Mobile Browsers
Most Windows Mobile devices come equipped with the default Microsoft browser, PIE (Pocket Internet Explorer). PIE is a typically a good browser if you access sites that are purely XHTML or you only visit sites that are intended to be viewed on mobile devices (WAP). Since most of the internet is not limited to XHTML and WAP sites, PIE is not a good choice for users that navigate the internet frequently on their WM device. Fortunately there are alternative solutions to choose from.
- Opera Mobile – Currently available in version 8.65beta as a free download until October. This browser renders pages much much faster than PIE and uses Small Screen Rendering technology to reformat webpages and images to fit nicely on your screen. The price of this browser is $24 USD and well worth the money considering some useful webpages (i.e. Bank) wouldn’t render at all in PIE. (Version 9 of Opera will support AJAX and Web 2.0)
- NetFront – Many people claim that NetFront is the best browser for mobile devices. The newest version supports the latest web standards including AJAX and has a very clean user interface. This was my browser of choice on the Dell Axim, but having moved on to a smaller screen on a smartphone I now prefer Opera Mobile because of Small Screen Rendering.
- Minimo – This is Mozilla’s current mobile browser. I have read good things about this browser but unfortunately it is currently only available on PocketPCs. I look forward to testing this browser when it becomes available for smartphones.
These are not the only options when it comes to mobile browsers, there are yet other browsers such as ThunderHawk which render webpages as they would be rendered on a desktop and provide full Java support.
No matter which browser you choose, it will be a step up from the default PIE browser and you will notice a significant difference in rendering time and your ability to comfortably navigate pages using the browsers mentioned above.
Filed under: browsers, minimo, mozilla, netfront, opera, smartphone, windows mobile | 2 Comments
Mohammad Azimi 
Good post. I tried Minimo for a few days – it looks promising with tabbed browsing and some javascript support but it is still beta (took up 8MB of my RAM, unacceptable). I wonder if this is the same initiative as Mobile Firefox?