A few years ago, the mobile Internet on the phone could cause only the desire to kill yourself. Yes, and I had to be a big fan so that in an incomprehensible gray shit on a tiny screen I could see the very, cherished “Internet”!
But the development of mobile technologies and the expansion of mobile frequencies suggest that more and more phones can give us the real Internet, in all its colors.
In this review, we tested eight common mobile browsers. Some of them caused us only a smile, the other showed that the correct display of HTML is still not enough for a full sense of the Internet.
Well, what can you say about the opposition of 3G against Wi-Fi ? All that manufacturers say is a lie! This is all about the mobile web!


Before we go further, a small test of the download speed and the display of several well-known sites.
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Legend:
The first number shows the page loading speed in seconds;
The display of each page varies from “Bad” to “Excellent”;
The colors (red, yellow, green) show an overall assessment, including the speed and accuracy of the page rendering:
Green = everything is good, Red = everything is bad.



The second sign shows the same thing, but with the function of going online via Wi-Fi:



And now more:

Android

Fast smart mobile browser based on WebKit. He attacks websites with (almost) unsurpassed grace and speed. Navigating and scaling pages could be a bit smoother and more manageable, but tons of settings, different ways of moving with a touchscreen and a joystick make it easy to navigate sites quickly and conveniently. The only thing that we have not tried is multitouch zoom . The buttons do not work too neatly, and although viewing the pages through a “magnifying glass” is quite convenient, you expect something more refined from the android.

Well, in general, we consider ourselves happy owners of Android! :)

Rating: 4+

BlackBerry with Bold Browser

Despite the hindrances and limitations that BlackBerry users have been experiencing over the years, the browser displays most pages correctly, although scripts can trigger attacks of the browser (for example, Wikipedia and WSJ have been loading on it for a very long time). He uses the standard “click to enlarge” principle, which works well, although running around the page with a joystick will make your thumb work pretty well.

The “column” view, which squeezes the entire contents of the page in one column, is very convenient and allows you to climb wide pages, although it does not always work equally well (great with Wikipedia, bad with Giz).

Fortunately, the execution of scripts was improved on Storm (BlackBerry Storm - another iPhone killer - approx. Transl.), Which uses an updated version of the Bold browser.

We modestly hope that BlackBerry will still give up its homebrew browser and go to a single WebKit!

Rating: 4- / 3 +

iphone

What can I say? This is still the best browser!
In terms of speed, he literally broke everything except, perhaps, Android (which is also built on WebKit), and bypasses his stepbrother (and everyone else, too) with a light and elegant multi-touch zoom . Some pages are still crooked and lacking support for Flash , but it does provide an unrivaled opportunity to use the Internet on your mobile.

We love him! But in the depths of our hearts we are waiting for the appearance of something better ( Mobile Firefox maybe?)

Rating: 5-

Nokia E71 Symbian S60

ABOUT! See, another browser with a WebKit engine! (comment perev .: here it means that Nokia has launched its browser for S60 in open source : prooflink )
It is not as good as Android or iPhone, neither in speed nor in the rendering of pages (can someone from the Symbian guys explain why?), But does its job well.
And yes! He knows how to work with Flash! For this, he uses Flash Lite 3, although he does it through f .. badly and with a large memory load.

Navigating the E71 is more convenient on buttons than using a joystick. The viewing mode through the “magnifying glass” is quite convenient (although to turn it on, you have to climb through several menus).

The result is not bad, but far from excellent.

Rating: 4-

Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile

Oh my God! This is a joke, right? Borg? MUAHAHA!
No, really, this is the worst mobile browser on the planet. He can not display anything except, perhaps, pseudographics. He terribly screwed up on all the simple tests, except for Wikipedia, on which he simply screwed up strongly.
And oh, a miracle! Navigating the page, if a UFO arrived and displayed it normally, it is quite usable.

Rating: 2-

Opera Mobile on Windows Mobile

With Windows Mobile, normal Internet access is also possible, for this you need to install Opera Mobile on it. He still limping on the curve ... unfinished Windows Mobile, but usually does his job normally. Not as great as its WebKit counterparts, but you can definitely use it.

Interestingly, when switching to Wi-Fi access, Opera Mobile has increased its speed more noticeably than WebKit browsers.

Zoom through the menu quickly tired, but the navigation on the touch works well, although slightly messed up. We checked the navigation on the Samsung Epix optical cursor - it works great, somewhere between the d-pad and the joystick.

Rating: 3


(Note. Trans.: Next come two beasts that we will not find on our shelves, Samsung Instinct is a model released by Samsung together with the American operator Sprint , and LG Dare for Verizon and directly imprisoned for their services. Phones belong to the so-called specialized class phones (feature phones) ; maybe someone else remembers “our” miracle i-mode phones ;)?)

Samsung (Sprint) Instinct

Ha! This is not the lousy browser that was recently supplied with Instinct.

The original was slow and weak, even though it was the flagship of its class (stupid phones;). But with the new update (up to version 1.1), the browser has really changed a lot.
He was at the bottom of the chart, because it is much slower than his fellows, and the zoom works as something ridiculous. But, as soon as the page loads, it becomes easy and convenient to climb on it.
A bit annoying is the loading bar, which hangs in the last 2 percent in the middle of the process, but more or less it corresponds to the loading state.

This is (probably) the best browser among non-smartphones you can find.

Rating: 3+

Lg dare

Just like Instinct, LG Dare showed that a good browser can also be on the feature phone.
Dare is a little bit livelier than his Korean brother in loading pages, but he got lower marks than Instinct. On the "heavy" sites, he simply lost control: the page turned into a still image and did not react to anything. However, most of the pages browser displays quite accurately.

