Dean Bubley

Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet

I'm continuously amazed by the attitudes of iPhone fans. In this post I go out of my way to point out that the device has the current best-in-class web performance but still get flamed because I mention its (few) limits.

Not only that, but in a previous post of mine I pointed the finger at network problems (ie not the phone) for the lacklustre reported 3G performance in the US, and yet I still get comments such as XamaX's.

Don't you realise that this almost religious over-reaction is counterproductive? I know people who specifically don't want one because of the uncool "enthusiast" connotations.

The fact is that many websites have Flash. Currently, the iPhone doesn't render them. Java is missing, too. Hence the UK Advertising Standards Authority recently banning one of Apple's ads for being misleading when it said "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone."

In terms of the perennial question of "Do people WANT the real PC Internet on a mobile device?", the answer is some do, some don't, for some sites, some of the time. In certain cases a mobile-specific site is convenient and more useable, but in other instances it's incredibly frustrating if you're trying to use a familiar feature and it's not there. The best sites (eg Google) offer you both an optimised version and the "real" PC one.

DB