Mozilla Hitting 'Brick Walls' Getting Firefox on Phones

meteorit writes "Mozilla has been working on a mobile version of Firefox since last year, and is now looking to repeat the success of Firefox on the PC. Although development seems not to have been completed, it is known that informal negotiations have already started with mobile network operators. Firefox Mobile is scheduled to be launched by the end of the year and the inaugural version will be compatible with the Linux and Windows Mobile operating systems. Work is already underway to determine what the browser's UI will look like. In the meantime those negotiations seem to be hitting 'brick walls', as cellphone operators resist the intrusion of the open web onto their platforms."

Comments

As of now

[Corpuscavernosa]

Opera is the king of mobile browsers IMHO. IE, as expected, is marginal at best. On my Windows Mobile 6 phone, Opera cruises along.

As a loyal Firefox user, I'd LOVE to see a mobile version if it can compete with the speed of Opera.

Re:As of now

[mOdQuArK!]

Are they working off the Firefox 3 code base? That's supposedly been improved quite a bit, performance-wise.

Re:As of now

[Brian Gordon]

I'm not a loyal anything user, but I really dislike the locked-down American cellphone situation. I'm not using my buying power to support apple/at&t for their nazi control over their device (even if you jailbreak it, you paid for the lock and so supported it) or any other platform, including opera mobile. Obviously I can't get by without a cellphone, but I just have a basic $20 KRAZR, no smart phone nonsense, and no putting $500 in the pockets of someone using it to get more locked down phones into the hands of the public.

Re:As of now

[Naughty Bob]

As a loyal Firefox user, I'd LOVE to see a mobile version if it can compete with the speed of Opera.

With Opera (mini and, i think, mobile), the pages you request are sent via Opera's servers, where they are put through some kind of compression. The upshot is that not only is Opera quicker, but I can visit almost twice the number of pages for my money. In practice, given that you can set it to not download pictures, I get about 3 times more pages-per-buck than when I use the browser the phone comes with.

I could seriously become a fanboy at this rate.

Re:As of now

[FonzCam]

Opera is the king of the user installed browser, WM6 phones will come with Internet Explorer installed, the iPhone and Nokia S60 phones come with a WebKit based browser.

I'm not sure why anyone is expecting handset manufacturers and networks to drop their current default browsers in favour of an unproved and as yet unfinished Mozilla product.

Re:As of now

[nxtw]

Opera Mobile is a regular web browser that does not go through Opera's servers. It'll use your device's connection settings, so it could end up connecting through your wireless provider's WAP/HTTP gateway if your device is set up to use it. (The rendering engine in the current version of Opera Mobile is old - the PC & Wii versions are newer)

Opera Mini is a completely different product.

Re:As of now

[Naughty Bob]

Opera mini connects through that same WAP/HTTP gateway. It's just that you are, effectively, visiting pages via Opera's proxy server.

Re:As of now

[hitmark]

only opera mini use the compression trick of the two. but there is a competing browser for windows mobile based phones, but the name slips me.

Re:As of now

[jgrahn]

With Opera (mini and, i think, mobile), the pages you request are sent via Opera's servers, where they are put through some kind of compression. The upshot is that not only is Opera quicker, but I can visit almost twice the number of pages for my money.

Thanks for mentioning it so I can avoid Opera Mini.

I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server which supports Content-Encoding:gzip. Unless servers normally don't compress their responses ... hm. I should reread the Apache documentation.

Re:As of now

[bheekling]

Dammit, incorrectly modded you "redundant". Posting to remove the mod _

Re:As of now

[zlogic]

Some forums, powered by vBulletin, are over 120 kilobytes per page (without images), probably has to do something with badly formatted HTML and a lot of Javascript. Opera's servers compress these to about 6-8 KB, also without images. That's more than 10 times less traffic.

Re:As of now

[Naughty Bob]

Thanks for mentioning it so I can avoid Opera Mini.

Hey, don't mention it.

I'm not really using a mobile browser for its speed, the main benefit for me is that it saves me c.£150 a year. And by 'quicker' I mean in comparison to the browser the phone comes with. In, you know, real life.

Re:As of now

[Animaether]

On the other hand, all data you retrieve goes through Opera's servers.

Re:As of now

[outZider]

From what I understand, Opera Mini's servers deliver a package containing the html and other viewable content in one compressed bundle. All the well-designed name resolvers and browsers can't help the fact that latency generally sucks on low-power mobile networks, EDGE and below. The fewer requests you have to make (resolve > request > deliver), the better your experience will be.

Re:As of now

[pas256]

The question is, why even both with the carriers... Firefox should be going straight to the manufacturers!

Re:As of now

[Doogie5526]

I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server which supports Content-Encoding:gzip.

Never used Opera on a cellphone, but from what I've read, the proxy will scale down the images before sending to the browser. No need to download the full res if you're viewing on a tiny screen. The browser does give you the option to download the full res version if requested, but i'm sure 90% of the time you're just using the images for navigation.

I'm sure it's obvious by now, but scaling down the images will reduce the bandwidth way more than gzipping them. Also, the proxy could add gzip compression even if the web server doesn't use it.

Re:As of now

[Naughty Bob]

Yup, that's the downside. And one I can accept, though others might feel differently.

I value my privacy, but have judged that, so long as I avoid sending sensitive passwords, bank card data etc., I am happy for a bunch of Swedish nerds to have access to my mobile browsing data. A damn sight happier than letting my phone company have the same data.

Re:As of now

[X0563511]

They don't need to drop it and switch, what would be nice is if they allowed the user to put it on.

Re:As of now

[enemi]

it uses their own proprietary markup language which leaves out all the data that is not cellphone-worthy (flash javascript whatnot), compresses the text quite a bit and compresses the images for the tiny display. this is where you save the most euro/megabyte

Re:As of now

[ronocdh]

even if you jailbreak it, you paid for the lock and so supported it

How so? Apple gets a substantial cut from the monthly AT&T revenues from the phone, which was negotiated to encourage Apple to actively work against jailbreakers. By buying the phone and jailbreaking it, you're really paying only for the device, and depriving Apple (and AT&T) of the monthly revenue stream the jailbreak is designed to ensure.

Re:As of now

[LarsG]

The compression goes way beyond gzip. It essentially pre-digests the webpages.

Re:As of now

[keeboo]

Try Ziproxy then. It compresses all your data and you may use any browser you want.

Re:As of now

[TheRaven64]

Does FireFox even support their platform? Is there a Symbian port of Gecko, and how does it compare, feature-wise and in terms of memory footprint, to the WebKit port that Nokia are funding?

Re:As of now

[TheRaven64]

How do they stop it? My cheap (Nokia UMTS) phone lets me run any software I want. Well, obviously not any software - it needs to be software written for the phone's OS, which is Symbian (S60). Please can you point me to the FireFox S60 download? I don't see it anywhere on the FireFox download site. In contrast, I can easily grab the trial version of Opera (the phone came with an older version) and the latest firmware from Nokia includes a browser based on WebKit.

Re:As of now

[D4MO]

The amusing thing is that the most "open" platform at the moment is windows mobile. Even if you get a subsidised / locked one, it's easy to modify. There's a very active ROM scene (though it's a legal grey area), you can install whatever you like, and write what you want for it in C++ or .Net compact framework. I have skype, jabber client, remote desktop, vnc.

Getting symbian updates, even on unlocked phone is entirely at the whim of the manufacture, which usually doesn't happen.

But yeah, the cost of an unlocked phone is prohibitive.

Re:As of now

[stbill79]

Agreed - AT&T is a definite negative to the US tech market. I'd say slice 'n dice them back up into 10 competing companies, but in the least they need to be restricted from controlling both the ISP/backbone/cable business and also a large part of the wireless system. The wireless carriers will not have their cake and eat it to. Prices have not come down while technology has improved leaps and bounds - in the US, we all still pay at least $40-$50/month for basic phone service. There are two markets and the wireless carriers cannot control both simultaneously: Either I want basic phone service at true cost (see third world countries for reference) of about $5-$10 for metered calls/text without all the bells and whistles. OR I want Japanese/S.Korea style access, availability, and speed from the platform of my choice, and the wireless carrier is nothing more than a link to the internet, not knowing whether I'm connecting with a phone, pc, or some clever hybrid not manufactured and 'approved' by the wireless corp. I should not be paying over $70/month for basic phone, text messages, very restricted internet access at special 'hotspots' or reduced bandwidth. I'm soon going to be expecting

Re:As of now

[Dionysus]

I am happy for a bunch of Swedish nerds to have access to my mobile browsing data.

Opera is Norwegian, and Opera Mini doesn't do ssl so you can't do your banking through the Mini.

Re:As of now

[X0563511]

On my phone, any third-party content needs to be signed, or it won't install/run.

You can bypass this first, but to obtain a "developer key" (IMEI number with signature) you have to develop something for the phone.

(sidekick)

Re:As of now

[D4MO]

The carries will heavily customise and modify phones, adding and removing what they please. For instance, vodafone set on of the soft keys to vodafone Live by default to try to keep users in their walled garden, regardless of the factory setup of the phone.

Re:As of now

[hkmwbz]

Opera Mini does support SSL. The connection between the phone and the proxy is encrypted as well.

Re:As of now

[hkmwbz]

Opera Mini supports JavaScript. Even Ajax, but with some limitations. There are articles at dev.opera.com detailing what it supports, and there are only a few exceptions.

Re:As of now

[hkmwbz]

Opera is Norwegian, and Norway has extremely strict privacy laws. Opera has been in business for more than ten years, and is definitely trustworthy.

Re:As of now

[VGPowerlord]

Unless servers normally don't compress their responses ... hm. I should reread the Apache documentation.

Apache does not compress by default. You have to install mod_deflate and set up the DEFLATE output handler first. The sample instructions are a bit simplistic, but they should work.

As someone else noted in one of the sibling replies, gzipping images isn't going to get you anywhere... the Opera proxies actually downgrade the image quality (and size? I'm not sure, I've never used Opera Mini) to improve speed.

