Having been stuck on Nokia’s Web (the default browser on the E71), I have always been on the lookout for an alternative to this often used piece of software on my phone. It’s not that Web is particularly painful to use, but sometimes it can be a little annoying. While it has some good features like the RSS reader and the ability to automatically resize web content (looks like it’s done with a custom CSS) and a few other nice touches, I often find it a little short in places where it counts.
One of the things that irks me about Web is when the screen goes blank after I click on a link. It first shows a text-only view of the web page, then it goes blank until the whole page and the majority of the graphics have loaded. This little habit of Web‘s is quite annoying on its own. It might be fine if I am looking at the mobile version pages of the large internet sites like flickr and facebook and so on, but some sites do not have any mobile version and they regularly exceed 1MB in size, so on my E71, that means quite a few seconds (with a very good network connection) sitting idle waiting for something to load, staring at a blank screen. This is compounded by the fact that even when the same graphics are involved (eg the second page of a website with the exact same graphical elements), Web still makes you wait a few seconds (while it reads the local cache? How slow!). This is also true when you hit the back button to view a previously loaded page.
Having put up with Nokia’s little browser for a year, I have decided that I have to find an alternative. I first looked at Opera Mobile, but it is only available for platforms such as Windows Mobile. However, inspired by the good experience I had with Opera Mobile on my HTC phone (imate Jamin), I wanted to see if Opera made a browser for the Symbian platform. After looking around the Opera website, it turns out that they make Opera Mini, which is available for the Symbian phone, including my Nokia E71.
Download and installation was a snap and using the browser is such a joy. Pages load up so quickly and the zooming function works really well. Opera’s technology for the mobile browser has really created a nice user experience. Hitting the back button to view previous pages loads them in such a snappy fashion that I feel so compelled to write about it here. It seems that the use of server-side compression has really paid off for Opera in the mobile space.
So if you are on a symbian phone, make sure you give Opera Mini a try!