We liked the sliding zoom bar, in any case, the very idea of ​​working with scale seems very intuitive. Unfortunately, in practice it works like a normal pair of buttons (“+” / “-”).

(Note: I do not think that the download speed on this phone really reached 300 Kbps - most likely, there were some problems with working with DSL Report )

Rating: 3

Testing method

We tested each browser only on full, immobile versions of sites, via 3G and, where it was possible, via Wi-Fi.
All scripts were enabled and the cache was cleared before each pass.
We took the average of a series of 5 consecutive tests for speed, in order to understand what bandwidth we are dealing with, and we noted the time it took for the browser to completely load the page along its load bar.
We evaluated whether the browser correctly displayed the page on a scale from “excellent” to “good” (oops, missed something) to “decidedly bad”.

Sprint Instinct and Verizon Dare, which we included in the tests as the best models of our class (feature phones), did not have Wi-Fi support.

We also did not include Opera Mini and Skyfire in tests, since they do most of the work on their servers, which give out something similar to the picture. Moreover, we believe that this type of Internet through proxy browsers will not last long.

Breath of air

Remember our mantra “only code matters” (“code that counts” - the article told you whether it is necessary to switch to iPhone 3G and what an ordinary iPhone 2.0 can give people to notice.). This is also true for mobile Internet in general. A cool browser can work on a mediocre Internet, but the hellish browser will produce nonsense at a good speed.

In the current state of affairs, the WebKits are perhaps the best of the invented solutions. But even so, the existing software needs to be refined (implementation), or it remains to wait for Nokia to provide us with functionality at the Android-a and iPhone level.

Well, to prove how little Wi-Fi actually differs from 3G: in the tests for speed, WebKit browsers on 3G overtook some of the browsers on Wi-Fi!

Another interesting thing that I would like to draw attention to is the principle of zoom. Buttons for zooming were too rough and uncomfortable (brutish), the “magnifying glass” was too inaccurate. It seems that the best concept for zoom is multitouch : it is accurate and intuitive.
We hope that other developers will also start using multi-touch interfaces on touchscreen phones (* khe-khe * ANDROID! * Khe-khe *).

These are the problems that we were able to see in the process of our review. The overall picture is that the mobile Internet is becoming more interesting and colorful. It could still be more reliable, faster, perhaps more flexible, but in most cases, yes, you can use the Internet in your mobile phone!
Comparison with the situation two years earlier says a lot.
Who knows what will happen in a couple of years? Perhaps Internet Explorer will work fine?
Although nooo! This is something rather from science fiction! ;)


(comment perev .: further a little bit of gag)

The carriage turns into a pumpkin or a few words about our realities.

Well, were they drooling on beautiful iPhones, Blackbury, and Samsung touchscreens?
3G and Wi-Fi speak? GPRS catches and thanks for that! ;)

So, we have:

The very best devices in Russia (according to the statistics of the opera )

Nokia 6300, Nokia N73, SE K790i, Nokia 5310, Nokia 6233, SE K750i, SE K550i, SE W910i

On sales (correct me, those who know better), something about this:
Nokia 6300, SE X1 Xperia, Nokia E51, iPhone, Samsung SGH-i910, Nokia 3109, BlackBerry Storm

On average, the Russian has a mobile Internet speed of 70-80 kbit / s and generates (oh my god!) 7 MB of traffic per month.

And now let us release our “flagships” to the arena, if not iPhones, but also handsome, meet (!): Nokia 6300 and Nokia N73 .

Instead of 3G - the usual GPRS (places precipitation EDGE).

Instead of Gizmo and Slate - Contact and Mail.ru. But of course Habr!

And yes! Browsers! Instead of Safari and Android, we’ll take Opera Mini (4.2), which was prematurely thrown overboard, and see what built-in browsers are capable of.

Well, well (* rubbing hands *), let's start:

Legend (again):
The first number shows the page loading speed in seconds;
The display of each page varies from “Bad” to “Excellent”;
The colors (red, yellow, green) show an overall assessment, including the speed and accuracy of the page rendering:
Green = everything is good, Red = everything is bad.



Nokia N73 Symbian S60

The built-in web browser N73 (actually there are two of them, the second one is hidden in the depths of the menu and serves more for wap-internet). He does not have the abundance of settings that Opera, there is only the most necessary.
The browser honestly downloaded all 3 and a half megabytes of data from the main page of Gizmodo, spending as much as five minutes and a lot of RAM. At the same time (apparently due to clogged memory), the pictures were not displayed.
But in general, the page has rendered neatly. In addition, unlike OM, the Nokia-browser displayed all the script stuff well.
On meil.ru there was a feeling that the phone would explode from tension, but after five minutes (oh, a miracle!), The shoe had a thick page stuck into the browser screen.
Wikipedia (an article about the Hubble) has opened wonderfully, but again for a long time. D-oh-oh-oh-oh!

Opera Mini

We tested the opera in two modes: with low-quality pictures and in hq . And as it was possible to already notice from the tablet, I simply added pages to the screen with a hurricane!
Yes, Opera has managed to bypass even the iPhone, and that’s on the usual GPRS asshole .
So what if the scripts on the page froze like in a stone, so what if in Netgeo the menu crawled over the text, and Wikipedia became two-column?
In most cases, all this is more than enough for normal surfing on your favorite sites.
And let the aesthetes admire beautiful markings on desktop ekarnas!)

For those who want more details and numbers here .

Another review from this series, with a focus on windows mobile here .