A Mobile Browser for Every Season

Life can be hard for a Windows Mobile Fanboy.  The Iphone and Android have both stepped up to the plate with extremely smooth web browsing experiences that are touch-friendly and well-implemented.  Meanwhile, the version of Internet Explorer on our phones (and even the new version coming out with WM 6.5), barely passes the tolerance test.  Luckily, Windows Mobile users have a solid collection of third-party browsers to pick up the slack.  Now that I’m settling into my Treo Pro, I decided I’d take a bunch of these for a spin and see where we end up.

I tested four third-party browsers.  Opera Mobile; Iris by Torchmobile; Bolt; and UC Web.

Opera Mobile 9.5
I used the latest update of Opera Mobile for my tests.  This version has a widgets engine as well as gears support for offline browsing.  I don’t actually care all that much about either of these features, and the widgets engine in particular is a little weird to me, as it’s a separate app, with icon launchers for the widgets.  If Opera had offered this as a today screen plugin, I’m sure it would be the hotness, but since they haven’t, it just doesn’t seem that useful. 

The Opera Mobile browser on the other hand, is still one of the more functional choices for mobile browsing.  It’s also the slowest by far of the four browsers I tested.    The trade-off is it has one of the better zoom modes available.  Starting from a full-page type zoom, a double tap of the thumb near the text you want to read will cause Opera to zoom in, and properly wrap the text for easy viewing.   Basically, Opera Mobile is still one of the better looking browser choices available for Windows Mobile.  But the price you pay in speed is significant compared to the other options.

Bolt Browser

Next up we have the Bolt Browser by Bitstream.  Unlike the other options tested, and exactly like Opera Mini (not tested, but available here: http://www.opera.com/mini/), Bolt is a java program.  For WM that basically means it will not quite work natively in WM.  Instead it gets installed through your java midlet manager of choice.  Once there though, Bolt really cooks.  It had the fastest startup of the four, although I did not count the extra steps necessary to start the java environment before starting the browser.  The biggest problem for me was that it didn’t quite fit full screen, instead leaving a tiny bit of the bottom of the screen exposed as you can see in the pictures.  Since the Treo Pro doesn’t have physical softkeys, this meant that, unless I carefully pressed the auto-hiding softkeys, I would interact with whatever program was open below the browser, effectively minimizing the browser.  Basically this little b ug makes this browser a no go on the Treo, which is a shame, because it is fairly fast and full-featured.  On of the features I really likes was the dual-pane zoom mode, which let you mouse around a magnifying box and view the zoomed section in the bottom of the screen.

UCWeb6

UCWEb was basically the dark horse candidate for me starting this test, but it’s one of the better offerings.  It has tabbed browsing, fast rendering, and the option to switch between zoomed (view full page, click to zoom in) and adaptive, which basically rips apart whatever page you’re looking at to make it more mobile friendly. Really my only gripe is that it defaults to the mobile version of some websites, and there is not setting to ask it to display the full version as there is in Opera Mobile.  Otherwise, it’s definitely a browser worth checking out.

Iris Browser

Last but not least is the Iris Browser from Torch Mobile.  This browser is built on webkit, which is the same stuff Safari and Chrome come from, so at least you know it’s got good genes.  Like Opera Mobile, this is a bit of a beast to install, requiring 10 megs of free memory.  Like UCWeb, it loaded the mobile version of CNN, but unlike UC it loaded the full version of Engadget.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for this, and there is definitely no setting to tell it which version of a website to run if given the choice. 

It is similar to Opera in terms of functionality, although it is a little bit quicker to render pages.  It’s biggest drawback though is speed.  Between Opera and Iris, it would probably be a toss up.  I think Iris is a little more feature rich with more plentiful options for viewing, but it’s also a little more unstable, and it occasionally locked loading a webpage during testing.  That said, it’s definitely one that I’ll come back to more than once.

Conclusion

The old saying “you get what you pay for” couldn’t be more true for mobile browsing.  If you want beautifully rendered webpages with no interference from big brother’s helpful servers, Iris or Opera Mobile are your choices, but you’ll pay a price with a huge footprint and slower rendering times.  If you just want a fast path to the web with nicely formatted text, UCWeb and Bolt are your clear winners.  UCWeb seems to split the difference particularly well, offering a very nice interface on top of it’s blazing fast rendering engine.  Bolt doesn’t really get a fair shake from me because of it’s bugginess on my system.  It’s a shame, because it’s speed and dual screen view both make it a very efficient way to browse the web.

I’d also be offering an incomplete opinion if I didn’t mention Skyfire and Opera Mini.  Both of these are also excellent browsers, and it was somewhat arbitrary of me to not put them through their paces before.  Skyfire’s main claim to fame is the ability to play flash content, including youtube, and virtually any other site.  Opera Mini is Opera’s java version of their browser, and a staple for blackberry users.  Either of these might also fit your bill.

At the end of the day, I don’t think any of the browsers on the market offer the complete experience I’d like.  Hopefully Opera’s upcoming version 9.7, which will add “Turbo” server-side compression will offer us the best of both worlds, but until then, it just comes down to what you want to use your browser for.