Can I use my mobile phone to surf the web
Most modern mobile phones have the ability to connect to the internet to varying degrees. The vast array of handsets available on the market and the rate of change of this array makes identifying the capabilities of specific phones impractical, however most phones are similar in essence.
Surfing the web on a mobile is subject to two main limiting factors:
- screen size
- connection
Mobile phones obviously have far smaller screens than traditional computer monitors, which can lead to display problems with some websites, e.g. ones that use large graphics or complicated layouts. It is often the case that sites will have a version for traditional computer access, e.g. on their www.mysite.com address and a version for mobile browsers on say mobile.mysite.com. Some sites (such as this one) will automatically detect what's known as the "user agent", i.e. the widget one is using to view the site, and will tailor the output to suit that user agent, by for example stripping much of the formatting out and presenting simple text.
The connection speed of a mobile can also be tediously slow. Although advances in mobile technology have given us 3G, which provides pseudo-broadband speed of 384Kbps (1/3 of the speed of a 1MB line) and even faster through the new high-speed data packet access (HSDPA) services which are capable of connecting to the internet at speeds of up to 3.6 megabits per second (Mbs), these technologies are based upon the mobile networks. This means that just like making phone calls, if you can't get a signal, you can't access the internet.
Having said that, the phone companies do claim to have quite a complete coverage accross the country.
A word of caution!
One important consideration when using your phone to access the internet is cost. Many price plans use per kB billing, which is arguably a fair method of billing as you pay for what you download. However, if you pay, say 1cent per kB, and a web page and associated graphics take up 50 kB, that costs you 50cent. Surf an entire site and you could cost yourself a hefty sum.
Handy tips as follows
- Check your price plan before you go trying to download stuff. If you are on a per kB system, see if you can get a flat rate for unlimited download, or if you can buy a chunk of data allowance, e.g. 10MB at a cheaper rate.
- If you are just surfing the net, try turning off images. You should be able to do this in the options on your phone's browser. This means that you won't get charged for downloading images, which is the hefty bit of a web page, and your page text will download faster.
- Use RSS. Many phones, e.g. the Sony Ericsson K310i have a reader built in to read RSS news feeds. RSS will ignore most graphics and just download the headlines and introductory text, which gives you the bones of what you need faster and more cheaply. Many mobile phones come with built in news reader applications. Some of the higher specification phones have web browsers which will will handle RSS feeds. You can get free downloads of news readers and browsers for any Java enabled phone (most modern phones have Java for their games) from sites such as:
http://www.getjar.com/software/
http://code.google.com/p/mobile-rss-reader/
You can learn more about RSS by reading The Wheel's article on it here.