Re:As of now

[VGPowerlord]

I apologize, the link for sample instructions in the previous post was wrong.

Re:As of now

[DDLKermit007]

It's your choice as a consumer to buy locked down phones, or not. It's not an American cellphone situation. It's called market forces. As you yourself have said, you paid $20 for a KRAZR. Which is oddly what most budget shoppers do. Yes it's locked down, but you paid once again, $20. Same goes for the iPhone crowd. If they want the iPhone they have to play by the carriers rules. Nothing says they HAVE to buy an iPhone. It's their problem if they want a status symbol that badly. Cellphones cost money to make. End of story. Yes you paid $20 for your phone, but you'll pay the other $150 (plus more I'm sure) during the 2 year contract you get stuck in. Me? I pay whatever the cost for a phone that does everything I want, and is not locked down in the slightest (Nokia N95). Every time I hear someone bitch about phones being locked down, or not being able to do what they want because of the damned phone companies I just smile, and remember they have no concept of long term cost vs paying up front for what they are getting. You pay far more at the end of the day with contracts for what you get, and are very limited. It's not the phone companies fault if people can't think for themselves.

Re:As of now

[The Evil Couch]

Maybe, but Firefox has this plugin. And it's really hard to find a more useful one.

Re:As of now

[Columcille]

And while you continue your silly protest over normal market practices, I'll be enjoying my iPhone.

Re:As of now

[nxtw]

Opera Mobile is a Web browser that renders HTML/CSS and does JavaScript. It connects to web servers directly if a WAP/HTTP gateway/proxy is not configured. Pages are fully rendered on the device; it's written in native code (C/C++) and is almost certainly based on the 8.6 version of the Opera rendering code. (Opera for Wii uses something close to the in-beta 9.5 code, Opera for Windows/Unix/OS X is at release version 9.26, and Opera Mobile has been at 8.65 for awhile.)

Opera Mini is a Web browser that renders specially processed pages from Opera's proxy server to reduce rendering & download time. It's written in J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition).

Re:As of now

[dwater]

Signing is part of the development process and has nothing to do with end users. The applications also need designing, coding, testing, and so on...not sure I get your point.

Re:As of now

[mjtg]

I am happy for a bunch of Swedish nerds to have access to my mobile browsing data

Actually, they're Norwegian nerds.

Re:As of now

[zoips]

I think the general point was that if Mozilla cannot get their app signed then it won't be installable, and because and end user also will not likely be able to obtain a key, they cannot sign it either in order to force the installation.

Re:As of now

[CharlieHedlin]

I have never had a problem putting any program I want to on my AT&T windows mobile phones.

Re:As of now

[dwater]

why would mozilla not be able to get their apps signed? Even I can do that.

Re:As of now

[MidnightBrewer]

You seem to be referring to the wireless carrier as a cell phone provider and a mobile device internet provider at the same time. Is that your intention?

In Japan, cell phones are irrevocably locked to the provider, and access to the internet outside of the walled garden, while possible, is exorbitantly expensive (try paying $3 just to start up the browser). Japan is one of the worst markets in the world for vendor lock-in vis a vis the cell phone.

The ISPs, on the other hand, are very reasonable, advancing rapidly, and even starting to push things like television on demand through their fiber connections.

Re:As of now

[X0563511]

Because they only sign apps that cost money to install through the catalog, of which the carrier gets a cut. I forgot to mention this...

Im not sure if the licence on firefox would allow that, but I'm fairly sure Mozilla would be upset about it.

Re:As of now

[McNally]

The question is, why even both with the carriers... Firefox should be going straight to the manufacturers!

The manufacturers will produce the devices demanded by their customers. Unfortunately for your theory, you are not the manufacturer's customer. The manufacturer's customer is the carrier.

Re:As of now

[dwater]

I'm confused. I'm not sure who 'they' is/are, but I had no problem getting my app signed (apart from a few bugs/etc). Furthermore, my app is not required to be on any catalogue. I don't have to sell it at all, if I don't want.

Am I missing something?

Re:As of now

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server which supports Content-Encoding:gzip. Unless servers normally don't compress their responses

That's because you're stupid.

Opera rips all the unnecessary bloat out of the web page that you don't want on a cell phone anyway, re-sizes the images, sticks the whole thing in one file, compresses the lot, and downloads it to your phone.

Stupid.

Re:As of now

[laffer1]

I realize this won't come out as I intend. I have not been following the development of the mobile version of Firefox, but have they designed it to work in a low memory environment? Many people complain about the memory usage on systems with over a gigabyte of memory. Firefox proponents claim this is due to caching; provided this is true, can the browser run efficiently with almost zero memory for caching?

I'm shocked they didn't have a company lined up before the effort to port was started.

Re:As of now

[Ilgaz]

With Opera (mini and, i think, mobile), the pages you request are sent via Opera's servers, where they are put through some kind of compression. The upshot is that not only is Opera quicker, but I can visit almost twice the number of pages for my money.

Thanks for mentioning it so I can avoid Opera Mini.

I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with
a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server
which supports Content-Encoding:gzip. Unless servers normally don't
compress their responses ... hm.
I should reread the Apache documentation.

gzip? Do you know the size of current web pages including graphics? Try to run a 56K modem for nostalgia and browse some regular sites you visit.

Opera has been doing mobile browsers for years, mini is an option for the people who are ignored by those vendors for years. You know, not everyone can buy/need a Windows Mobile PDA as a cell phone. (!) For Opera Mini you just need a J2ME (Java) supporting handset, that is all. They also offer it for free, as a favor to near billion people having those cell phones.

It seems you have a very good PDA/Windows with a decent 3G connection and forgot about the "rest of us" while writing this message. Someone should also mark some open source foundation with millions of dollars as "troll" for missing a significant (majority) of real World for years.

Re:As of now

[Seumas]

I have no idea how they'd get it to run well on mobile devices unless they also seriously cripple it. There's nothing special about my firefox install on kde here, but if I go to bed with the browser open, it'll be closed when I wake up. It consumes a couple gigs of ram and then just craps out on its own.

It's only consuming 400mb right now, but then again it was only relaunched about fifteen minutes ago. And of course, as they say, the problem is all because of that "back button feature". You know, the one where it caches two or three gigabytes of web pages in memory so you can have an uber fast back button or whatever.

Re:As of now

[AvitarX]

Where do you save?

I have not had a contract for a while, but I am still paying the same for my service as I was with one. And as I shop around I still can't find a better deal (39.99 1500/month no free nights/weekends). I've paid this rate for 2.5 years now, and only when there are promotional rates does anything even come close.

Re:As of now

[Andyman1134]

If you want a non locked-down phone, go with Nokia. I am on my fifth one now (10 years later) and my second carrier (AT&T now). My phone has never been locked, it allows me to put anything on it. I want music? I can use my mp3's. I want video? I use Mediacoder to get it in the right format, and then no problems. I can put on any software I want, signed or not. The software to hook up my phone was even free from the website. As far as I can tell, they are the only manufacturer that work this way.

Re:As of now

[bunratty]

No, they have not designed it to work in a low memory environment. The minimum memory requirement for mobile Firefox is the same as for the desktop version: 64 MB. That means that mobile Firefox will be limited to running on smartphones at first. In a few years, even typical mobile phones should come with enough memory to run Firefox. I would think the bigger problems would be the small screen and small keyboard.

It is common to see complaints about Firefox's memory usage on Slashdot, but in reality very few people (out of 140 million users) experience serious memory issues. On the MozillaZine forums, discussion of serious memory problems is almost non-existent. Caching will not cause Firefox to use a gigabyte of memory, and neither will fragmentation as far as I'm aware. I don't think anyone knows exactly why Firefox mysteriously uses many hundreds of megabytes of memory for no reason for some users. The users who complain about the problem think it's a problem every Firefox user experiences, so they don't seem to feel the need to explain the details of the problem. I used Firefox 3 beta 3 on Windows for a week, and it was using only 150 MB when I closed it (the peak was 250 MB). Now that many smartphones come with 512 MB of RAM, it doesn't look like lack of RAM will be a problem for Firefox except on low-end smartphones in the near future.

Re:As of now

[RockDoctor]

Obviously I can't get by without a cellphone,

Not obvious.
I agree that a cell phone is useful - which is why I have one - but "can't get by without one" is a much stiffer test to pass. Have you ever tried it - just switch the phone off one day and don't switch it back on again. I assume that you've got a land line at home and at work, so that people can contact you when you're being reasonably predictable ; some of your friends are likely to know the phone numbers of the bars you frequent. Cell phones are dangerous to use (even hands-free) when driving, and are annoying (at least) on public transport, so you can get on with something productive in your moving time. So people who have a good reason to contact you, can do so.

but I just have a basic $20 KRAZR, no smart phone nonsense, and no putting $500 in the pockets of someone using it to get more locked down phones into the hands of the public.

My phone only gets changed when the keypad wears out - takes an average of about 3 years. I've sent 3 photos from the phone (having a basic pocket camera with you is the most useful thing about modern phones, IMHO) in the 2 years I've had it, and judging from receiving my first ever "multimedia message" this morning, I guess that my mountaineering buddy Tony has just got a new phone which does do MMMessging. Very pretty, a sort of animated pattern with a cheesy MIDI sound. Fascinating. But not actually worth a lot.
Because I often have need for telecoms in foreign countries where I don't trust the communications supplied by the client (e.g., if I need to check what we're contracted to supply, and what is an extra charge), then I need to have a phone on contract ; that gives me a certain number of minutes talk and a number of texts inclusive every month. And I've never reached even half-way on the meter, despite being on the lowest available contract rate. I guess that I'm not a very compliant little consumer.

Re:As of now

[mdwh2]

I considered this issue, although it's not clear it's any different to my phone company knowing where I go (plus they have my details...)

Re:As of now

[Andy Dodd]

Yeah, given that they are targeting Windows Mobile as a destination platform, I don't see why they care about negotiating with network operators.

