Products & Services
What is the most important feature in a web browsing device?
By JBC on 05 August 2009
GLOBAL – Following on in our series of what you think the key features of certain devices should be, this week we’re looking at phones for browsing the web on the go. Browsing on the move is something I for one pretty much take for granted these days. It’s something I expect my mobile device to do, and do well. However I’ve never stopped to think what aspect of a mobile device is most important to mobile browsing. Of course, much like last week, “all of the above” is sure to be a popular answer, though it doesn’t really help highlight what is the most important (and note the difference between this and last week’s poll of “most important” versus “what do you expect”). I’m looking forward to the results and of course we’ll be doing our best to follow up with the folks in the know. Now, get voting (and commenting too, if this one tickles you).
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Tags | browser, mobile internet, web services, Widgets
August 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
For me the most important features for a web browsing device are:
Flash support
High speed connectivity
Web apps
Web services
The Keyboard and Big screen are important and the rest are just nice to haves.
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August 5th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I have to say its High speed connectivity first then flash support, the rest doesn’t matter much.
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August 5th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Just vote bigger screen and not surprise it’s the first pic.
No insult to developers out there, but browsing on a phone is no fun no matter what mobile browser you are using. The best thing to do is minimize interacttion with the device; manufactuers can help by providing a bigger screen; and more importantly a higher resolution display.
As fun as some phone may be with web scrolling, I would be happier to scroll 2-3 on a webpage insteads of tapping my fingers on the display or d-pad like a madman.
You need to add “high resolution screen” as a choice. You can have a huge 4″ display at 320X240 resolution, but the smaller 2″ display that also have 320X240 will show the equal amount of info.
You also need to add “fast load time,” mobile browsing is always inferior to PC browsing because it loads so slowly. If one day, our mobile load webpages faster than our PC, we would want to use the phone to look up something instead of going to the PC.
I think what’s wrong with web developer these days is that they’re trying to make mobile broswing like a PC experience. Well I tell you it shouldn’t, the hardwares are totally different. WAP based webpages was the right way to do things, simple and quick load… WAP should have been built on to add more graphics and multmedia contents; but it didn’t happen…
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August 5th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
The most important thing in my opinion is Speed!
I mean Speed in Rendering the webpages, and Speed loading the content from the web (connection speed).
Nobody wants to feel like they have a 64kbps RDIS connection, when most of the time we are using wireless (up to 55mbps) or 3G (about 10mbps)
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August 5th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Voted all of the above, and knew that there is always a scope of improvement in a Mobile Web Browser.
We need to understand a lot in such case, starting with a the device hardware. No matter how excellent a mobile browser is, until you have a supporting hardware, its of no use.
Flash support to me is very important, as I am a youtube addict. Now imagine the ram is low, and the browser crashes after watching couple of videos , is not what I expect. For me, I got what I wanted from the browser, but the hardware is not able to support it at all.
Coming back to “so” called desktop browsing. Mobile phones should be handy for single handed use. So I dont expect myself to scroll horizontally while using a mobile browser. Hence, AUTOFIT of content to the mobile screen while zooming is again something of high priority.
A FULLSCREEN browsing is another most expected feature, which prevent space wastage. This internally is linked to the feature that all browsing control should be accessible via browsing in Full screen, preventing multiple clicks and scrolls.
Since the talk is about web browsing device, “TOUCHSCREEN” is the most important feature. Touchscreen provides the capability to access any link , options , with just one touch of a screen. A browsing device experience is negligible if there is no touchscreen.
However, the expectations and features will always be increasing … but I know that creating a near to perfect browsing device is always possible.
Cheers !!
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August 5th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Speed speed speed, if it’s slow, people won’t bother waiting while it loads. For example, if you’re quickly looking something up, if it’s not speedy loading content you’re after the conversation has already moved on by the time you’ve found what you were after…!
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August 5th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I’d have to go with performance. While screen size is great, that shouldn’t affect the performance I receive when web browsing from my mobile handset or device. Loading times need to consistently be quick and I’d like that to be visually reflected. I guess this can fall under high-speed connectivity.
A nice clean layout of all controls would be #2 and while web apps are great, I’d rather be able to download them to my phone. However, I wouldn’t discredit them.
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August 5th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
The most important thing is a capacitive touch screen!
Please nokia! I am more loyal to you than anybody i know, but the n97 is the last resistive touch screen i will ever buy. Period. It’s just not good enough, it always should have been capacitive.
I’m so disappointed by the performance of my n97 for web browsing, and the biggest reason for that is the chosen touch screen technology.
