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…
[tags]blackberry, browser, operamini, opera[/tags]
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
*cough* iPhone *cough* *cough*
Seriously, though, I know what you mean. I’ve used just about every mobile browser out there, and they all make compromises. It sucks.
Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch definitely comes the closest to being the ideal mobile browsing experience, IMHO. Sure, there are some things it doesn’t do (like, uh, Flash, and, uh, Flash…). But I’ve gotten so spoiled by it that I’d probably cry if I were forced to use one of the other mobile browsers out there for any length of time…
Single key shortcuts in Opera Mini has some serious usability drawbacks. Users would accidentally hit single keys without knowing what or why it happened.
In fact, in the Opera desktop browser we used to have single key shortcuts enabled by default. However after getting lots of feedback on the usability drawbacks, we disabled it by default in the beta version of Opera 9.5.
Daniel
Opera Software
Perhaps some users wouldn’t like it. But since Opera Mini’s current keyboard shortcuts all involve alt+ keys, just going to one “speed dial” saved bookmark is essentially four key presses alt + * then alt + number.
Make it a user-configurable option, but don’t tell me I’m too stupid to use it. I use the single-key shortcuts all the time in the Blackberry browser.
Which phone model are you using? On my Samsung phone I don’t have to press any ALT keys. For me, I just press two keys to get to a shortcut.
I have a Blackberry 8700 as noted in the post.
Quote: “I would love a browser that looked good and was easy/fast to use. Please?”
My guess is that you’ll get it, but just not on your current phone. RIM has to get this sorted or it will watch its market share erode.