Nothing prevents users from installing third-party apps on 95%+ of WinMo phones out there.

Strangely enough, almost all of the Linux-based phones on the market (Most are Motorola phones) are incredibly locked-down, probably more so than anything except for the most proprietary manufacturer-specific platforms. Nokia's Linux-based devices aren't actually phones, and the TrollTech and OpenMoko stacks don't have much market penetration at all.

Re:As of now

[Mantaman]

I have opera Mini on my N95 along with my 'built in' symbian browser. It does feel faster that the built in browser but gives an 'overview' page that you cant read but see the entire page. It does render full web pages faster and it is easy to read after you zoom into the text. Mostly I use the browser on my phone to find things when im out and about and to read mostly news pages (including this wonderful web page) when poping out for a smoke. Overall it works quite well and Im happy with it.

Re:As of now

[bunratty]

No, the back/forward cache is not going to use hundreds of megabytes fifteen minutes after you start the browser. It holds only up to the last eight pages you visited, for an average memory usage of about 32 MB. It sounds like you are experiencing a very serious memory problem that hardly any Firefox users experience. Typical memory usage is 100-150 MB on Windows.

Re:As of now

[X0563511]

On the sidekick, for an end-user to install an app, it has to be in the catalog. The catalog is locked down by the carrier and danger (the phone OS people).

If you get a dev key, YOU can do what you want with YOUR phone, but others still cannot use your apps unless they have dev keys as well, or the app is in the catalog.

Catalog apps usually cost money to download, but I noticed a few (2 in like 50) are free.

(T-Mobile, Sidekick Slide (developer.danger.com) )

Re:As of now

[amRadioHed]

Verizon does the same crap. I had one of the soft keys on my last phone permanently set to their useless Buy it Now service.

Re:As of now

[dwater]

Well, it's nothing like that for *my* phone, which is running S60 - and I'm sure it's similar for UIQ and some others too. It's possible to get apps signed as freeware, or you can pay something like $20 to have it signed.

I suggest you choose to buy phones you can install s/w on yourself, and where you aren't directly involved in the signing process (like I said, that's part of the development process). The Nokia N95 seems to be quite popular, and even the Nokia 6120 Classi (which is much cheaper) is well thought of (there's a newer version with Wifi, but I forget the model number).

Re:As of now

[pas256]

Sure... if you are in the United States, where "customers" allow corporations to do whatever they like. Walled-garden - sure sign me up. Locked iphone - sure sign me up! What a land of opportunity!!! In Australia and other parts of the world, you can by a phone that hasn't been crippled by carrier. A carrier is simply that - a carrier... revolutionary isn't it?

Re:As of now

[Seumas]

Well, having also used firefox on Windows frequently, I can confirm that "100-150mb" on Windows is unlikely. I've never heard of anyone having such a light memory footprint. In my experience across many installations over the last couple years is that 400 to 600mb on Windows is the norm.

I suppose consumption on linux is a little more iffy since it perhaps will consume as much memory as is available, but even then it should not regularly consume 1gb, 2gb or more and then require you to kill the pid and restart.

I frankly don't think the average firefox users buys the idea that memory issues are due to the history page caching functionality and for all of the people of similar experiences who have posted to related firefox articles over the last couple years, I've almost never seen anyone posting to say "My firefox is just dandy and pretty much only consumes about 150mb!".

Don't misunderstand me. I've been a firefox fanboy since day one (I was an engineer at Netscape back in the 90s, until just after the code was opensourced). I also admit that my experience with several gigs of memory the last couple months or so is an abnormal experience (for me, at least) but that aside I can never recall a time when Firefox consumed less than many hundreds of megabytes with anymore more than a couple tabs open.

Because

[ArchieBunker]

companies think that free=no good.

Re:Because

[bgillespie]

But if you give software away for free, that makes a more competitive and consumer friendly market! Why do something silly like that when vendor lock-in is such an easy and lucrative way to run a business?

Re:Because

[Jeff DeMaagd]

But if you give software away for free, that makes a more competitive and consumer friendly market! Why do something silly like that when vendor lock-in is such an easy and lucrative way to run a business?

They don't necessarily make more money being consumer friendly, and cutting a little on costs here might net them more expenses in the long run. They don't make money by allowing the market being competitive. Both are benefits to the consumer, not the service provider. The article explains more along this line.

Re:Because

[RLiegh]

Not exactly, it's because mobile phone companies think that having complete platform control is a lot more important than allowing an open browser to upset their applecart.

And from their perspective -they're right. If you don't control the application you want to make sure that the people who do control it are either under your influence, or have similar goals. Open source isn't under their influence, and the goals of open source are diametrically opposite of the manufacturers'.

Re:Because

[RonnyJ]

Is 'Firefox Mobile' really going to be offered as completely free to the mobile phone operators though?

If that's really the case, then why the need for the negotiation mentioned in the topic - let people download it themselves. I suspect, however, that they're looking for some sort of bundling deal.

Re:Because

[Billly Gates]

The consumers are left out of this equation.

Many will think enough is enough with paying $3 for some crappy midi file for a ring tone and want to run their phone like their pcs.

I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps and not pay through the nose for their drm infested crappy software.

If you read my posts I am in favor of the free market and not some gnu zealot but when a company dictates how to use something I paid for and halts innovation I get mad.

I am not the only one and a truly free phone will attract all the developers and therefore bring all teh apps and cool games. After this their business model is done. You can't just lock a whole market up. Eventually someone like lets say google and their andriod sdk will come along and provide serious competition.

Re:Because

[bgillespie]

Should the bottom line always be profits?

Practically speaking, of course, it always is. But in the end, it all comes down to a class war between the wealthy and the not-as-wealthy in society. Anti-competitive trends in a market mean more profits for the "company", which translates primarily to more profits for the wealthy executives and investors associated with the company. Competitive trends, on the other hand, mean better value for the people who use the good or service, which translates to a smaller benefit for a larger group of people. When the wealthy executives and investors are making the choices, clearly the expected outcome is the one we're seeing here.

It seems to me that we're not necessarily disagreeing here.

Re:Because

[vux984]

Eventually someone like lets say google and their andriod sdk will come along and provide serious competition.

Yeah, lets all bow down at the alter of google. They'll just force us to view ads while data mining our conversations and text messages. I'd sure like to get in on that.

Re:Because

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Should the bottom line always be profits?

But that's what the bottom line is, that's what the expression means.

I realize that we might not be disagreeing on several points.

I think part of the problem is that there aren't very many wireless carriers, though oddly enough, there are more wireless carriers in more areas than there are wired ISPs. I think the hope was that the 700MHz spectrum would shake things up a bit, but there was the same hope with WiMax too.

Re:Because

[erroneus]

...even so, it's only a matter of time.

Since recently there has been a ruling to the effect of preventing carriers from locking out equipment not sold by them, there will be pure equipment makers who will find generic software offerings such as FireFox mobile quite attractive when adding value to their hardware offerings. The first one to shed their fear of control loss will be the first one to find that giving the consumer what they want often leads to consumer loyalty and enduring profits.

Re:Because

[Miseph]

I think it's a sign that capitalism is deeply and critically flawed that things are turning out the way they are. It's not a good sign for the free market that we have to resort to socialism in order to restore basic economic and consumer freedoms.

It's a sinking ship you cling to, just in case you hadn't noticed.

Re:Because

[garett_spencley]

"I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps and not pay through the nose for their drm infested crappy software.

If you read my posts I am in favor of the free market and not some gnu zealot but when a company dictates how to use something I paid for and halts innovation I get mad." - Billy Gates

I love the irony.

Re:Because

[that this is not und]

But in the end, it all comes down to a class war between the wealthy and the not-as-wealthy in society.

Well, you can try to reduce the conflict to that. There's even a name for that point of view.

Re:Because

[that this is not und]

We're supposed to love google.

They use Linux a lot.

They hire a lot of smart people.

Isn't it self-evident that we're supposed to love google?

Re:Because

[bgillespie]

But that's what the bottom line is, that's what the expression means.

I understand that that's the common usage of the expression, but it can also be used to mean "the deciding factor", which is what I intended. All I'm suggesting is that in an ideal world perhaps money wouldn't be the only thing that corporations considered when making business decisions.

Re:Because

[trytoguess]

Eventually someone like lets say google and their andriod sdk will come along and provide serious competition.

Huh... whatever did happen to OpenMoko? I figure you meant they're not a serious competition in the cell phone market, but I'm somewhat surprised the enthusiasm for it died down in favor of a phone that doesn't exist yet.

Re:Because

[Sancho]

The first OpenMoko phone didn't even have EDGE data rates. It had some neat features, but let's face it--it was doomed to failure because of this.

Re:Because

[amirulbahr]

cough. android. cough cough

Re:Because

[TheRaven64]

Should the bottom line always be profits? Not if you have a triple bottom line.

Re:Because

[Rich0]

Firefox took off on the PC because they marketed it to consumers - not megacorps.

Mozilla being upset about cell phone companies not deploying firefox is about as silly as them being upset about Microsoft bundling it with windows. What did you expect?

What they need is a PC-based installer that will bluetooth sync with a phone, identify the appropriate version to install, hack into it (with the owner's permission), and install the browser. Then it will take off. That's exactly how it took off on the PC - it still doesn't get preinstalled by most PC OEMs as far as I know.

Bypass the megacorp and their controls, and market direct to consumer. And make it easy to install...

Re:Because

[Solandri]

I think it's a sign that capitalism is deeply and critically flawed that things are turning out the way they are. It's not a good sign for the free market that we have to resort to socialism in order to restore basic economic and consumer freedoms.

No, it's not a sign that capitalism is "deeply and critically flawed." Capitalism works most of the time. There are certain localized areas of the solution space where capitalism doesn't work. This includes the Prisoner's Dilemma (where individuals acting in their own best interests arrive at the worst possible outcome for all), the Tragedy of the Commons (where individuals acting in their own best interests arrive at the worst possible outcome for everyone else), and a monopoly (where an individual, company, or cartel controls enough of the market to thwart free market economics). Phone carrier lock-in is just a localized monopoly.

