So you bought this brand new HTC Hero and you tell everyone it’s on a par with the iPhone 3GS and its great browser? I mean, both are very recent Webkit-implementations aren’t they? Safari Mobile on iPhone OS3 is based on AppleWebKit/528.18, Chrome Mobile (or don’t they call it that?) for Android 1.5 on AppleWebKit/528.5+, and between 528.5+ and 528.18 there can only be minor differences? So HTML5-goodies (such as geolocation, localstorage and app cache) which Google is actively promoting, will work out of the box, just like on that dreaded iPhone 3GS, won’t they?
Sorry to bust your bubble, but Google seems to have decided otherwise; there’s no navigator.geolocation, no localstorage and no app cache on my HTC Hero (which is running Android 1.5 aka cupcake). You can access similar functionalities by calling the built-in Gears plugin, but mobile web-developers can’t assume that these HTML5-draft-specs are available on all modern high-end mobile handsets at all. Hell, even “big” Chrome 3.0.195.10 (which is based on Webkit 532!) does not seem to support these killer-features. Must be that Google is secretly pushing for Gears to become the default “rich internet enabler” instead of HTML5?
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HTC-dude, where’s my keyboard?
In spite of my almost religious view on the ideal mobile phone, I bought a HTC Hero last week.
But let there be no doubt; it’s a great handset! My Hero sports a beautiful touch-screen, a nice -albeit young- Linux-based OS and a top notch webkit-based browser (with Adobe Flash 10, a first for a mobile device). The price is considerably lower then that of an iPhone and the platform is very open (esp. if you compare it to the golden cage Apple created for its ecosystem). I’ve installed several free apps from the Android Market and downloaded and installed a great AR-application from outside the Market without having to jailbreak anything (more on Android-apps in a later post).But there’s one thing I really miss on my fancy device; a physical keyboard. Because as ancient as my Nokia e61i might have been, I really was more productive (as in “writing mails”) on it thanks to the (small) physical QWERTY-keyboard it sported. And while friends and colleagues assure me that I’ll get used to the virtual keyboard, and I’m sure things will indeed get better, we should not kid ourselves; nothing beats a real keyboard. Ever! So let the quest for a small compatible bluetooth keyboard begin!
Tomorrow’s phone, now!
As every boy could tell you, it’s our toys that keep us kind of young. Because of that and as I work for a telco, I can’t but regularly buy a new phone. Over the years I’ve had a.o. a Nokia 7110, a Sony-Ericsson T68i, a Qtek 9100 and I currently own a secondhand Nokia E61i. But time flies and my E61i is aging fast (maybe if I wouldn’t drop it that often …), so in a few months time I’m buying a new smartphone. Time to start shopping for pics, specs and reviews!
Smetty recently asked for advice on this topic as well, she was thinking about the Nokia E71 as a cheaper alternative to the iPhone 3G. But I won’t be buying Apple’s must-have gadget any time soon; although it has some superb features (OS, browser and that multi-touch interface), it lacks a real keyboard, has not tethering and doesn’t allow applications running in the background. And last but not least; the platform is far too closed to appeal to an open standards and open source minded wannabe-geek like me. All Windows Mobile-based devices are banned from my shortlist as well; I really don’t like the OS and its GUI, it feels too much like Windows 3.11 to me.
I’ll probably end up buying either the Nokia E71, a HTC Dream (the Google-phone) or the Palm Pré. So let’s do a pro&con-list, comparison-tables are always fun, no?
| Nokia E71 | HTC Dream | Palm Pré | |
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| Pro |
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The conclusion: although it still is vaporware, there’s some extreme chemistry going on between me and that darned Palm Pré. It’s the most exciting device by far and if it is for sale in Belgium, it’ll be hard to resist. The HTC Dream doesn’t seem to do it for me, no chemistry on one hand and not the “safe choice” either, as that award is easily claimed by Nokia E71. So Palm Pré if available in June/July, Nokia E71 otherwise?
Webkit Konquering the mobile world
With the nineties browser wars and the quasi MSIE monopoly that followed after the Netscape debacle behind us, the desktop browser scene can be considered a mature market, with some very good products vying for our approval. Time to shift our attention to the next battleground; mobile browsers. Netfront and Pocket Internet Explorer dominated this emerging market for quite some time, but as of late some newcomers are making great advances in this area. And apart from Opera Mobile and Mini (the Mozilla-guys are really ages behind here), these all share the same open source core; WebKit.
The history of WebKit in 10 1/2 sentences
WebKit is a fork of KHTML, the html rendering-engine that was developed by the KDE-community for its Konquerer-browser. In 2002 Apple decided to build it’s own browser based on KHTML and thus WebKit was born as the core-component of what would become Safari. Since it’s inception, WebKit has gained enourmous momentum; Safari now has a market share of approx 6% on the desktop, but smaller projects such as iCab and Epiphany (the Gnome browser!) picked up WebKit as well. But there’s more; Adobe decided to incorporate it in Air (the Flex-like platform for building desktop-software). And Trolltech, the company behind the Qt GUI-toolkit and one of the primary backers of KDE, announced they would include Webkit in Qt 4.4 as well.
WebKit 0wnz Mobile
But the mobile area is where WebKit is really taking the world by storm; it not only powers the mobile version of Safari on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, but WebKit (in its S60webkit form) it’s also the basis of Symbian’s S60-browser. Nokia ‘s Mini Map Browser, as it’s officially named, was first released in november 2005 and thanks to the succces of Symbian it’s probably the most widespread mobile browser by far. Being a proud Nokia e61i-owner myself, I can testify that it is a great browser indeed; I didn’t even bother with installing Opera Mini (which I used instead of Netfront on my Sony-Ericsson w810).
Next to these two well-established WebKit-derivatives, the lesser known Iris (for Windows Mobile), newcomer Digia (for Symbian UIQ-devices) and last but not least the browser of Google’s highly anticipated mobile Android OS are also part of the family.
Mobile Web, but there’s more then One
So thanks to KDE’s great job on KHTML and Apple’s (and Nokia’s) subsequent work, we are at a point where users of ‘smartphones’ and similar devices can access the internet almost as if they were using a desktop-browser. But screen-size, text-input, data transfer (bandwidth and price) and context remain very different from normal browsing, so don’t believe the “one web”-hype just yet. But still; these sure are great web times for building mobile(-ready) websites and -applications!