MWC: Web browsing: WebKit, Thunderhawk news; a dedicated Web browser handheld

(Note that you'll find the Opera Mobile 9.5-related report HERE; in this article, I only report on some other stuff. Also note that I'll still publish some other MWC articles on Web browsing; for example, on the Russian InfoGrin.)

WebKit

WebKit (Wiki page HERE) is a well-known framework two major mobile browsers (that of Nokia’s s60v3 and Applet’s iPhone) are based on. It’s hugely successful and, by many, generally considered one of the best mobile browsers. You may already have head that it’s being ported to Windows Mobile.

(The WinMo port of WebKit rendering our blogs; as usual, click the images for a much bigger version)

I was pretty lucky with the Wake3 folks (the people behind the Windows Mobile port of WebKit) because we’ve run into each other right on Sunday morning (one day before the MWC officially started) on the bus heading to Espanja Square. As they didn’t have a booth, I would have, otherwise, missed this great chance to quickly test the current version of their port and also ask them about their plans for future.

First, don’t expect a full review in here – it would just be unfair because the port, currently, doesn’t even have a menu (only an address bar) or, on a low-resolution handheld device, pretty much important "fit into screen" or "one column" modes. Therefore, I just played a bit with it to see how, for example, our blogs are rendered. I haven’t run the Acid2 / my standard Ajax tests either to find out more about web standards compliance. According to the developers, I already supports full JavaScript, HTML and CSS(2). They have also stated that, speed-wise, it should be comparable to Nokia’s S60v3 FP1+ Web browser – or, even better, iPhone. Finally, I haven’t made any speed tests or checked the memory usage / optimization either (a major stumbling block with, for example version 0.2 of Minimo); they stated the WebKit blog has (and will have) some related announcements.

A public pre-beta phase follows some months later. They will (at least try to) implement hardware button quick access / controllability (one of the greatest things in Opera Mini, Mobile and Internet Explorer Mobile with the right plug-in supporting this; for example, PIEPlus or MultiIE).

As far as the above-mentioned lack of an one-column or "fit to screen" mode is concerned, they plan to do something like Safari on the iPhone, with the same nice scrolling and zooming in/out – that is, something that needs to be scrolled / zoomed in exactly the same way. It’s only later (if at all) that they might implement any fit-to-screen modes. I, however, REALLY hope that they do implement a text rendering mode like that if Opera Mini / Mobile – that is, the text, repaginate when necessary, dynamically reflows so that it first nicely in the screen, without any need to scroll horizontally.

As far as different D-pad-based scrolling modes are concerned (page/link(/line) being the most important), they won’t implement this either in the near future; they, currently, don’t know whether the first public beta will support this or not.

They already have a tier-1 European operator as their customer.

BTW, they had exactly the same experience with the local Vodafone folks as me. You may remember my Vodafone ES rant from my first article; they mentioned exactly the same problems (no English-speaking guys at the customer service; very hard to activate the Internet etc.) They were even more unlucky with the local Voda guys than me because, while I "only" spent some three hours (not counting in posting my help request to the XDA-Devs forums and checking for answers later) on Sunday queuing at Vodafone, explaining why I only have an ID card with me and not a password (they would have required an international ID card but, finally, accepted my simple ID card), fighting with the Spanish-only automatized menu of Vodafone etc. They had wasted even more time on activating their prepaid Internet.

Thunderhawk

I’ve also met the pretty much famous Bitstream people, who, in the meantime, have completely switched to Java in their, partic well-known Thunderhawk browser, but stated they also have Windows Mobile (Symbian etc.) clients of their new browser. The lead developer has turned out to have Finnish roots, so we quickly switched to Finnish for some quick small talk.

Unfortunately, their Java-based browser (see homepage HERE) isn’t available for testing to the general public. I’ll try to review & thoroughly compare it to the, currently, de facto Java-based browser pick of most mobile user folks, Opera Mini 4.

DataWind’s PocketSurfer 2

This is a self-standing device with purely server-based processing. While it's not a Windows Mobile device, it's still worth mentioning / quickly reviewing because it's always nice to know how Windows Mobile-based Web browsing compares to doing the same on dedicated Web browsing devices.

The screen is half-VGA (640*240) and isn’t of particularly good quality; for example, it has pretty much terrible viewing angle. I’d say it’s using the old, cheap DSTN technology, as opposed to the, in almost everywhere, currently used TFT. It’s pretty much washed-out and, of course, it doesn’t have a touchscreen.

The only way to handle scrolling or selecting links is using the cursor buttons. Scrolling seems to be a bit cumbersome: there isn’t any way of achieving link-by-link scrolling: when you want to click a link. For that matter, the same stands for click an Internet Explorer (MS Office etc.) Yes/No dialog box rendered by the remote server: you need to use the very slow-to-position cursor with the arrow buttons and you can’t directly use for example keyboard shortcuts (Y for quickly answering Yes etc.), unlike in desktop Windows (or, for that matter, Windows Mobile). An example of a server-side error dialog:

Also, it has very little RAM. According to the manufacturers, the memory is also used to cache the (last) past pages so that returning to the previous page can be instantaneous. This is, however, wasn’t really the case with my tests. It seemed the device reloads the last page, no matter how small it was.

All in all, I’m not sure whether this device will be successful at all.

Here’re some other reviews; it’s definitely worth checking them out:

ZDNet Review

Amazon user review

CNet review

(Yeah, I have still tons of articles to write. Please be patient: they will come. The next one, to be published today evening CET, will review the latest A2DP (stereo Bluetooth) headphones I've seen on MWC.)