It's highly unusual for any solution to be effective 100% of the time in all possible cases. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that capitalism doesn't work in certain cases. The key is to recognize those cases, and enact legislation which makes up for those shortcomings (e.g. environmental protection laws, fisheries management, anti-trust laws). Damning capitalism entirely because it fails in certain limited cases is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and about as ideologically boneheaded as believing capitalism is always the best solution. What's needed are laws assuring the phone carrier market operates efficiently - allow people to port their phone numbers, allow non-vendor hardware to operate over the networks, and a cell-phone version of network neutrality where any non-vendor apps can run over the network.

I haven't quite decided yet about multi-year contracts since they are a legitimately chosen by customers - the problem being that apparently 99% of US customers would rather amortize their purchase and pay more, rather than pay the phone costs lump sum up front for less. At this point the only contract legislation I would support is forcing the telecos to give me a discount once I am out of contract or if I bring my own phone, since then they are no longer subsidizing the phone cost with my monthly fee. As it is right now, I pay the same monthly fee as someone whose monthly fee is subsidizing a $500 phone, even though I bought and paid for my phone myself.

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

No, maybe it's because they've only just started figuring out the UI. It's premature for them to be trying to make deployment details when they haven't got a clue what they are going to be deploying yet.

Re:Because

[LarsG]

Hack into it?

You do know that in the developed world, most phones support installing 3rd party software without the need for hacks?

Re:Because

[Planesdragon]

But that's what the bottom line is, that's what the expression means.

I understand that that's the common usage of the expression, but it can also be used to mean "the deciding factor", which is what I intended. All I'm suggesting is that in an ideal world perhaps money wouldn't be the only thing that corporations considered when making business decisions.

It's not common usage, it's the origin of the term. Just like "comparing apples to oranges" is based on fruit.

Corporations are legally obligated to consider their bottom line before all other considerations. Any corporation you see that is doing something charitable is doing that because they have a plausible theory that it will help their bottom line. There are no exceptions, because if you see exceptions they quickly go away due to a shareholder lawsuit or SEC smackdown.

For example: GM and Wal-Mart engage in lobbying for government-centralized health care. They do not spend those dollars because they think it's a good idea for the country. They do it because they beleive they will save money on medical bills and turnover if they do.

Re:Because

[k33l0r]

Yes, because we all know that Communism worked out so well. You only need to look at the surviving centrally planned economies to know that a free market is definitely the wrong way to go.

Re:Because

[ArAgost]

AFAIK Nokia runs Webkit, so it seems like price is not the main issue here.

Re:Because

[smaddox]

The free market works because those with similar goals band together. Working together with other people isn't socialism. Socialism is having a governing body telling you how to work together.

Re:Because

[Kalriath]

Ironically, like someone suggested earlier, Windows Mobile is currently the most open platform for developing on or using. Microsoft has designed in the ability to block unsigned apps from running, but they then conveniently signed the tool that you can install to disable that restriction (the Device Security Manager or whatever it's called) - any copy of Visual Studio has it (and I think it's. in the free Windows Mobile SDK) As well as that, you can develop third party apps in C++, C, VB, .NET, pretty much anything that compiles binaries! It even supports Javascript in the browser now ;)

Re:Because

[dryeo]

Corporations are legally obligated to consider their bottom line before all other considerations. Any corporation you see that is doing something charitable is doing that because they have a plausible theory that it will help their bottom line. There are no exceptions, because if you see exceptions they quickly go away due to a shareholder lawsuit or SEC smackdown.

This is only true for corporations that incorporated with one goal, to make money.
It is quite possible for a corporation to have other goals. Think of charitable corporations as one example. Really it all depends on the charter they used when incorporating. As one example someone else posted this link further down, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise.

Re:Because

[op12]

Many will think enough is enough with paying $3 for some crappy midi file for a ring tone and want to run their phone like their pcs.

I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps and not pay through the nose for their drm infested crappy software.
Actually, often it's only in high end phones that you get the options you mentioned. As long as you're careful about choosing a carrier, you can do the things you mentioned. For instance, I have a Win Mobile device on Sprint and I can easily put my MP3s on it and use them as ringtones, can create my own apps for the phone, can mess with the registry, and can install apps like Opera Mobile, an NES emulator, etc.

Re:Because

[Koiu Lpoi]

*clap clap clap*

You win the gold star for today. A man talks about the clear problems with capitalism, and you turn him around and say "BUT COMMUNISM IS BAD." It's called a straw man. You can't argue against the center by saying he belongs to the edge.

Then again, you won over somebody, as you got modded up.

Re:Because

[Miseph]

The problem is that we see these same sets of circumstances arriving in virtually every sector, and making these laws is completely contrary to free market economics. Capitalism makes some fundamental assumptions about how things work that are simply untrue, particularly about the values it assumes to be either infinite or zero, such as consumer population, work force, competition, supply of natural resources*, barriers to entry, consumer awareness and collusion. The fact that all of these things are limited, and more importantly are intrinsically connected, is completely contrary to classical free market theory.

*The "scarce resources" line refers to the limited availability of resources at any given time, but it is assumed that there will always be at least an equivalent scarceness (and therefore an equivalent supply), and capitalism has a great deal of trouble dealing with the notion that we could simply run out of something on a global scale.

Re:Because

[Billly Gates]

Capitalism works very well and I disagree.

It sucks we can't have everything but it motives people to take on jobs that are more important for the community as they pay more.

First off there is no capitalism when the government hands out free monopolies under the condition they act all nice and be regulated. later the maga telecoms just deregulated and now we have the worst of both worlds. No competion and no regulation to keep them acting like monopolists.

Europe is 5 years ahead of North America and their phones have less drm and they have no restrictive contracts for alot cheaper. Why? Because competition exists.

I think if the government can just allow anyone to compete the problem will go away.

Google or someone being open is not socialism but competition from someone finally big enough.

Re:Because

[Billly Gates]

The tragedy of the commons is example of communism and socialism and not capitalism.

If land owners came in and charged rent the problem would go away. Yes wool would go up in price but at least the whole market for lambs and wool would not go with it and it would have worked its way out.

Don't forget the iPhone

[stokessd]

There's certainly room for it on the iPhone as well. Safari is all nice, but I would like adblock on it, especially on the edge network when every byte counts.

Sheldon

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[pebs]

There's certainly room for it on the iPhone as well. Safari is all nice, but I would like adblock on it, especially on the edge network when every byte counts.

NoScript would also help in that respect.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[abigor]

Well, Adblock for Safari obviously exists: http://safariadblock.sourceforge.net/ , so I guess it's just a matter of Apple allowing 3rd party software installs. I don't own an iPhone, so I'm not really sure what the situation is there.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Safari (for Mac) has a downloadable ad-blocker addon called PithHelmet; I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it appear for the iPhone at some point.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[pjludlow]

Considering a lot of the ads I see are Flash based ads then by way of viewing the web on the iPhone you already have a built-in ad blocker because it doesn't support Flash. It's not a bug it's a feature sort of thing.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[Winckle]

Thank you so much for that.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[thsths]

There's certainly room for it on the iPhone as well. The fact that the iPhone is the "most open" platform say it all. Phones are a convenient way for the networks to control customers. This also means that they are not enabling technology. I am confident that Firefox will change this, but it may take some time.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[porneL]

If you set up a VPN you can browse via Privoxy (removes ads) and Ziproxy (compresses the rest).

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[keeboo]

and Ziproxy (compresses the rest).

This is a very interesting software for mobile web.
At work, we do use that as a HTTP WAN accelerator (dedicated city-city links, quite expensive ones) and it's a life saver.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[maxume]

Is that a fact?

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[teh kurisu]

The lack of ad blocking doesn't bother me on Mobile Safari as much as it does on the desktop. I tend to double-tap and zoom in on divs, which essentially obscures most ads. I'd actually like to see the same zooming feature on desktop browsers, maybe with the option of auto-resizing the window rather than zooming.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

mod fucking parent up.

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[LarsG]

iPhone "most open"?

Huh? What country do you live in?

Re:Don't forget the iPhone

[absurdist]

The fact that the iPhone is the "most open" platform say it all.

You are kidding, right? I'm running a Treo 680 GPS which I purchased from ATT Wireless (EVIL!!! OH NOES!!!!!1one) that will run any Palm software I throw at it, including running Opera Mini currently. WITHOUT being hacked. Same thing with my Treo 650 before it. $30 to a phone shop in S.F., and the SIM card was unlocked, so I can use it anywhere in the world there's a GSM network. If you don't do any research into the phone and carrier you're using BEFORE you sign the contract, you've effectively reached out and guided the dick straight up your own ass.

Just another reason to unlock your phone

[sw155kn1f3]

Period. You can't stop software spreading if customers want it.

Re:Just another reason to unlock your phone

[rbanffy]

Tell that to all the folks running Linux on modded XBox 360s.

If the hardware maker is really into screwing the user, something phone makers will consider business as usual, they will do it regardless of what users want.

Re:Just another reason to unlock your phone

[h4rr4r]

People have gotten linux running on 360s, so what is your point?

Also there are working modchips for it.

Bull

[adam1234]

Complete bull. The browser UI hasn't even been developed yet, and the Mozilla community expects the phone community to accept it with open arms?

Come up with an innovative and usable UI *first*, then try to get it onto phones.

Re:Bull

[CableModemSniper]

Usable UI fine, but innovative? Why does a web browser's interface need to be innovative?

Of course they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Phones have a limited amount of memory. Firefox just wouldn't fit after running for a few minutes!

(It's a joke. I use Firefox all the time and rarely see Firefox break 100MB.)

Re:Of course they are

[clark0r]

I guess you haven't discovered the 'tabs' feature yet? I'm using nightly builds of FF3 which seem to leak a LOT less than FF2 and all I have open is Gmail and 3 Slashdot articles and memory usage is already 138,xxx K. Granted that's low but still over 100mb ;)

Re:Of course they are

[toadlife]

(It's a joke. I use Firefox all the time and rarely see Firefox break 100MB.) My Windows Mobile based phone has 10MB of free program memory when no programs are running.

