Has Apple succeeded in setting a new mobile Web-browsing paradigm? InformationWeek examines how the Palm Treo, BlackBerry Curve, and HTC Wing stack up against the iPhone. Unfortunately, this article completely snobs the UIQ and S60 Symbian smartphones.
Smartphone Browser Shootout: Palm, BlackBerry, HTC vs. iPhone
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Yes, the iPhone is definitely superior to the other phones in this article. The title of the article even says as much: “Smartphone Browser Shootout”
However…
From a usability standpoint, the iPhone is dead last IMO. Plus, is the iPhone really even a Smartphone?
I’ll give up my blackberry when it’s pried from my dead cold hands. Limited browsing experience? Sure…but from a pure usability standpoint it can’t be beat, plus the infrastructure behind it is customizable and mature. Yada yada yada…the iPhone isn’t even in the same category as the other phones, so the article holds no water for me.
Yeah, I’ll take my Treo with its “limited browsing capability” over an iPhone any day of the week.
I would take my iPhone over any other phone any day of the week with its real, integrated web browser.
I am waiting for a gPhone.
“I would take my iPhone over any other phone any day of the week with its real, integrated web browser.”
Maybe I’m just a crazy old man but I use my phone to, you know, make phone calls….
No, it’s not an iphone, not even a “smartphone”.
I use my “phone” for just about everything but the phone part.
Stop being a prude. This is a browser shootout. Nothing more.
It goes without saying that Apple’s iPhone has the best browser there is for a phone, hands down.
I think that’s a pretty arrogant thing to presume given how good Opera is on XDAs
Funny of you to say that when you’ve probably never used all the browsers available for phones. Just believing what Apple tells you.
but Apple says you have “the real web” on an iPhone!
Dude, you like totaly behind the curve. Nowdays people use the phones to browse the web, and PCs – to make the phone calls. As simple as that.
…I believe the requisite response starts is:
“Ooooh – luxury, LUXURY! At least you have a phone. We used to live in a lake! Every morning, we had to wake up 15 minutes before we went to sleep, clean the lake, and then every night our parents would thrash us to sleep with broken bottles.”
“I would take my iPhone over any other phone any day of the week with its real, integrated web browser.”
Install Opera Mini beta 4 on any of the other phones, and voila…a full blown web browser. It also has a zooming feature similar to the iPhone’s. It works/looks beautifully on my Blackberry Pearl.
I’ve used it and it falls flat on its arse compared to Safari on the iPhone IMO. Safari is *made* to be on the iPhone so it feels like it and integrates with everything else on the iPhone. Opera Mini cannot do that.
Opera Mini can’t do that because Apple won’t let them release it for the iPhone, FFS.
Opera Mini does everything Safari does. It renders a page exactly as it does on the desktop and uses zooming to view a certain section. It also did this well before Safari did.
How does it fall flat? What specifically was better about Safari?
It’s up to Opera to garner business relations with smartphone developers/manufacturers to have their browser run seamlessly.
Apple has no business case for the iPhone to offer Opera Mini.
The iPhone is an Appliance. It’s not a desktop/laptop/workstation.
I’m sorry but what point are you trying to make?
Opera is developed for hundreds of phones. They can’t possibly develop Opera to be “seamless” for all of them.
Regardless, what exactly does iPhone have that Opera does not?
“The iPhone is an Appliance. It’s not a desktop/laptop/workstation.”
The iPhone is a one trick pony…by one trick I mean it’s either Apple’s software, or none at all. Everyone always wants to complain about vendor lockin, yet the iPhone comes out and since it’s Apple, no one is complaining. The device is completely shut off from the 3rd party application realm, and that’s reason enough for me to never even begin to consider buying one.
I didn’t buy one. None of my tech friends bought one. Actually, no one I know bought one. I don’t see folks yakking away on them out in public. And certainly there will be zero business adoption. On day 2 I went to an Apple store and literally sat there for almost an hour comparing it to my blackberry (w/ Opera)…there is nothing it can’t do that a blackberry can do, and plenty that it can’t do which a blackberry can. I almost feel sorry for the folks who have plopped down 500+ dollars to own one…they have no idea what they are missing for a fraction of the price.
Sorry to burst your bubble of ignorance but I currently have non-Apple native applications (terminal emulator, NES emulator) on my iPhone.
You are welcome to your opinion but please don’t try to pass it off as fact. A surprisingly large number of people I know (techheads or not) have iPhones.