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August 5th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
High speed connectivity is on the top of course
) To put anything else as more important will be in vain if you wait 5 minutes for a website to load.
Than comes the big, and later the touch- screen
)
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August 5th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Fast rendering should be there too. Fast connectivity doesn’t matter if the device can’t handle loading the content fast enough.
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August 5th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
My N97 gives me a reasonably fast browsing experience(Up to Eee-speed), and the screen size matches its resolution.
My problem is that the device is not stable nor dependable. It crashes, it locks up, it freezes, it just doesent want to do stuff. Random programs just shut down. Youtube might suddenly not work at all.
Before you add more flashy hardware or advanced programs – make sure it works to start with! Every time. Especially when Im out of the country and pay $5 per megabyte its really annoying having an important webpage load to 99% and 1,2MB before the browser suddenly disappears and has to be started again only to have to download everything again.
Hoping for a solid firmware patch coming out soon, if not I’ll have to look at other products that offer me reliability.
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August 5th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
high resolution 480×800+
yes, even the n97 is found wanting…
i want trade my n95 8gb for it, as the handling is unequaled for quick surfing
but for the whole enjoyment i use my htc touch hd, easy to be used with one hand — that is what i expect of the nokia n98 or n99
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August 5th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Personally I think the browser NEEDS the following:
* Ability to support ALL types of sites (Full Flash, JAVA, etc support)
* Quick loading times (So more available RAM usually)
* Good user interface so you can get to the functions you need quickly (Overlay menu items like on the Digia @Web browser so you can still see things under the menu items would be nice and tabbed browsing for easy access to different open pages)
* Easy to navigate though pages (Best way usually would be by touch and I think the N97 does this part of the web browsing well)
* Full screen Browsing so you can see as much of the site as possible
Some other things such as web apps/services, etc are nice to have and would be good if it were possible to install these if wanted, like the way Firefox has Add-ons so you can customise your web experience to your specific needs/wants.
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August 5th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
On the last poll, the “all of the above” option was negleted.. It should be on this one! The question is: “What’s the most important feature?”, not what we want!
[rant mode>off]
Now talking about mobile browsing, i’ve been an addict of it some time ago, when i had to wait for my wife (leaving her job) or at the beach (i go there with her, and we all know woman like sun, and nothing more). I used to visit data-eaters like symbian-freak (where the average daily post’s is about 200/250), and the thing that bugged me was that i had to use Opera’s browser, because the native browser was just toooo sloooow..
Even so, it was a bit slow (mostly because 21Mb ram isn’t enough), but also because 3G is slow (i have 24Mb/s at home, for now…)
Mobile browsing isn’t suposed (atleast for now) to replace PC Browsing, but when out of home (like in the beach), we need a small/handy “thing” to surf the web. If we add it a BIG screen, and TOUCH, great! but the main thing is speed!
I could ask for a better d-pad, or even an inbuilt mouse (just like those who where used in older laptops), or a bigger screen… i could even ask for a “better user interface” (downloading content from mediafire/others is annoying), but i think that those things are secondary. (atleast for me).
Ps: Sorry for my English/vocabulary/sentences today (they might even sound weird).. i’m a bit “tired of all” today..
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August 6th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Voted big screen, but I think the most important feature is rendering speed.
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August 6th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Nokia, learn from Apple and Safari on the iPod Touch/3GS, it is fast, smooth and has kinetic scrolling which I know most of your newest phones can handle. I own the 5800 XM and I use Gravity to update Twitter, that has perfect kinetic scrolling. Overall a good browser would be, one which is fullscreen so we can view the whole page without buttons squashing it, a good UI, pop out so it can remain full screen, smooth to use all the CPU/RAM needed to make it smooth (like the iPod Touch/iPhone Safari) and kinetic scrolling, to create a good use friendly web browsing environment. Thankyou, Andrew Robinson.
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August 6th, 2009 at 5:41 am
My vote was for OTHER: Efficiency.
Sure we ALL want “all the above”.
we all want Flash Lite
we all want large screen and the ability to interact with touch.
we all want keyboards to contribute to the web, interact with it.
we all want Web Apps, Widgets, Web Services (is this not 1-in-the-same thing)?! Web 2.0!
We all want High speed connectivity.
But NONE of this, NON-of-The-Above is worth anything without the speed and lack of issues/bugs/compatibility issues/crashes/lack of memory etc. Non of it is worth having if its not fast to use, and reliable. Imagine having what we can do with the web & browser on your desktop/laptop back in the mid 1980’s! Impossible and the time it would take an average web page today – on 56K … you’d all SCREAM with insanity and pain. No efficiency.