Re:Of course they are

[Saurian_Overlord]

Um, FF 2.0.0.12 with 6 tabs open here, including /. and Gmail, and I haven't broken 80MB yet. Anyway, it's a moot point since even 30 or 40MB is way too much RAM usage for a typical mobile phone.

Re:Of course they are

[Kalriath]

I have 60MB available. WTF are you running?

Re:Of course they are

[bunratty]

They're looking at getting Firefox running on mobile devices with at least 64 MB of RAM. Smartphones today have 128 MB of RAM or more. If you have a typical mobile phone, Opera Mini is probably a better bet for now.

Re:Of course they are

[toadlife]

It's a T-Mobile wing (HTC HERA110)). I had a feeling it was underpowered.

Now, thanks to your post, I see that it is!

It's important to read the article

[93 Escort Wagon]

One reason this walled garden approach benefits cellular operators is that they get paid both by subscribers and by content providers. With open Internet access, only subscribers pay. Another benefit is that their approach reduces use of limited 3G bandwidth, meaning carriers don't have to build a more robust network. I don't know if the blogger is confused himself or is deliberately muddying the waters - but very little of his argument applies to Firefox at all (even tangentially). He is hop-scotching around (such as the quote included above), making it hard to argue against because he seems to be jumping back and forth randomly between about ten different subjects.

So let's assume that the title of his little rant is indicative of what he thought he was writing about. Somehow he seems to be drawing the conclusion that, sans an open-source web browser, people aren't allowed to browse websites of their own choosing! I'd love to see Firefox on mobile platforms; but really - even my friends with Windows Mobile phones are checking their Gmail; I see them looking at all sorts of odd pages; and I have never heard them complain that their carrier won't let them visit any arbitrary page. I do hear them complaining about the crappy internet experience they're having, due to the poor design of the browser; but that's a completely different subject (and while Firefox could potentially address that, Safari already does - and it's got nothing to do with the openness of the browser, per se, anyway).

When the web was first getting onto mobile phones, I realize people weren't given free reign in their browsing habits - but c'mon, that was three or four years ago.

Re:It's important to read the article

[jc42]

Hmmm ... This didn't make sense until I realized that, to the cellular providers, "content" includes ads, while to most users, "content" is everything except the ads. With this understanding, it makes sense that the cellular providers would want to keep firefox out, because firefox allows customers to block content (i.e., ads), and the cellular provider loses income from the content (ad) providers.

More generally, of course, the cellular providers want to be the one deciding which content to block, not the customers. Firefox and the other mozilla browsers allows customers to block undesirable content (ads), thus taking control away from the cellular provider.

It all makes sense to me, in a rather cynical way.

Re:It's important to read the article

[bgillespie]

Wouldn't credit for ads being funneled through a web-browser be given to the website which served them, not the cellular provider which is acting as an ISP? It doesn't seem like ad-blocking would be much of a detriment unless the business plan was to make money off of consumed bandwidth.

Re:It's important to read the article

[alphakappa]

How does the service provider make money from ads on random websites? The website provider makes money, the ad distributor makes money - the service provider does not come into the picture at all. For example, if I visit slashdot using my iPhone on the AT&T network and I click an ad, Slashdot makes money, but neither Apple nor AT&T make a dime off it. Conversely, if I block ads, Slashdot will potentially lose some income, but that wouldn't be a concern to Apple or AT&T.

Re:It's important to read the article

[Jurily]

Opera Mini kicks ass. Shame they don't release it for PC :(

and what do we call Opera?

[shareme]

And what do we call Opera and Safari? has more to do with dismal performance and lost less to do with being open

Their phones??

[Billly Gates]

I thought we owned all own phones like we do computers? Why can't we run our own software? Or develop software for them?

Can you imagine living in a world where you could not develop programs for your own computer?

Fuck em!

Seriously port firefox to andriod only. If enough developers switch to a platform that allows them to compete and run their own software the users will follow. I know many here hate Java but why can't we live in a world that is free?

Would you rather own a locked down phone or one where all the free apps on the internet run on? I would pick the latter.

Consumers run WIndows over Linux and MacOSX because its where the apps are at. The phone companies are going to create the ultimate competitor if they are not careful and dictate to the rest of us what to use.

Re:Their phones??

[RobBebop]

As a pretext, I agree with the benefits of openness and software freedom. The point of my response is to address where users who are not tech-geeks would prefer a closed solution.

I thought we owned all own phones like we do computers? Why can't we run our own software? Or develop software for them?

We can't run our own software because it hasn't been tested. If loading and executing applications on phones was trivial, you'd see text-message exploits that load ad-software onto your phone and then send copies of the exploited message to your entire contact list. I am speculating here, but the base Operating Systems running your phones are tested in their plain vanilla environments which would be fairly easy to hack with 3rd party development... and that is why you can't do it.

Can you imagine living in a world where you could not develop programs for your own computer?

Could you imagine living in a world where you could not manufacture a wrench or a hammer? Yes, you could. Because like wrenches and hammers, computers are tools for the majority of the population. Who cares how they are made, as long as they do the job?

As a software engineer, it is bad to be locked out from doing development. However, that is why organizations like FSF are competing with MSFT and Apple.

Seriously port firefox to andriod only. If enough developers switch to a platform that allows them to compete and run their own software the users will follow. I know many here hate Java but why can't we live in a world that is free?

I am not sure of details of Android, but I do know that it is from Google and that Google's applications are generally not "Open". They are "free" because they are ad-supported, which appeases the majority of the population, but the are not "free" as defined by all 4 rules of the FSF. I would rather see hardware that is truly "Open" be the basis for this development -- so that I can buy the raw components and fork the design for my own needs.

As far as locking onto any single platform... are you aware that the IBM-PC and a certain brand of OS software became successful because they supported a wide range of hardware platforms?

And as far as Java, I like Java. I've never really heard claims that people don't like it, so maybe you could enlighten me with a response.

Would you rather own a locked down phone or one where all the free apps on the internet run on? I would pick the latter.

I disagree with their pricing scheme for internet access. I would actually prefer a mobile device that is NETWORK AGNOSTIC before I even start talking about which Applications I can and cannot run (as an aside, I have a simple Verizon cell phone that does not have Bluetooth or WiFi... so Network Agnostic phones may actually be more ubiquitous than I know).

And for now, the only application that I need my phone to perform is "voice communication", and it does it satisfactorily. A bonus application would be "not dying after 20 minutes of talking", but that is standard for cheap 20 month old mobile batteries of any kind.

Consumers run WIndows over Linux and MacOSX because its where the apps are at. The phone companies are going to create the ultimate competitor if they are not careful and dictate to the rest of us what to use.

Is your argument targeted at consumers or developers? Are you considering the benefits to vendors or users? Hell... if it were easy, the F/OSS development community would deploy a nationwide WiMax network and offer a line of cellular products with all the bells and whistles for $0.00 a month with "Donate to support the F/OSS Communications Network" links (kinda like Wikipedia). Unfortunately, it costs lots of money to do this, and so the phone companies get to keep their duopoly... and they get to protect their cheap OS's by not letting you run your software on them, and they get to keep their users for at least the next two years because we are locked in with contracts.

Re:Their phones??

[barzok]

I thought we owned all own phones like we do computers?

You must not be a Verizon customer^Wvictim.

Re:Their phones??

[TheRaven64]

We can't run our own software because it hasn't been tested. If loading and executing applications on phones was trivial, you'd see text-message exploits that load ad-software onto your phone and then send copies of the exploited message to your entire contact list Uh, what? First off, I can run any app on my (cheap, generic, Nokia) phone that I send via a bluetooth message. I can't send an app via an SMS because they are limited to 160 bytes. I think it's possible to send them via MMS, but I've not tried.

Re:Their phones??

[bgat]

Android already has a browser, based on WebKit. So you want to discard one Free browser engine for another? And the one to be discarded has a proven portability and mobile track record at that?

If that's all the justification you can muster, leave Mozilla on the desktop.

Re:Their phones??

[poot_rootbeer]

Would you rather own a locked down phone or one where all the free apps on the internet run on? I would pick the latter.

Unfortunately for you and me, we're outnumbered by ten million people who would rather get a locked-down phone for $10 with service agreement than pay $600 for a completely open phone platform.

Come to think of it, *I'd* rather get the $10 phone...

Yet another reason...

[bcrowell]

...not to use a cell phone to browse the web. But I didn't really need another reason. The screen is way too small. Almost no web pages are designed for cell phones. There's no mouse or keyboard. I don't need another monthly bill.

Re:Yet another reason...

[stokessd]

The small screen thing is valid. I have a iPac 4800 with is 640x480 and surfing with it sucked. The iPhone has an even smaller screen, but the zoom capability is a lot better thought out and surfing is a whole lot better. I'm not saying that to be a fanboi, but I'd expect that as all mobile platforms mature, the limitations of the small screen resolution will be worked around. Apple proved it can be done effectively, and I'm sure the android folks will be equally effective.

The lack of a mouse is not a huge limitation either provided that you have another equally useful input method (touch screen for example). The keyboards on all mobile devices pretty much suck universally when compared to even a laptop. But surfing is often more reading than writing.

I used to think that I didn't need mobile web until I had it. Now I wonder what I did without it. It's just like carrying a cell phone, a decade ago I thought it too was silly.

Sheldon

Re:Yet another reason...

[donstenk72]

It is extremely useful for a lot work situations. When out with clients I can check my realtime stock by logging on to the intranet using 3G on my Nokia E61. I do need to do a fair bit of scrolling but it beats carrying a laptop for that purpose. I did take a subscription with unlimited datatraffic however - 20 pm in Italy. It is also a great backup if ADSL fails in the office (as it does here) - faster then a modem (which I don't have) and faster to setup over bluetooth.

