This isn’t new but I just discovered it. There’s a mobile formatted version of every Tumblr blog. To see it, just add “/mobile” to the end of a Tumblr blog’s URL. There’s doesn’t seem to be any mobile browser detection and redirection, you have to manually change the URL.
A few examples from Social Media Explorer‘s list the Top 25 Tumblr.com Blogs:
pluimer.tumblr.com/mobile
brouillon.tumblr.com/mobile
chappedlipsandchiclets.tumblr.com/mobile
http://clientsfromhell.net/mobile
Tumbler is a free microblogging service that lets users post text, images and video or audio clips. Like Twitter, Tumblr users can follow other users and see all followed user’s posts in a timeline. Other social media features include the ability to “like” or “reblog” another user’s posts. Unlike Twitter, there is no limit to the size of a Tumblr post.
It looks like Tumblr’s reformatting for mobile strips out background images and Flash content, resizes images to 250px wide and changes text to black on a white background. Pagination, at 10 posts per page, is unchanged from the mobile version. The mobile versions of some image heavy Tumbler blogs I looked at ranged from 400 to 900 KB in size versus 1400 to 3000 KB for their desktop equivalents.
Via: MobileViews Blog
Yes. …and the /mobile version would be nicer for the feature phones. Would be nice to have acres to mobile template like they give you for the standard templates.
You can toggle on auto redirection to mobile version in site settings. The detection scripts are optimized for smartphones. Many feature phones that need the mobile version most are not detected and are sent to the desktop version anyway.
Thanks for the tip, David. I just tried turning that feature on in an old Tumbler blog of mine. It looks like only the iPhone and Android are recognized as mobile and they get a different, richer mobile version that the one you see appending “/mobile” to the URL.