we all know WAP sucks, and WAP is dead. and yes, WAP is pretty useless for browsing the "mobile internet".
that doesn't mean that people aren't browsing; as the browsers are getting richer and better on phones, it seems people are starting to browse again using them, just not using WAP! XHTML looks really good, and the new mobile browsers mobile browsers are doing a much better job in rendering regular old HTML for the mobile profile. Opera on the Nokia 6600 and P800/900 looks damn good, an the build in browser on Microsoft Mobile (Smartphone) is totally usable as well. boy did openwave miss the bus there. there is really no need for WAP anymore on these new phones with better processors and better bandwidth. the newly announced nokia 6620 is going to be even more usable on the EDGE networks of AT&T and Cingular.
P900 Opera
6600 Opera
6600 Opera, Full Screen Mode
i wouldn't bring this up, except that in looking at our webserver logs, i'm starting to see more and more people using these browsers to, well, browse, enter comments, download MIDlets, whatever.
here's one from a P900
"GET /steve/archives/000279.html HTTP/1.1" 200 16741 "-" "SonyEricssonP900/R101 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0"
ah, now here's an interesting one:
"GET /steve/archives/000155.html HTTP/1.0" 200 12398 "-" "Nokia6600/1.0 (3.42.1) SymbianOS/7.0s Series60/2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 (Google WAP Proxy/1.0)"
what's the "Google WAP Proxy"? what's a WAP proxy?
well, if you do use your wap browser and start at http://www.google.com/wml - they have what is referred to as a "transcoding proxy server" or a "transcoder" serving up your pages. what this does is sniff your device, and then take regular old HTML and turn it into WAP, XHTML, or whatever on the server side before sending it down to the device.
most telecom software infrastructure companies sell these things, but the need for them is going away. we saw this market evaporating a couple years ago a the last place i worked, and my product management team did all we could to kill further product development in this area and refocus it in other more forward looking areas.
that was still the right choice, but it's cool that google has this piece of soviet-era technology, and interesting that people are actually using it, especially on a 6600.
Posted by Steve at January 15, 2004 10:39 AM | TrackBack
Steve, WAP use here in the UK is really taking off now. Here's a link from 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2546447.stm , showing 11.5 million pages a day were being viewed. Here's an updated figure for October 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3161108.stm , showing 28.5 million pages per day are being viewed.
Here's a bonus link for you, too, courtesy of the #mobitopia links feed: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3299821
:-)
Posted by: Martin Little at January 16, 2004 03:44 AM
thanks martin - yeah, i've seen the media coverage of this in the uk. i wonder how much is actually wml vs other markup languages that will evolve not to use the WAP protocol and just use IP.
cc/pp is definitely the way to handle multi-channel content - and of course, it's move toward being handled in open-source implementations is what made the commerical proprietary implementations obsolete!
Posted by: Steve at January 16, 2004 08:52 AM
I really like your site, do you mind if i mirror some of it on mine? unrealdestination.com
yes, mobile phones and thier browsers r insane now, i remember my parents black and white nokia that died after it started ringing beacuse the batteries sucked.
Posted by: Joe Fratantoni at January 16, 2004 11:50 AM
Yep. I use the HTML browser on my Danger Hiptop (http://www.danger.com/), and it's very usable. It doesn't read the HTML directly; rather, it uses a gateway which tokenizes the HTML, kinda like WAP, and sends it to the phone. Unfortunately, there's no JavaScript support, but I can live with that.
Posted by: Eric Galluzzo at January 21, 2004 08:55 AM
why doe people use wap on mobile phone's.
has anybody got the answer for that?
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Posted by: sam at August 20, 2004 05:41 AM