Just to say that just because you don't have a use for it it does not mean a technology isn't very useful for others.

Re:Yet another reason...

[Mattsson]

There's plenty of situations where having internet-applications like a browser or a map-tool or a SSH-terminal is really useful.
It's dumb to use a mobile phone for leisure-browsing, that doesn't make it useless to have access to a "real" web browser in the phone.
Wouldn't buy one of those "smart"-phones though... They don't offer much useful functionality over a regular one. With my mainstream, non-3G, Sony-Ericsson I can access the web, search maps, listen to music, use SSH, have a calendar, adressbook, read mail, do instant messaging, use a bluetooth gps, play games, etc, etc.

Most of this is not something I do often, but having the ability there saves the day when you encounter a situation where you do need it.

Re:Yet another reason...

[Zebedeu]

Speaking of which, what software do you use for GPS?
I tried Google Maps, but they don't support bluetooth GPS on my mobile (also a run-of-the-mill Sony Ericsson).

Re:Yet another reason...

[Mattsson]

I use Wayfinder Earth.
There's a free version that can't connect to a GPS and a pay-version that supports GPS-tracking.

Re:Yet another reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost no web pages are designed for cell phones

Good web pages aren't "designed for" anything, and they simply work on everything.

Symbian OS?

[Evan Meakyl]

I am glad that Firefox is availaible on the Windows & linux phone, but why nothing is (seems?) to be done regarding the Symbian OS? (wikipedia says that it is "the leading OS in the 'smart mobile device' market. Statistics published February 2007 showed that Symbian OS had a 67% share of the 'smart mobile device' market,"

Does someone have some information about the "why?" (I know you can tell me that if I am willing, I can start developping it myself, but actually I have to much projects to cope with...)

And another question: I own a Nokia E-61. If Firefox is not planed for Symbian OS, I am willing to install Linux Mobile on it. Can someone give me a pointer to what I should do to do this?

Re:Symbian OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that Symbian, in C++, is deeply unpleasant to develop for, and very different to Palm, Windows CE or really, anything else.

The documentation is atrocious - there aren't many examples in it, and as opposed to Win32, where you can usually figure out how to use a function from the MSDN library's description of it, trying to do that will generally result in something that fails in an obscure way. As a rule the only sure way to find out how something is done is to find someone else who's already done it and try to figure out what they did that makes it work.

Symbian has only recently ported stdlib to it properly, in what I presume is an act of desperation to try and get people to develop for it. V9 solves the problem where all applications had to be DLLs with no global storage allowed, but it also adds a particularly paranoid code-signing system where your app has to be signed before it is possible to run it outside of the emulator.

That's been my experience, anyway. However - there is a whitepaper on how Opera was ported to Symbian. I can't find a freely accessible version of it right now, but it's a fascinating read and it illustrates full well why porting Mozilla would be very, very difficult.

Re:Symbian OS?

[Linux Ate My Dog!]

I do not know why you have been modded -1. I have developed in Symbian when I worked for Nokia, and it is exatly as you describe: deeply unpleasant.

Re:Symbian OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Opera Mini? It works for your phone and they have a non-mobile option to view pages.

Re:Symbian OS?

[saihung]

I don't understand this entire conversation. I have an unlocked Nokia N75, which is a Symbian phone. I can install any software I please on it, and as long as there's EDGE or even GPRS coverage, I can do what I like with the so-called "open web." For that matter, even though the locked AT&T version of the N75 was loaded with crapware, you could still install your own software on it.

I don't care about waiting for the phone companies to agree. It's my phone, I own it, I pay for unlimited data, and I'll install what I like. Now gimme some candy, Mozilla!

Aside: Nokia's "Web" browser is pretty much the best mobile browser I've ever used. If your phone doesn't have this app on it already, then you're either not looking hard enough or you need a firmware update.

Re:Symbian OS?

[Evan Meakyl]

> I'll install what I like. Now gimme some candy, Mozilla!
ok so you agree that you can't install Firefox because Firefox for Symbian doesn't exist?

> Aside: Nokia's "Web" browser is pretty much the best mobile browser I've ever used.
Stop kidding!! Opera is quite good (and of course far better than the symbian browser), but there are still some problems!
Where can I change the user agent? How can I get ride of the few bugs which are poising my browsing experience? Why is it so slow? Why *each time* I am using the HTTP identification mechanism on an unencrypted transaction (which can be dangerous, I agree), I have a dialog box? (I mean, I can disable all the security alerts or enable all of them... why can't I disable a particular one?)

And yes I use this stupid browser *every day*, so I think I am aware of some of its limits.

I dunno...

[ohxten]

I love FF, but you have to admit, it's not the most lightweight browser out there. Opera works well on phones because it's got a fast rendering engine and low memory footprint. It'll be interesting to see how FF will be able to handle this.

Re:I dunno...

[bunratty]

It looks pretty lightweight to me, if by that you mean it consumes fewer resources than other browsers. On the other hand, if you've got a way to demonstrate Firefox being a pig (one that we can all see and confirm), we'd all love to see it...

Firefox that cannot connect is next to useless

[tepples]

If that's really the case, then why the need for the negotiation mentioned in the topic - let people download it themselves. Of course users can download it. But when a user tries to transfer the program to her phone, she gets an alert box that the certificate used to sign Firefox has not been trusted by the network operator. To protect the user from rogue programs that consume the megabytes that the user has paid for, the phone has blocked Firefox from accessing the network.

Re:Firefox that cannot connect is next to useless

[Naughty Bob]

I've never experienced that, but I am in the UK, which from what I can tell has a much healthier mobile phone market.

That would drive me nuts though. Can you download 'offending' apps to a computer then transfer it locally?

I am angry just thinking about that error message.

Re:Firefox that cannot connect is next to useless

[TheRaven64]

I'm in the UK, and I get an untrusted cert warning if I transfer pretty much any application to my phone (from my computer via Bluetooth, since the data charges are so high), but it doesn't stop me running it, and I can make the error go away by correctly installing the certificate.

Re:Firefox that cannot connect is next to useless

[tepples]

and I can make the error go away by correctly installing the certificate. Since when can an end user install a certificate on a phone?

Re:Firefox that cannot connect is next to useless

[TheRaven64]

Main menu, Tools, Settings, Security, Certif. Management. From there I can set the trust settings for any cert (including whether it should be allowed for app installation), or install new ones. I've had this phone for about three years, so for at least that long. I got a cheap phone with the cheapest contract that offered any included data, and since it ended have switched to using the same phone on the same network's pre-pay plan.

One has competition; the other doesn't.

[tepples]

Tell that to all the folks running Linux on modded XBox 360s. But at least the Xbox 360 has a competitor that isn't entirely unfriendly to free software: a PC with television output. Locked phones don't have such a competitor in the United States. Every retail chain that carries mobile phones that I have seen in Fort Wayne, Indiana, carries only locked phones.

its all about control, of your money

[hAckz0r]

I have a Treo and use Sprint for my network. The browser they supply is rigged so that I can not download anything bigger than a couple of k in size. Not even a full SlashDot web page! This prevents me from downloading any media files that I did not purchase from them and also any applications I might like to run on it. They are attempting a complete lockin situation by virtue of keeping me from using anything I don't buy from them. I have news for them, I WONT buy from them because they won't let me use what I want when I want. In the final analysis I still transfer what I want to listen to and/or read on my device, they just make it harder than it needs to be.

I for one would welcome Firefox on all my mobile devices as along as it lets me download what I want.

Re:its all about control, of your money

[dreamchaser]

You've got a problem then. I also am a Sprint customer, though I have a Moto Q and not a Treo. I have no limits placed on the size that I can download except for the inherent storage and memory limitations of the device. You are either making it up or Sprint is screwing you royally.

Re:its all about control, of your money

[hAckz0r]

You are either making it up or Sprint is screwing you royally.

Defiantly the latter of your two choices. Then again, I am locked in for several other reasons unrelated to this discussion.

Opera != just a browser. Firefox can't compete

[cybernanga]

Opera mini is more than just a browser. They have a proxy server that grabs the page, and re-renders it to suit your phone's screen. That causes a very slight delay, while their server re-renders the page, but it saves a heck of a lot of bandwidth. All images are resized. Long lists are collapsed etc.

I'm not sure that Firefox will be able to compete in this arena without creating a proxy server system of their own. I'm not against them trying, I just want to make it clear to those of you who haven't used Opera Mini, that it is more than just a browser.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Re:Opera != just a browser. Firefox can't compete

[Corpuscavernosa]

I agree and am not really sure why you got flamed on that one. It's almost as if you made a pro MS comment or said something not entirely negative about Christianity!

Hasn't stopped Opera

[dreamchaser]

"In the meantime those negotiations seem to be hitting 'brick walls', as cellphone operators resist the intrusion of the open web onto their platforms."

This made my BS detector go off. I've been running Opera Mobile (which is very nice) as the alternative to Pocket IE on my Motorola Q for a long time now. There is nothing stopping Mozilla from making a mobile browser. Sounds like they want it *bundled*, which is a different challenge.

Safari has spotty coverage

[tepples]

I do hear them complaining about the crappy internet experience they're having, due to the poor design of the browser; but that's a completely different subject (and while Firefox could potentially address that, Safari already does - and it's got nothing to do with the openness of the browser, per se, anyway). Safari doesn't work in Vermont, most of New Hampshire and Maine, or other areas not served by AT&T Inc. From the legend at AT&T's coverage viewer:

Excessive use of Partner coverage may subject your service to early termination, in accordance with your service terms. Data services may not be available.

So for the next four and a half years while the iPhone is still exclusive to AT&T, Safari won't work in those areas unless someone makes a phone-sized Windows PC that can run the Windows version of Safari.

Why whine about operators?

[Threni]

Opera doesn't have any problems with free java-based browsers on mobiles, and neither do any number of other ones. Why should any ISP have to get involved - it's not their problem, nor will they make any money out of it, other than via data traffic, which is apparently something which they don't seem that bothered about, at least in the UK.