The browser beats all other platforms for pure integration, multitouch, URL to phone connectivity, and wide(r)screen-browsing capability. I have been through a *lot* of devices over the years, and this one trumps them all in the browser integration/usability/experience space. Sorry but Opera Mobile does not compare in my experience. Not even close.
Yet again I will ask: What is better about the iPhone browser than Opera Mobile or Opera Mini?
“Yet again I will ask: What is better about the iPhone browser than Opera Mobile or Opera Mini?”
I think it’s pretty telling that you’ve asked this question several times on this thread and have yet to receive an answer.
“Yet again I will ask: What is better about the iPhone browser than Opera Mobile or Opera Mini?”
I think it’s pretty telling that you’ve asked this question several times on this thread and have yet to receive an answer.
The only way in which it is pretty telling is that few people here have actually used both browsers in earnest. Some of the non-iPhone crowd are beating their chests and yelling “it does nothing better than my phone”, yet they don’t really know that is the case. All that is apparent (without using both for a considerable amount of time) is the difference in feature set. What cannot be assumed from reading reviews and specifications is the level of integration and usability.
This attitude is just as bad as the people who allegedly “bought” the Apple marketing hype.
The iPhone apparently doesn’t have universal copy/paste.
w.t.f. is with that?
Or does it and I’m completely confused?
Edited 2007-08-10 12:21
Did you read my reply, because I listed some features that make it better than Opera for me. Or are you just trolling?
How about you answer this question: What is better about Opera Mobile/Mini on <insert favourite smartphone here> than Safari on the iPhone?
I prefer Nokia E90 with 800×352 screen resolution
I wonder why they didn’t mention it …
I would really love to see how the Opera mobile would fair in a review against these phones and more.
I have a feeling that people, never using a good smartphone before and being lured into buying an expensive iPhone (or they got it for free from Apple), are writing articles and opinions like this. I’ve been using Nokia 7710 for three years. It has flash capability, wonderful screen resolution, word and excel like software, touchscreen, … and a really good and reliable Opera browser. The iPhone is not revolutionary, it is not even “evolutionary”, what it is is millions of dollars thrown into marketing and thousands of people believing what “gurus” have to say. Makes me sad.
I would say the iPhone was ‘evolutionary’, but only in the same way as text messages evolved to include pictures. ie just a logical progression rather than a ground breaking new interface.
That aside, the iPhone is just like a designer handbag – looks pretty but does much the same as any other handbag.
Edited 2007-08-08 11:20
I’ve never used Opera, but I’ve used IE on a T-Mobile MDA, and that was annoying. Just to browse around took way to many clicks, and even doing simple things requires pulling out the stylus and navigating through awkward menus. No thanks.
I’ve never used a Crackberry either, and I imagine they don’t suffer from the Windows Mobile “must pull out your stylus for every little thing”, given that nice wheel button I see everyone flicking. They look nice, but I’m happy with my iPhone.
My iPhone is the best phone I’ve ever used by far, and I’m very happy with it. I could really go for a faster network, but for the most part, it’s great, and it really does “get out of the way”. It doesn’t do a single thing that my old T-Mobile didn’t do functionality wise, it just does them a lot nicer.
And not having to pull out a stylus is really, really nice.
The iPhone had an obnoxious amount of hype, but beyond that, it’s a really good phone.
Right… slight tangent.
I had tried Opera mini 3.1 and I really liked it. It was passable. I saw some posts here about the 4 beta. I though, well, lets give it a go. Wow! It is brilliant – bar a few caveats. It works like a charm on most sites I tried – very fast, the UI makes a lot of sense. The scrolling and zooming is excellent. Downsides: is does not seem to keep sessions alive properly. I was checking my webmail and it lost the session as soon as I opened an email. On MySpace, it had me logged in for a while, but then the session was lost and it asked me to log in again. This seems to be a session thing – maybe cookies?
Anyway, it’s beta, so I’m just pleased with how good it is now. Hopefully the final release will have all these bugs ironed out! Kudos to the Opera guys, you RAWK!
Myself, I couldn’t tell you which browser is better on mobile phones because I’ve never used Opera on the mobile platform. I use Safari on the iPhone and I have no inclination to use anything else. It’s a brilliant browser, and the multi-touch zoom aspect makes it very nice (which perhaps Opera could use on other phones, although I’m not sure any other phone has the multi-touch).
I’ve used Opera on the PC, and while it was nice, it wasn’t better than Firefox, so I use Firefox.
I’m sure Opera is better than IE on mobile phones, because really, IE blows.
Edited 2007-08-09 13:35
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