forward to the past

Tags: Design,  Mobile web
March 19, 2008 by Barbara

I have two mobiles, both relatively old. A Blackberry 8700 (AT&T) and a Sanyo MM-7500 (Sprint). I like both of them, though they’ve had their own drawbacks.

Until very recently, I was not using the Sanyo device for data access. Sprint wanted to charge me something like $35 on top of my $50+ voice plan, mostly for stuff I wasn’t using. Streaming video or streaming pop music just isn’t my thing, but I couldn’t just get web + messaging. So I had data services completely off on that device.

However, the recent spate of $99 all-you-can-eat plans changed that. It turns out that Sprint also two smaller unlimited data plans: $89 for 900 voice minutes and $69 for 450 voice minutes. That latter one met my needs nicely, and is costing me an additional $5/month (for which I get picture mail, navigation, web, and text – plus stuff I don’t use).

So I promptly re-downloaded Opera Mini. After using it a little bit, I decided that I tend to want to read quickly, so I changed to “mobile view” so that left and right page scrolled. Great! Now my Sanyo does a pretty good job at Google Reader.

As a result, I got to re-learn just how much faster Sprint’s EVDO network is in comparison with AT&T’s EDGE network. But my Blackberry has a lot of advantages, so I kept using it.

Well, it seems like AT&T’s network has slowed down quite a bit in the past month or so. Waiting 8-25 seconds (average about 12) for a RSS news item that is mostly or completely text is a bit much.

My old problem with the Openwave browser appears to have been fixed, either with the “OpenWeb” upgrade or something earlier. That was the cookie problem: I had to re-enter my user ID and password to any site (including Gmail) because it wouldn’t store a cookie; this was my biggest reason for using Opera Mini.

So Sprint just launched Openwave’s transcoding platform OpenWeb. Sources on the wmlprogramming list say that it is passing through almost all obvious mobile sites unmolested (by default, “m.thisdomain.com” isn’t passed through but it’d be easy enough to add).

All of this was enough to trigger my trying out my Sanyo’s default browser (NetFront 3.1) again. It is now a pretty great experience! As the built-in browser it has several advantages over Opera Mini, especially for following links in SMS, access to a good text input UI, access to LBS, and very fast load time. However, this was insufficient until now. Opera Mini was just better.

Now I can get to the same set of sites in my NetFront browser as with Opera Mini. OK, so I can’t edit a Backpack page (uses AJAX), but I can sign in and see it. This is exactly what I can do with Opera Mini.

NetFront doesn’t get me content rotation and softkey hiding, but it does get me a consistent experience on page scrolling. Opera Mini’s mobile mode lets me use left and right to page scroll, but some pages (maybe 20% of them) appear in cursor mode. This is particularly bad when I have to navigate past several links. NetFront consistently uses volume up/down to page scroll, so that’s better.

In short, transcoding done well can help all devices improve the user experience. But it does have to be done well: a mobilized site must remain mobilized.

Combine everything: a good data plan, lots of web services, excellent mobilized sites, access to full sites, cookie support, fast network, good rendering, good scrolling for fast reading. This starts making feature phones quite smart.


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4 Comments »

  1. This articles is very good. i have mobile phone Samsung u600 and i well try your strategy :)

    Thanks

    Comment by web design company — March 22, 2008 @ 3:20 am

  2. I want to know how to unlock the samsung SCH-3500 model n.SPH-460 portable dual-band tri-mode made in Taiwan for the USA. If you need more specifications, please ask me now. Thanks.

    Comment by Ana Maria Carrico — March 25, 2008 @ 5:03 pm

  3. I’ve forgot to mention the year,ok? It was bought in the middle of 2003 or before at Best Buy. Thanks. AMC

    Comment by Ana Maria Carrico — March 25, 2008 @ 5:07 pm

  4. @Ana: Alas, I have no idea.

    Comment by Barbara — March 26, 2008 @ 8:17 am

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