Re:Why whine about operators?

[Tony Hoyle]

From the UK perspective this does all seem a bit confusing, but from what I gather in the US the carriers actually mandate what browser you can install and even what websites that you view. It's the North Korea of the mobile phone market.

I see no problem with Mozilla creating a version of Firefox for Symbian and WM, everyone who wants it if they feel they need to and that's the end of the story... don't see what the carriers have to do with it - it's none of the bleedin' business. No different to Opera 5 years or so ago on the Nokia 7650, where it was a separate download (that was a decent phone btw. one of the best I ever owned).

Opera for Set-Top-Boxes Problems

[c0d3r]

I'm working at a company that wants to put opera on their custom stb based on a Sigma Designs SoC chipset, and opera does have a browser for this platform but what happened when I engaged Opera was a 'brick wall'. Aparently i can get their binary and run it on our linux based stb, but there are no drivers for anything unless you pay more for their SDK and pay even more for support to develop basic drivers that should already be there. For instance, it can't display on the screen because the frame buffer device interface doesn't exist, and must be developed or paid for separately, we're working with a group that already went through this, and what happens after 6 months and a bunch of money later is that the IR interface needs to go through the same bullshit, and who know what other hardware device interfaces need to go through this bullshit process, when the Sigma Designs SoC is pretty standard. It turns out that you probably have to pay more for every external IO interface such as HDMI, Composite, IR, Serial, keyboard ..etc.. and is not install and go.. it's probably the same bs for phones.
M

Starts with "M"

[nacturation]

companies think that free=no good. In this case, perhaps they're right. Picture this: there's a company that makes a widely used free browser which is trying to develop a mobile version for cell phones. The product isn't even finished yet and is likely still in alpha stage. However, that hasn't stopped this company from approaching cell phone manufacturers to attempt to get this unproven product installed as the de-facto browser.

Oh, and the name of this company starts with "M". With that description, most people would guess incorrectly which company it is.

Re:Starts with "M"

[cp.tar]

The incorrectly guessed company would first have to approach cell phone manufacturers to attempt to get their OS installed in order to even test the browser, let alone install it as the default.

Call-me-Kenneth knows the answer....

[call-me-kenneth]

It's obvious!

Completely misleading headline

[roca]

There is nothing here about "Mozilla Hitting 'Brick Walls' Getting Firefox on Phones".

Some blogger is *talking* about brick walls and speculating that they might make it hard to get Firefox on phones. There is no data showing that is actually the case.

Law suit

[omgamibig]

Where's the law suit to open up the phones? Microsoft had to and Firefox walked right through the door.

Bollocks

[Colin Smith]

He said, posting from a pub in Berlin, using his Nokia e61.

it has sfa to do with free software.

There are three problems.

1. the american market is a fucking nightmare. American consumers are hopelessly naive and continue to allow the operators to run their little walled gardens.

2. Firefox is not renowned for it's ability to run in 16mb of ram. Opera can. Works great. Cut the bloat.

3. Naivete within mozilla org. Wtf would you start with the US.market? everyone in the mobile world knows it's sewn up. It's only 5% of the world. Look further afield people.

Re:Bollocks

[Colin Smith]

More on 3.

windows mobile? Linux? Wtf? symbian epoc is the operating system on most phones now...

it works in the rest of the world

[Colin Smith]

Capitalism is just buyers and sellers. If the buyers keep on buying crap from the sellers, they'll just keep being sold it. Especially when there are alternatives available.

Re:it works in the rest of the world

[vidarh]

But for that to work the buyers needs to know which sellers are available that don't sell crap. When the profit margins are higher when you sell crap it means you have more money to effectively market your product and do whatever you can to shut out competition.

An unregulated free market only have a shot at working if everyone involved have perfect information about the market and are capable of sorting through that information.

Even then the market may favor solutions that make large subsets of the buyers unhappy simply because economies of scale may make it so much cheaper to satisfy the lowest common denominator and ignore the rest that the price gap for a seller trying to satisfy customers more might be too high to make it feasibly to compete with a better service, not because buyers don't want it, but because they want it at a price the seller can only achieve AFTER they get volume.

A "free market" is an oxymoron. If it's free of all regulation it won't remain free, as history has shown time and time again, because sooner or later someone gets enough of an upper hand to impose their own rules.

Re:it works in the rest of the world

[Colin Smith]

But for that to work the buyers needs to know which sellers are available that don't sell crap Oh wow. You mean buyers might want to research a little when they spend their money? Jeez who'd have thought.

I've actually used Mozilla on a phone...

[Frangible]

As the summary states, Mozilla has had a beta for Windows Mobile devices for some time. I've used several versions of it, on a Motorola Q (~300mhz CPU, 16mb RAM, WinMo5) and was not especially impressed, especially in comparison to IE or Opera.

First of all, it's incredibly slow. Page renders take a very, very long time. The interface is also pretty bad on a Smartphone, but perhaps is better on a PocketPC. It also is quite buggy, and locks up / crashes frequently. But then, it is a beta.

Really, I don't expect any reasonable port of Mozilla to work on a Smartphone without a massive codebase change. Once you see just how bad the performance is for yourself, I think you'll agree-- it's more or less unusable.

Pocket IE is the speed champ but is somewhat limited. Opera has almost as much capability as Mozilla, while being relatively bug-free and almost on par with IE for speed. Perhaps the problem isn't so much with cellphone providers not wanting to primarily use Mozilla Mobile, but simply with it not being up to par with its desktop counterpart, or other mobile browsers already available.

In the end, Mozilla simply needs to do what it has always done-- offer a better product than anyone else. In the mobile space, they unfortunately have not done so yet. Until substantial improvements are made, I would not expect anyone to be preinstalling it.

A tinderbox for burning cash

[tepples]

Some blogger is *talking* about brick walls and speculating that they might make it hard to get Firefox on phones. There is no data showing that is actually the case. In the United States, the CDMA networks of Verizon and Sprint have better coverage than the GSM/UMTS networks of AT&T and T-Mobile. Mobile phones designed for use on CDMA networks tend to use Qualcomm's BREW system. Every time you recompile and relink a program on a BREW phone, you have to pay 4 USD to get the new binary signed so that you can run it on your own phone. Distributing a binary to testers is even more expensive. See criticism of BREW on Wikipedia and its references for details.

Image recompression

[tepples]

I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server which supports Content-Encoding:gzip. Gzip cannot recompress GIF, JPEG, and PNG images at reduced quality and file size, which I'm suspecting that some proxies do.

Unless servers normally don't compress their responses A lot of servers don't compress responses out of the box.

Re:Image recompression

[Serious Callers Only]

Gzip cannot recompress GIF, JPEG, and PNG images at reduced quality and file size, which I'm suspecting that some proxies do.

Personally I'd rather not see degraded versions of images (if this is even being done) just to get the file size down, I'd rather use a better device which doesn't suck at displaying the real images. Typically images are already compressed on the web anyway, so reducing the quality further is going to lead to massive drops in quality, unless your display is some 120x160 monstrosity and you can't tell the difference. The reason gzip isn't used for images is that they're typically already compressed (often almost to their limit), so adding another layer of compression isn't worth the trade-off of using up more CPU on the device to decode it; it can compress them, it's just not worth it.

A lot of servers don't compress responses out of the box.

And a lot do - nowadays more and more are doing it. I think pretty soon every website will use mod_deflate (this one already does for example), it's even built in to Apache 2.

As mobile CPUs and bandwidth improve, this will become less and less of an issue anyway. It's so much better to have an all-you-can-eat plan than one which charges per KB - I wouldn't even consider using one which charges per KB for general browsing, as it would get very expensive very fast.

Re:Image recompression

[mdwh2]

Personally I'd rather not see degraded versions of images (if this is even being done) just to get the file size down, I'd rather use a better device which doesn't suck at displaying the real images. Typically images are already compressed on the web anyway, so reducing the quality further is going to lead to massive drops in quality, unless your display is some 120x160 monstrosity and you can't tell the difference.

You're on a phone. The web has moved on from the days when it was Best Viewed In 640x480. So there will be images far larger than you can see on your phone - don't tell me you have a phone with 1600x1050 resolution!

Also note that Opera Mini (as opposed to Mobile) is targetted towards low end (i.e., not stupidly expensive) phones - not that that matters, as even on a smart phone resolution, it won't be enough to display many images on the web.

Vapor Cannot Hit A Brick Wall

[gig]

Firefox on mobiles is total vapor. The realities of today's mobile industry are irrelevant in a discussion of Firefox on mobiles. By the time Firefox ships for mobiles, if it ever does, the industry will be very different.

Apple always pushed WebKit to be both smaller and faster in every way possible. Then last year they shipped it on a 400 MHz, 128MB RAM, 4GB storage device and it runs great. Obviously they had mobiles in mind from the start of the WebKit project. But even on Windows, Safari is twice as fast as Firefox, and Safari for Windows is an 8MB download (including Mac graphics libraries) while Firefox is 22MB. Mozilla has to get much faster and much smaller to go mobile, and that's going to take a while.

Re:Vapor Cannot Hit A Brick Wall

[VGPowerlord]

But even on Windows, Safari is twice as fast as Firefox, and Safari for Windows is an 8MB download (including Mac graphics libraries) while Firefox is 22MB.

You might want to check your figures.

For PCs:
Firefox 2.0.0.12 installer: 5.75 MB (6,029,648 bytes)
Safari 3.x Beta installer: 15.6 MB (16,398,632 bytes)

Re:Vapor Cannot Hit A Brick Wall

[VGPowerlord]

As a sidenote, that should have said Safari 3.04 Beta installer.

It's even larger if you get the version bundled with Quicktime: 38.3MB (40,133,928 bytes).

I borked that one....

[Naughty Bob]

I'm sorry about getting Opera's nationality wrong, and not a little ashamed. But nobody is trustworthy, not when there's humans involved. That said, I can believe that Opera is at the less untrustworthy end of the spectrum.

