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Posts Tagged ‘browser’

Yeah, forget the Skyfire S60 browser

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

I posted a note last night about 100 beta invitations for the S60 version of the Skyfire browser. Forget that.

Strike it from your memory. Screw it, with bells on.

You can’t actually get the beta, if you’re in the UK, Europe or anywhere other than America. Which is one of the dumbest things that Skyfire has dreamed up. In the email I received from their truly efficient PR, there was a note about a text message being sent to American numbers only. I didn’t dream think that this actually effected the actual sign-up process. No one would be that stupid.

Or so I thought.

I’m particularly annoyed because I look like a total arse, proffering invitations to Mobile Industry Review’s readers — the vast majority of them, serious Nokia-heads, keen to see what Skyfire was on about. I’ve begun writing to everyone that’s emailed me asking what I was thinking publishing, to quote one reader, ’such drivel’. ‘It doesn’t work outside America??’ and ‘Skyfire = dumb’, are another quotes.

It’s a pretty shit hot browser. But it’s — like UIQ — heading for the way of the dodo, if the American-centric mindset is going to continue. It needs to be implemented now. Not tomorrow, not next week and not in 6 months. Limited patience.

We should, I think, follow Skyfire’s example. If you’re not in America, ignore it. If you are in America, get an iPhone.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Sneak peak at mobile Firefox concept

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Whenever I get a new PC, the first thing I do with it is install Firefox because in my opinion it’s simply the best browser there is. While the people behind it, the Mozilla Foundation, have promised a mobile version codenamed Fennec is on the way by next year, it looks like Mozilla’s development people haven’t been resting on their laurels.

Mozilla Labs’ head of user experience, Aza Raskin, has posted this video on an experimental touch UI concept he’s been working on. Alas, like most concepts, there’s no word on when, if ever, we might be able to see this on our mobiles.


Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

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Posted in Mobile Applications | Comments

Opera gives Google’s Gears some support

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Good news for fans of Google Gears: Opera has decided to support Gears in its Opera 9.5 Mobile browser, meaning that users will be able to get access to all their favourite Gears apps through any phone equipped with the browser, as well as on Opera’s desktop support.

Alas, the details about Opera’s Gears support are a little on the slim side – the release is pegged as sometime later this year and there’s no technical details available right now – but it’s good to see Gears expanding beyond its previous heartland of Windows Mobile devices.

By joining up with Opera, Gears gets to dodge the operating system question entirely and open itself up to Symbian phones and the massive user base that goes with it. A release date wouldn’t go amiss – I’d be keen to find out how Gears copes with some of the lower end devices.

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Posted in Mobile Applications | Comments

Mobile web dead or just sleeping?

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Mowser was a browser that would take sites designed for the web and render them for mobiles, launched last year. I say was, because its founder, Russell Beattie has decided to pull the plug after struggling to find funding.

Aside from his debts, Beattie said on his blog that he decided to stop development on the browser because “I don’t actually believe in the “Mobile Web” anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence”.

But Beattie isn’t suggesting that people don’t want to use the mobile web *at all*, just they don’t want to use it when it feels so much worse than a PC browser. The solution to getting more web traffic, he says, is better devices and better browsers. Here here. Perhaps if every phone had a whizzy browser and a big screen, the mobile web would be used everywhere. But given we’re years off mid tier and low tier devices getting such capabilities, if they ever do, is there a way of encouraging mobile web take up in the meantime?

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Posted in Mobile Applications | Comments

1.5 billion mobile web browsers coming soon

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Mobile web browsers are about to get a whole lot better, according to analysts ABI Research, with open-Internet browsers (browsers which sport capabilities like AJAX and RSS) for mobiles growing from 76 million in 2007 to nearly 700 million browsers in 2013.

“The move towards web-based applications means browser and web services engines will become increasingly important for mobile, whether these are in a commercial browser implementation or a customized widget. Ultimately, the long-term trend away from native applications to web-based applications means browser and web services engines will be increasingly important components in the mobile environment,” research director Michael Wolf said.

It looks like despite all the hype and bluster the iPhone really might have kicked off a bit of a shake-up in the mobile world – the device has shown people what mobile web browsers should be like and reminded rival mobile manufacturers that its time to polish up those interfaces.

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Posted in Mobile Applications | Comments

Opera shows off browser for Android

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Opera Mini has just unveiled a version of its mobile browser for Google’s Android platform. The company wants developers to get involved with testing it, so if you fancy experimenting with the browser, it’s available here.

Once the feedback is in, Opera has promised the Android-specific Opera Mini will enter beta form soon, with the usual Opera goodies: small screen rendering, zoom, synced bookmarks and integrated Google search etc.

So now we’ve got the Android browser, we just need the handsets. Anyone? Anyone?

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Posted in Mobile Applications | Comments

Nokia leading mobile browser wars

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Despite all the talk of the iPhone being the data consumer’s phone of choice, it seems Nokia is still holding its own. According to research from StatCounter, Nokia’s browser has 0.15 percent of the UK browser market share (the stats take in browsers on both PCs and mobiles), with the iPhone making up 0.6 percent.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry made up 0.02 percent and SonyEricsson has 0.01 percent. In the US, it’s a different story – there, the iPhone is beating Nokia with 0.18 percent to 0.01 percent respectively. However, globally, Nokia is way out in front with 0,25 percent compared to the 0.06 percent that the iPhone has.

While the US stats don’t look good for Nokia, it’s worth remembering that it’s one of the markets where Nokia hasn’t traditionally been the number one. That said, the iPhone’s performance should be more than enough to worry the Finnish manufacturer, when the numbers of iPhones and Nokia handsets in use throughout the world are compared.

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Posted in iPhone | Comments

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