Browser Menu needs to be tweaked and adjusted.
Browser needs or more intuitive layout of controls.
Browser needs to allow a user to have a highlighted link – without loading the page first. Browser needs to have the user save a page, a link (current viewed site or highlighted link) into a Folder > structured BY the user, for the user; especially when purchased UNLOCKED and Nokia Links have no relevance, useless, and no business being static in the browser bookmarks for a region the device is sold and compatible with. Case in point. N85/N95/E71 all have 3.5G usable in USA/Canada but those Nokia Mobi links for wallpapers, ringtones, music, etc are useless – loading a mini site that users here cannot take advantage of. Again not EFFICIENT to the end user.
I submitted a similar idea on Symbian Ideas.
Prom1 aka Jagga aka Donny
seriousmobile.
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August 6th, 2009 at 8:19 am
How about reliability? I don’t want to experiene a sudden browser shutdown while doing something in the ‘net.
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August 6th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I belong to a state in India, called Kerala. I am writing this in English so some of you can read and understand the urgency of the hour. We Malayalees are a bunch of very industrious and creative folks. I think there are about 35 million of us. That’s twice as much as the Netherlands. Yet Dutch is a language supported on most of your handsets. Malayalam is not. Quite a few Malayalees actually work in your offices and development centres all over the world.
The Malayalam edition of wikipedia has over 10,000 articles making it the highest number for any Indian language after Telugu. There are over one million Malayalees who communicate in Malayalam via Blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Yet you seem totally oblivious to our existence. Over five million Malayalees are wealthy expatriates who have enough money to buy mobile phones for themselves, their kids and their pet dogs. So there need not be any doubts about the buying power of Malayalees.
Kerala is a young, vibrant and exciting place with over 10 million mobile handset users. Most of them buying your products. And this number is increasing by the minute. However very few of those handsets allow communication in Malayalam. As far as I know none of the high end business phones support Malayalam as a communication Language. They communicate using latin characters, which does not even come close to a proper solution. We cannot be forced into using English or Latin to express our deepest emotions. Our songs of love and grief are not in written English. Our hymns and lamentations were not written in English. Our martyrs did not sing their songs of revolt in English. They were written in our beautiful Malayalam script. We have a right to use our language to communicate at least within our own soil. We demand freedom of expression.
All we ask of you is to write a simple rendering engine to support indic-unicode and include it in all new Models of Nokia sold in India. I am sure this can’t be difficult for you guys. I for one will gladly promote your handsets.
Help us win our freedom. Help us communicate.
Malayalam support on Nokia. Now!
Cheers.
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August 6th, 2009 at 10:09 am
I voted for “All of the above” and I feel the availability of web apps and local language support are also important
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August 6th, 2009 at 10:51 am
1. Do. Not. Crash.
2. Speed. Fast rendering, scrolling and zooming. Okay I can wait for page to render, but there’s nothing more annoying than to ques whether your screen presses have been registered or tearing and stuttering when scrolling.
Nice to have bonus features:
1. Ability to quickly turn on and off image loading, scripts & flash. Usually they just slow you down if you’re checking news or reading forums etc.
2. Reflow text when zooming to avoid horizontal scrolling.
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August 6th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
This is definitely a fun discussion, y’all!
What strikes me as a critical flaw in mobile web browsers is the lack of scripting support. There are some sites that (unfortunately) use scripts for things like links, forms, and mouseover effects, so these are completely useless on a mobile phone. This closes off parts of the web to a mobile surfer!
Also, Flash support would open up some websites to mobile browser use. It’s all about access, I guess. I want to be able to use the same websites on my mobile device as I do on my desktop and shouldn’t have to worry about limiting inabilities.
Thanks – I hope we can help!
Brian
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August 6th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
If by the device you mean mobile phone, then it’s the connection quality and keyboard, so you could watch websites, read news and and write emails.
For all other Internet purposes the mobile phone isn’t comfortable anyways. It’s better to use netbook instead.
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August 6th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Speed and simply… don’t crash.
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August 7th, 2009 at 8:04 am
For me, web loading speed, flash and size of screen are more important- more so than ‘touch’ – i voted for all of the above, but i wouldn’t have voted for ‘touch’ if i could have avoided it.
I don’t need to touch my PC screen- why do i want to touch my mobile screen – decent navigation is possible, but over reliance on touch screens is just not needed.
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August 7th, 2009 at 8:18 am
I was about to choose “All of the above”, but that’s such a cop-out. I chose “High speed connection”, cause that really kicked off my obsession into the mobile revolution.
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