On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 19:14:42 -0700 (PDT), Ken Chang <carigate@yahoo.com> wrote:
> though I believe that wireless contents should specially target
> the mobile users and be designed from scratch (both WAP and i-mode
> fall in this category) I've been looking for Opera-like browsers
> because they may change the ground.
>
> (1)
> of course can view the fixed web content is better than cannot.
> but I'm always curious what if people have Opera and flat-rate data,
> will they use it a lot?, which we'll see soon.
I've always viewed Opera for mobiles as a pretty darn good technical
achievement (for the Small Screen Rendering) so am a bit puzzled to
see it receive a drubbing here. That said, I don't see mobile web
surfing as being the killer mobile app for the sole reason that GPRS
pricing is quite prohibitive in this part of the world at least
(Philippines) The charging here is 25 centavos per KB of data traffic
- accessing a typical news web page with all the bells and whistles
(ala CNN.com) will take up over 100 KB per page. I am not inclined to
use browse the web unless absolutely essential - or until they come up
with flat rate GPRS pricing over here (I understand that T-Mobile in
the US offers this).
My operator Globe Telecom offers free WAP access but only for a
handful of sites within its "closed garden" mentality. The free sites
that are accessible using a WAP browser are quite useful, mainly
CNN.com and Yahoo's WAP version, and some Reuters news feeds. I am on
these constantly, and I think my average data WAP consumption is about
9 MB a month.
Accessing all other sites requires pay GPRS and I would say forget it,
given the pricing.
My main use of GPRS is for instant messaging, not web browsing. I use
a free application called Agile Messenger on my Sony Ericsson P800
that is a messaging client for ICQ, AOL, MSN, Yahoo chat networks.
Given the bandwidth of messaging is not that much, this application
saves money,especially when messaging contacts on PCs whether across
town or across continents.
My other favorite mobile apps have little to do with accessing GPRS.
For example, Repligo is an excellent mobile document format that I use
in place of PDF files for viewing web pages and documents uploaded
from my laptop. I find little compelling content from mobile
operators, most of my apps, images, ringtones, etc. are obtained
directly from the Internet or created on the PC and uploaded to the
phone.
- jim
Received on Thu Jun 10 12:37:10 2004