ROUNDUP: how does iPhone compare to Windows Mobile browsers

[Menneisyys]

I've just published a very thorough comparison of iPhone's Safari to all the current Windows Mobile web browsers - and Opera Mini running on all mobile platforms (except for, unfortunately, iPhone). See http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/blog/9/full-roundup-browsing-web-windows-mobile-just-iphone-incl-iem6-review

[dlogik]

This is one of those rhetorical questions rights? :rolleyes:

[{klondike}]

Well mobile safari crashes every 10 minutes so if these stay running I say they win.

[mrsteveman1]

Well mobile safari crashes every 10 minutes so if these stay running I say they win.

I haven't seen it crash once since 2.2

[Rocketman919]

I haven't seen it crash once since 2.2

im on 2.1 and it crashes a ton

[{klondike}]

I haven't seen it crash once since 2.2
Well lucky you.

[Eric5h5]

I've seen it crash once on 2.2. Really, just once...it was a huge page with loads of images so I'm not completely surprised. It actually loaded once, but crashed when I went back and reloaded at one point.

--Eric

[don_k]

im on 2.1 and it crashes a ton

And why exactly don't you update it to 2.2?

[{klondike}]

And why exactly don't you update it to 2.2?
And why exactly do you need to know? He has his reasons so stay out of his buisness.

[schplurg]

Geez, so sensitive! Are you his over-protective big sister?

[Kamazar]

Geez, so sensitive! Are you his over-protective big sister?

... how the heck did we go from mobile browsers to this? stay on topic, guys.

[{klondike}]

Geez, so sensitive! Are you his over-protective big sister?
Nope. If I was then my name would be 'Rocketman918'.

[don_k]

And why exactly do you need to know? He has his reasons so stay out of his buisness.

Because the reason some people avoiding 2.2 is their iPhones are jailbroken and they have so many mod-apps that might mess up the system, eg: BossPrefs.

These people have no right of blaming Safari the way they have no right of blaming TS Tennis for not running properly on their jailbroken iPhones.

If jailbreak isn't his reason, then he'd better upgrade to 2.2. He has nothing to lose.

[oticon6]

If you don't want to update, don't complain about the performance.

Safari on the iPhone is MUCH better at displaying pages than Windows Mobile browsers. It is the ONLY complete mobile browser at the moment. My only issue with it is that a large animated gif can still cause it to crash. Everything else seems to have been resolved.

[{klondike}]

If you don't want to update, don't complain about the performance.

Safari on the iPhone is MUCH better at displaying pages than Windows Mobile browsers. It is the ONLY complete mobile browser at the moment. My only issue with it is that a large animated gif can still cause it to crash. Everything else seems to have been resolved.
Complete? There's no flash player or copy and paste. I hardly call that 'complete'.

[don_k]

if you don't want to update, don't complain about the performance.


exactly!

[dlogik]

Complete? There's no flash player or copy and paste. I hardly call that 'complete'.

What is it with people demanding that there should be a flash player...I for one am happy nytimes.com and other sites aren't bogged down with flash ads and "OH MY GOSH! NO WAY!" sound effects from idiotic banners.

Safari, as it stands now is the most advanced, user friendly, and well developed mobile browsing app going, because of it's simplicity.

And I totally agree with the other posters regarding the lack of sympathy for 2.1 jailbreakers.

[Menneisyys]

I haven't seen it crash once since 2.2

You're lucky :) Nevertheless, the crashes aren't that big an issue IMHO - I still prefer Web browsing on my iPhone because Safari is just faster and easier to use than anything on Windows Mobile.

[CrocStock]

I have never had any problems with Safari, it works very well and I doubt the Microsoft Mobile works very well at all considering their current rate of failure.

[Oliver]

I'm really happy that Apple does not ship Flash for Safari. I wanna kill someone every time Flash starts to play a YouTube-high-quality-movie with the great framerate of 3 frames per second on 100% CPU on my iMac G5 (which handels every other movie format up to 720p without problems). And guess who is to blame when my account is slow and the cpu is used to 95%? Yeah, of course, it's flash in the Safari of my gfs account eating up everything to display (tadah!) a scrolling banner with news from a tv station in a skyscraper ad.

