The S60 Browser Just Doesn’t Cut it Anymore
I am going to do my best not to get overly critical here as it seems like I’ve been ripping into Nokia a bit much lately. At the same time however, I would be remiss if I avoid posting about certain things because I might “hurt someone’s feelings”. After all, how would a company ever improve a product without criticism?
That said, the S60 browser has exceeded its useful lifespan. As harsh as it sounds, the internet moved forward and left Nokia’s smartphone browser of choice behind long ago. “Web 2.0″ is already a term so overused that many people are actually angered by it, and yet the S60 Browser just doesn’t handle new technologies well at all. Notice that “new” was written in italics.
Rather than go on and on about how Nokia should be embarrassed to call a device a “multimedia computer” when it can’t even handle a basic “Web 2.0″ site built on Drupal and jQuery, I’ll just show you what I’m talking about. The following is a Firefox screen shot of a great website I found this morning:
And now, that same page in the S60 Browser:
Mind you, it took three crashes before I could keep the S60 Browser open long enough to take that screen shot. This, by the way, was on my N95 8GB with about 73MB of free RAM.
Needless to say, the internet has changed A LOT since the S60 Browser was introduced and the browser simply hasn’t kept up. Only recently was Flash support added and this was after engineers had all but shunned Flash years ago. We’re at the point where a mobile browser built by the world’s leading handset manufacturer / Internet company should be able to handle a simple web service like Streetread with ease…
EDIT: Just to clarify, this is a “boiling point” post. My complaint is not that this particular site doesn’t work. Having Streetread crash on me seven times this morning was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. I visit several sites each week that either don’t work well in the S60 Browser, or don’t work at all.
No I’m not insane, calling for a mobile browser with desktop functionality. What I am calling for however, is a mobile browser from an Internet Company that sells more smartphones than any other company in the world… to handle basic web technology that has been widely adopted for several years already.
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Also keep in mind, this site is just an example. Streetread was a last straw / boiling point of sorts.
With that said, I'll answer your question now lol. Yes, the iPhone renders the site fine and yes, the functionality of the site works perfectly in Safari mobile.
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I edited the post a few moments ago to clarify that this particular site is just one of a hundred sites I've had fail on the S60 Browser. The last straw, if you will. I could run through a list of plenty of sites that use fairly old and popular technologies and still aren't supported by Nokia's browser. I'm sure you could as well...
As for the valid markup issue, fair enough. It works fine in "other" mobile browsers though! ;) http://bit.ly/244yUv
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Neither here nor there however. Please recheck the post for an update as this particular site is just an example; one of a hundreds sites I've tried that "should" work but doesn't.
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Anyone know how to make Opera the defult browser on a Nokia N95?
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forward to playing with 9.5 when the beta comes to S60...
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