Browsing on the Blackberry: It’s About Compromises

I’ve had a Blackberry (the 8700g) for about four months (although it seems like longer). I usually spend a couple hours a day mobile, and I’ll often use the web browser to check Twitter, Google Reader, or a few other mobile sites I visit. From what I’ve been able to tell, I essentially have two real browser options: the built-in Blackberry browser, or Opera Mini.

The Blackberry browser is just a hair more advanced than lynx. It’s quite text-focused, but has some nice usability features. To refresh the page, you just hit “r”. Pressing the center hotkey brings up the bookmarks menu. You can type text directly into text fields.

Opera Mini is closer to a “real” browser. You can view a full web page and “zoom in” on sections. It’s much more graphical. In short, it’s prettier. On the other hand, the usability stinks. The center hotkey doesn’t bring up the bookmarks; it does nothing. You can’t enter text into fields on webpages, instead you have to select the field and then open up another text editing window. There are no single-key hotkeys, everything is a combination of the # or * keys along with something else.

I would love a browser that looked good and was easy/fast to use. Please?

Perhaps the sometime-in-the-future mobile version of Firefox will make me happy…