible solution used in the Nokia browser...

"Hell" about covers Nokia's efforts in the browser space