So keep this garbage off my phone until it's fully optimized, which obviously will never happen (prove above).


And, btw: Can you name one single browser on a mobile device, which offers Flash? The real Flash, not the mobile edition of it. I can't. Must have some cause.

[mek]

would you rather have the safari browser crash, and spit you back out to the homescreen, where you can reload

or experience a blue screen of death, and spend 15 minutes rebooting your system

hmmm

[Menneisyys]

And, btw: Can you name one single browser on a mobile device, which offers Flash? The real Flash, not the mobile edition of it. I can't. Must have some cause.

WinMo only has (very slow) Flash 7 support. Both Symbian S60 and WinMo have excellent Flash Lite 3 support - it's pretty much usable to play compatible Web videos. In the latter, it's more flexible than iPhone's Safari as it supports, for example, Google Video and some YouTube clips iPhone (2.2) just can't play back - see for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q9Pc0Fxh7c

[Menneisyys]

would you rather have the safari browser crash, and spit you back out to the homescreen, where you can reload

or experience a blue screen of death, and spend 15 minutes rebooting your system

hmmm

Well, neither (native) WinMo / Symbian / BB browsers force you to restart the entire device. WinMo's PIE, under old(er) OS'es, used to crash frequently (but that didn't result in having to restart the entire device either); now, however, it's pretty much stable. So are most other browsers.

[KittyGotSued]

I've just published a very thorough comparison of iPhone's Safari to all the current Windows Mobile web browsers - and Opera Mini running on all mobile platforms (except for, unfortunately, iPhone). See http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/blog/9/full-roundup-browsing-web-windows-mobile-just-iphone-incl-iem6-review

link = dead

[Menneisyys]

link = dead

Thanks; it seems the server has problems... alternative links (cross-post):

http://forum.brighthand.com/showthread.php?p=1734652

http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/f323/full-roundup-browsing-web-windows-mobile-just-like-iphone-incl-iem6-review-91980.html

[Modus]

And, btw: Can you name one single browser on a mobile device, which offers Flash? The real Flash, not the mobile edition of it. I can't. Must have some cause.

Flash is a massive system hog.

The only reason it works on desktop/laptop CPUs is because they're so much more powerful now: Yet Flash can still bring them to their knees.

Try running a modern flash intensive website on a P4 and you'll see what I mean.

[Menneisyys]

Flash is a massive system hog.

The only reason it works on desktop/laptop CPUs is because they're so much more powerful now: Yet Flash can still bring them to their knees.

Try running a modern flash intensive website on a P4 and you'll see what I mean.

Let me disagree. Under Windows, with the latest Adobe 9/10 distros, most Flash sites only result in 10-30% CPU time - at most (measured on a 2 GHz P4). The Windows version of Flash 9/10 is pretty well done - much better than on any other platform, it seems (Windows Mobile, OS X etc.)

Basically, it's only Flash Lite that is actually usable on mobile platforms (WinMo, S60). It's way better than the "real" Flash 7 for WinMo.

[Menneisyys]

I have just posted a heavily updated version of the article.

[don_k]

The Windows version of Flash 9/10 is pretty well done - much better than on any other platform, it seems (Windows Mobile, OS X etc.)

As much as I dislike Windows, I must agree that Flash for Windows has always been better than for Mac. Even Flash 5 / 6 on Mac was very slow compared to its Windows counterparts. I don't think it's about the machine as nowadays Flash on Mac still sucks compared PC with same hardware specs. Let's blame Adobe for being lazy to optimize their code?

Anyway, I still prefer it without Flash. Those ads are just killing me.. and my monthly quota too.

[Menneisyys]

UPDATE (01/05/2009 4:26 AM CET) : MobilitySite frontpage (http://mobilitysite.com/2009/01/browsing-the-web-on-windows-mobile)