Re:I borked that one....

[mjtg]

No, the name is Bjork, and she's Icelandic...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

What DRM

[meehawl]

I for one refuse to buy high end phones for this reason. I want to run my own apps

I think it's just on the lower end phones that the DRM lock-in is enforced. I have a Sprint Mogul (HTC Hermes/Titan) running WM6. I have installed literally hundreds of apps and have yet to find one that won't install just by copying a CAB over and clicking it. And with a single registry edit on the phone (also open access) I got unlimited PC tethering on EVDO. Last week I installed a homebrew firmware from that activated the GPS unit and upgraded it to WM 6.1 (but apparently the "official" GPS firmware is out this week anyway). Although I don't develop Windows Mobile apps, I understand one of the attractions of the rather ugly platform is that there are multiple, easily available SDKs for it.

Open?!?

[meehawl]

The fact that the iPhone is the "most open" platform say it all.

Given that without Apple's corporate blessing, to develop apps on the iphone up to now has required buffer exploits and security holes, I am having trouble understandig how this counts as "open". I have a Sprint Mogul (HTC Hermes/Titan) running WM6. I have installed literally hundreds of apps and have yet to find one that won't install just by copying a CAB over and clicking it (including, yes, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini as a MIDLet). And with a single registry edit on the phone (also open, easy access) I got unlimited PC tethering on EVDO. That's not to say that there isn't a hacking underground. Last week I installed a homebrew firmware from that activated the GPS unit and upgraded it to WM 6.1 (but apparently the "official" GPS firmware is out this week anyway). Although I don't develop Windows Mobile apps, I understand one of the attractions of the rather ugly platform is that there are multiple, easily available SDKs for it. It's ironic that one of the more "open" platforms seems to be a Microsoft product.

Why not just support proxies?

[heroine]

Has always been peculiar that conspiracy theorists criticize lack of support for 3rd party applications when in at least T-Mobile, they only need to support proxy servers to get around the network firewall. Why proxy servers have never been supported in 3rd party browsers may be the biggest conspiracy.

Why no Palm OS version?

[CorporalKlinger]

I know plenty of people who are fed up with the integrated "Blazer" browser on their Palm-based devices - especially Treo devices. Opera offers Opera Mini for the platform, but it is cumbersome and lacks even some basic features. It's also notorious for crashing the system. As far as I know, Palm is looking for developers to make mainstream programs for their OS - they even offer free software development kits, APIs, and more on their site to all developers. Some on here may laugh and consider Palm OS an outdated beast, but a lot of professionals use Treos running Palm OS and MS Direct Push technology rather than Blackberries, iPhones, or other devices. If Mozilla wants to break into the mobile browser market, why not make a browser that will smoke the two paltry PalmOS-based offerings currently available and grab a major share of the market on these devices instead of competing to release *another* browser for devices that already have many options?

The iPhone is not open in any way shape or form.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The iPhone has to be hacked to make it open.

It is one of the most closed phones out there.

Re:Surprised?

[carpe.cervisiam]

Aww...How cute. The little troll is trying to make a funny. Did both your parents have the same last name before they got hitched?

so

[overcaffein8d]

we're doomed. it's even an ibrick for the guys at mozilla.

Google filters mobile search results

[Jamie Lokier]

I'm on the 3 network in the UK. The internet facility is quite good: we have HSDPA, advertised as "up to 2.8Mbit/s". I've seen about 2Mbit/s at best, however download rates are sensitive to latency too. The latency is extremely variable, anything from 150ms up to 30 seconds for a ping, independent of signal quality. Whether it's usable or not is therefore also rather variable. Still, when it works, it's quite nice.

I pay a flat rate of approx £10 (US $20) to fetch up to 3GB/month, which I've never reached on it. Therefore, I'm quite happy with the price, and I don't worry at all about data charges.

It's not a walled garden: the whole internet is accessible. That's nice.

But when I visit good old Google, at their normal URLs, I find the search results are filtered by Google. I'm not sure, it may be that Google's "Safe Search" feature is switched on when using a mobile. But I notice that there are no settings to turn it off: I'm stuck with filtered results, whether I like them or not. And there's no text saying the results are filtered.

Another thing I noticed is that the BBC News page redirects to a "mobile-optimised" version which doesn't have what I want on it. That's very annoying; I would really like to be able to visit the normal page.

I wouldn't be surprised if this has nothing to do with the mobile network, and is done by the web sites themselves detecting a mobile client. It is very annoying, especially when the site in question provides no way to access the normal site.

-- Jamie

Re:Google filters mobile search results

[Jurily]

Seems like mobiles reached the "Best viewed with..." era.

Re:Google filters mobile search results

[rdebath]

Are they still filtered if you add
    &safe=off

to the end of the URL?

Re:Google filters mobile search results

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the ideal solution I know, but if you hit the "low graphics" version of the BBC News site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm - the "text only" in the URL is a lie, it has pictures), it will let you use that rather than redirecting you to the crappy mobile version that splits up the story onto multiple pages. For Google, have you tried using one of the 'google proxies' like Scroogle?

Re:Google filters mobile search results

[insanius]

if you are using opera mobile, you can set it to identify your device as a "Desktop"....this will allow you to view pages un-filtered/formatted.

Re:It must suck to be you

[Benaiah]

I couldn't live without being able to transfer money in my back accounts, send email, etc. You don't have to spend $500 to get that stuff. The iPhone is actually inferior to most phones out there (except for the display size)... most people just buy it because they think it makes them look cool or, ironically, anti-establishment. Apple is very good at marketing to that susceptible demographic.

Just get a different, better phone. Your making the apple i-fanboys angry :)

Europe

[tsa]

Why don't they just put the mobile version on their website so every European with a normal non-crippled phone can download it and be happy? I don't get it. Why do Americans always try to take on their own retarded mobile phone market where crippled phones are king first while thee is a bigger and most of all accessable market elsewhere?

Have you tried approaching Sony about the PSP?

[bunbuntheminilop]

The in built psp web browser by NetFront isn't fantastic. There are OTHER mobile devices other than phones. Just an idea.

lets not forget the opera bookmarks sync

[mackermacker]

On top of Opera being very fast, the sync feature is also nice if you have a lot of bookmarks dating back years. The new opera beta for the desktop has a built in 'sync' to sync the bookmarks with my.opera.com (same thing as Foxmarks plugin on firefox). All you need to do to get your bookmarks on your phone is import your firefox bookmarks into desktop opera, and sync mini opera for the win.

What???

[Ilgaz]

I haven't seen such a baseless claim for years. Opera Mini is pushed to users of J2ME (Java) phones by operators themselves! Head to any Operator's wap page, they must have suggested Opera Mini to their users somehow.

That is the same browser does massive compression which makes users pay significantly less for their per-kilobyte (non flat) GPRS/3G costs. Some Cell phone providers even pre-install Opera Mini to handsets they provide.

I tell you the real reason without conspiracy theroies. I got a Symbian S60 V3 E65 Nokia enterprise focused phone. It has 23 MB of free RAM. Somehow, Opera manages to code a browser , a real browser which will run inside that RAM space with amazing tricks which makes any phone almost like iPhone (It is said to have 256MB RAM). For the record, it does "real, desktop web" if you choose although I prefer their small screen rendering personally. Also if you don't know already, it will surprise you. Opera Mobile 9.5 runs the _exact same_ HTML rendering C code as Opera Mobile Desktop. That is some tight coding for you.

Nokia S60 browser using Apple Webkit also runs fine on that device although I hated their idea of iPhone like browsing on 320xsomething screen.

So, telling people from 3rd World to "buy more RAM, upgrade your CPU" when they bitched about memory/cpu usage wasn't a good thing to do eh Mozilla?

Re: Google filters mobile search results...

[Jamie Lokier]

Are they still filtered if you add &safe=off to the end of the URL?

That's a really good question.

So I've just been to have a look, and...

Ooh.

The mobile provider's links page has "Search Google". When I go there, I get the restricted Google page with limited results, and preferences that don't mention SafeSearch. There is no indication that you can go to another Google page. The "Google Home Page" link goes back to that limited page.

When I go to http://www.google.com/ or http://www.google.co.uk/, however, I get a "mobile-optimised" but unrestricted page. That one has mobile settings which do include SafeSearch options, has an option to turn on mobile-optimised HTML or not, and offers the choice to show "Classic" view instead of "Mobile" view, serving the standard Google pages we hope (apart from the option to switch back to "Mobile" at the bottom" :-).

I'm sure I tried the standard Google URLs 2 weeks ago, and got the super-restricted mobile page. Maybe I didn't, or maybe Google and/or 3 (the mobile network) have changed their policy in some way since then to allow the standard URL to work.

Big improvement. And big surprise to me, right after posting my comment :-)

Re:The iPhone is not open in any way shape or form

[Gary W. Longsine]

I can hardly wait for the SDK to ship, not so much that I'm craving to install 3rd party applications on my iPhone, but that you will finally be forced to find another mental tic.

Re:The iPhone is not open in any way shape or form

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm craving to install 3rd party applications on my iPhone,

Well, expect to pay through the nose for them!

Re:The iPhone is not open in any way shape or form

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I can't wait for the SDK to ship, not because I want to install 3rd party applications on my iPhone, but I can't wait to see you're facial tic on finding you have to pay $100 for a suite of apps new iPhone users get for free ;-)

To that I would add . . .

[LuYu]

Opera is the king of mobile browsers IMHO. IE, as expected, is marginal at best. On my Windows Mobile 6 phone, Opera cruises along.

To that I would add that this concept that the carriers are resisting the open web is crap. Maybe they are in the US, and I have seen something like that in Japan, but if Opera is any indication, they are not doing it at the software level. I have yet to see a smart phone with no web browser. Nokia's web browsers suck for sure, but that does not mean that they cannot access the web (it does mean they cannot access local files, though).

Opera is king of the mobile phone market, and the king is nearly ubiquitous. Web browsers are on nearly every device, so the carriers cannot be resisting that.