Its nice to see that we might not have to wait too long for a better browser as part of Windows Mobile but is this going to be another case of ‘nice software, shame about the hardware?’ I say that because it was the conclusion I came to with Opera 9.5 a while back. The accuracy, UI and features were vastly improved but the bottle-kneck is the processor. There’s really no way around it. To convert todays very complex html, script and media that arrives through your Internet connection into a useable screen of information takes a lot of transistor switching. ARM9 and ARM11-based devices just don’t have that power. ARM Cortex and Atom do.
Show me a ‘Pocket PC’ a-la HTC Universal (left) with a 4.5″ 800×480 screen, 3G and Wifi, WM6, 5-hour online battery life, running on a a Cortex A8 core and we can talk. The Archos 5 does a fairly speedy job. The Open Pandora device too so we know there’s no hardware limitations. It’s just a case of putting the right software with the right hardware!
Source: Download Squad
November 13th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… try an HTC Advantage X7510.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:27 am
I’d love to see that same updated HTC Universal… running Android :-)
November 13th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Try Skyfire. A new browser which turns your windows mobile installed PDA into a web monster. It shows pages, even including flash such as youtube, exactly same as you see on regular PC. Of course in that view you just see how page layout is. Then you can zoom the exact section of the web page you want to read, watch, etc. It’s certainly the best browser I have tested on mobile devices
November 13th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
@John : you can yet try debian under htc universal :) just do a google searche ;)
@Fatih : yes i’m also impressed with SkyFire on my iPaq 614c, which render youtube pages perfectly! by the way, there are many browser alternatives to PocketIE yet : Opera mobile and NetFront are also doing a great job in quick&dirty rendering of web pages
November 14th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Well, I’ve been using the latest Internet Explorer mobile 6 from past 3 days on a real hardware, HTC TOUCH DIAMOND. Here is the link to the review. You may add it to your post
http://gadgetmix.com/index/?p=1237
March 24th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
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