I’ve added several mobile sites to the WapReview directory and YesWAP.com mobile portal. These are all “Phone Fan” sites which cover mobile technology from the point of view of a enthusiastic end user, phone hacker or developer. This is a very active and vibrant part of the mobile web. The portal currently has 73 sites listed under the “Mobile Phones” category and another 27 in the “PDA” group. Together the phone and PDA sites account for nearly of a quarter of the 440 total sites in the directory\/portal. Incidentally, the Phone and PDA distinction really doesn’t make sense any more as sales of standalone PDAs are dropping rapidly with a corresponding rise in shipments of Smartphones running what used to be considered PDA operating systems (Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian). I think I need to move most of the sites in the PDA section (the ones that now also cover Smartphones) to the Phones section.<\/p>\n
I believe that the popularity and quantity of phone technology sites is a natural result of the relative newness of this technology compared with the Web. While mobile browsing is rapidly becoming a mainstream activity, for a long time it was more the realm of the early adopter. It’s only natural that there are a relatively large number of phone technology sites at this stage in the development of the mobile web. In addition, the low quality of the carriers’ end-user technical support and the fact that phones tend to be locked down and crippled by the providers means that users have a real need to research and share tips and hacks using these sites.<\/p>\n
SmartPhone2000<\/em> is interesting in that exists as a mobile site only with no corresponding desktop site. Of course, the cHtml site is perfectly usable in the desktop version of Internet Explorer.<\/p>\n
Smartphone2000 focuses on the SPV series of Smartphones on the UK Orange network but much of what’s on the site is of use to owners of any Microsoft Smartphone device. The main areas of interest are the help<\/em> and download<\/em> sections. Help has clear, detailed instructions on how to install various types of media and applications, how to unlock the SPVs and dozens of tips to help you make your Smartphone faster and more usable. The download section includes unlocking tools and a good selection of free and demo software, videos, sound files, skins and background graphics. The site has a nice selection of mobile links too.<\/p>\n
I noted a few relatively minor usability issues. On some browsers (but not on PIE or Opera including Mini) there was some text overlapping. There are a number of image links without alt text which could pose a problem for anyone who turns off images in their browser to reduce data charges.<\/p>\n
All in all, a very nice site – particularly for anyone with a Microsoft Smartphone or researching the purchase of one. At around 20 KB including images the site’s page weight should not be a problem for most WAP2 phones. You can find Smartphone2000 in the Technology\/Mobile Phones\/Smartphones\/Microsoft<\/em> section of the directory and the portal.<\/p>\n
SmartPhone2000: cHtml<\/a>
\nContent: Usability:
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CoolSmartphone: cHtml<\/a>
\nContent: Usability:
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TamsPalm-the Palm OS Blog is an interesting blog by Palm developer, Tam Hanna. The site is updated several times a day by Tam and a number of contributors and includes Palm OS tips and secrets, product reviews, general musings on the future of the handheld scene and the process of software development along with a number of technical pieces replete with code examples. Tam’s the guy who wrote the utility<\/a> that lets the Netfront browser (which normally only works on Sony Clies) run on Palm branded devices.<\/p>\n
Tam is using a WordPress theme called Lesbar<\/em> to create the PDA version of the blog. Lesbar strips the blog down to a single column containing just the blog items along with a search box at the top and a form for writing to the “shoutbox<\/a>” at the bottom. In general, Lesbar does it’s job allowing a mobile user to read sequentially through the blog starting with the most recent post. Like CoolSmartPhone, the pages are big – so you need something like a Palm Treo or Opera Mini to fully appreciate the TamsPalm site. TamsPalm is in the Technology\/Mobile Phones\/Smartphones\/Palm<\/em> section of the directory and the portal.<\/p>\n
TamsPalm: xhtml<\/a>
\nContent: Usability:
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The warning seems superfluous and adds a extra click and page load to the process of getting to the content. I didn’t have any problem reading any of the articles on any emulator or device, other than a few double-byte characters that displayed as gobbledygook, a common problem with mobile pages, BTW. The problem is that even if you specify UTF-8 encoding, most mobile devices can’t handle literal double byte characters like left and right quotes, the em-dash or angle-quotes. It’s a good idea to avoid these characters altogether when generating mobile markup. Representing them as decimal character references<\/a> like ‘ for left single quote (\u2018) will also work with most modern mobile browsers. This a cosmetic issue and doesn’t effect the usability of the site. Filed under Technology\/Mobile Phones\/News – Reviews<\/em> in the Portal and Directory.<\/p>\n
Slashphone: xhtml<\/a>
\nContent:Usability:
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S60.com: xhtml<\/a>
\nContent:Usability:
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I’ve added several mobile sites to the WapReview directory and YesWAP.com mobile portal. These are all “Phone Fan” sites which cover mobile technology from the point of view of a enthusiastic end user, phone hacker or developer. This is a very active and vibrant part of the mobile web. The portal currently has 73 sites listed under the “Mobile Phones” category and another 27 in the “PDA” group. Together the phone and PDA sites account for nearly of a quarter … Continue reading