Apple iPhone and related items (cont.)

[WWWeed]

it appears there are a few floating around in London (but not for sale as I'm sure you know).

I had a quick play on one today! Only really messed around on the web seeing how broken the web is. The bbc have a beta ipad site I tryed.

But apart from that I hate to say it was quite good! The screen is much much more responsive and sharper than the iphone! This makes typing a pretty good experience! They are also a bit heaver than I expected, but I'm told the battery is massive and is basically the whole back cover so it should hopefully have a decent life.

Google Maps Street view is also very smooth. In fact scrolling around in streetview seems much smoother than on any other device I've seen (mobile or desktop).

Also the youtube client is quite good too!

all in all pretty nice but I still dont think its worth the money. I wont be wasting my cash, especially if they are going for £400 for the basic wifi model!

 

[sunnysidedown]

Man alive this is the most boring shite ever..!

sorry about that, I had too much time on my hands the last couple of days.

this will be my final mention of the Apple v Adobe malarky.

this article is well worth a read.

The reason is that I think Adobe holds much more of the blame. Adobe is a large company with a significant, and complicated, relationship with Apple. They have frequent high level contacts and meetings. Adobe has known for quite some time about Apple's desire not to have Flash on the iPhone. There is no doubt in my mind that if they asked Apple to bless this they were rebuffed, and if they didn't ask the only reason they didn't was because they knew Apple would say no. In either event, they announced the product to their customers and sold them on an idea they were not in a position to deliver, hoping Apple would be unwilling to piss off developers by not fulfilling Adobe's promises. They tried to force Apple's hand by putting Apple in a position where in order stop the Flash they would have to do it publicly in front of Adobe's users. That was a bad call on Adobe's part.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

No worries, anyway some good news: Opera mini has been approved and will be available for free in the next 24!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/12/opera-mini-for-iphone-approved-will-be-available-for-free/?icid=engadget-iphone-url

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Cool it's available, trying it now.

 

[editor]

It's fast! Very fast!

http://www.wirefresh.com/apple-iphone-gets-the-opera-mini-5-and-its-fast/

 

[Sunray]

It's fast! Very fast!

http://www.wirefresh.com/apple-iphone-gets-the-opera-mini-5-and-its-fast/

Compared to the Safari experience its quite poor. Too jumpy, this site is reformatted so you can't zoom it, zoom is only two levels.

This means that you spend more time panning than is really necessary.

 

[editor]

Compared to the Safari experience its quite poor. Too jumpy, this site is reformatted so you can't zoom it, zoom is only two levels.

This means that you spend more time panning than is really necessary.

It's a bit clunky to navigate, but if you want to, say, read the news quickly it canes Safari's arse.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

It is very fast but I don't mind waiting and having a better user experience. The choppyness is irritating...

 

[editor]

I know which one I'll be using when I want to check the footie scores

 

[Lazy Llama]

iFooty?

 

[Sunray]

Just goes to show, speed isn't everything.

Do remember how it works, its not a HTML renderer like safari, its just a simpler display tool. The HTML is compiled on Opera's servers, compressed till the pips squeak and then sent as OBML. That's why there is an initial pause and then it all appears really quickly.

This technique has some limitations.

 

[Kanda]

iFooty?

Or Sky Sports Score Center.

 

[editor]

Or Sky Sports Score Center.

I already use that but prefer the BBC's text commentary. I also like to use as few Sky products as is humanly possible.

 

[Crispy]

How do dynamic sites like gmail.com perform? all that javascript - do the popups pop up? menus etc. all work properly?

 

[Lazy Llama]

Definitely try iFooty then if you haven't already. Uses the BBC text but is easier to navigate, IMO.

 

[editor]

Definitely try iFooty then if you haven't already. Uses the BBC text but is easier to navigate, IMO.

Just downloaded. I like it!

*shows Sky Sports the red card.

 

[Pie 1]

It is very fast but I don't mind waiting and having a better user experience. The choppyness is irritating...

This.
There's no denying the speed, but I've just had a good play around with it & that 2 level only zoom and the jumpiness of the scrolling is doing my head in a bit already.

 

[maximilian ping]

Just downloaded. I like it!

*shows Sky Sports the red card.

i had this but then it disappointed. didnt have my team's non Premier League games and there were a few other frustrating things i've forgotten - so i ditched it. Also ditched the Sky Footie one because the live text commentary thing was awful and kept on getting muddled. so now i just have normal BBC pages when a game's on.

 

[editor]

i had this but then it disappointed. didnt have my team's non Premier League games and there were a few other frustrating things i've forgotten - so i ditched it. Also ditched the Sky Footie one because the live text commentary thing was awful and kept on getting muddled. so now i just have normal BBC pages when a game's on.

Sky Football occasionally completely screws up - at one point if was showing me stats for a completely different game!

It's off my phone now, so I'll see if this iFooty thing is any better.

 

[Gromit]

iFooty piggybacks BBC data but isn't allowed to display fixture data.

I have both on mine. Why delete when you can switch between if one or the other is playing up? They don't exactly take up a lot of memory space.

 

[editor]

iFooty piggybacks BBC data but isn't allowed to display fixture data.

I have both on mine. Why delete when you can switch between if one or the other is playing up? They don't exactly take up a lot of memory space.

BBC text updates on opera and iFooty should cover it, I reckon.

 

[Gromit]

iFooty piggiebacks the BBC match updates So you can view em via the app rather than browser if you want. .

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I'm distinctly underwhelmed with Opera. It isn't faster at all for me on 3G - the rendering is of course but it was taking me ten or twenty seconds a page to even start, on Urban just now (on Safari at the moment it's a few seconds). Sometimes longer. Plus, there's no autocorrect when making entries in text fields - which is a deal breaker - and when I submitted a post just now with it, it didn't actually post it.

 

[teuchter]

Compared to the Safari experience its quite poor. Too jumpy, this site is reformatted so you can't zoom it, zoom is only two levels.

This means that you spend more time panning than is really necessary.

Try setting it to "mobile view" (in the settings) and see how you find that.

From the beginning (when smaller non-touch screens were the norm) Opera mini's strength has been in getting as much information onto the screen as quickly as possible and in an easily navigable way. In "mobile view" this means formatting all the content into a single column - which means what you see doesn't look like what you'd see on a desktop...but then again you aren't on a desktop, and panning and zooming around pages is a silly way to do things on a small screen.

Using "mobile view" you never have to pan or zoom - just scroll up or down (very handy if done with a couple of shortcut keys when using a phone one-handed).

The downside is that occasionally it will format something in a weird way but usually it does surprisingly well.

Of course to people used to using Safari on an iphone this probably all seems a strange way of doing things - but to those used to Opera Mini, trying to view the full desktop version of a website on a small screen seems a strange way of doing things.

Opera Mini speed can be a bit hit and miss though... sometimes super fast and some days not - I guess it probably depends on how much load there is on the servers and stuff like that.

 

[Kanda]

Try setting it to "mobile view" (in the settings) and see how you find that.

Attrocious. Like reading a webpage on a 6 year old Sony Ericsson.

 

[grit]

Attrocious. Like reading a webpage on a 6 year old Sony Ericsson.

Exactly Opera Mini was originally created to solve a problem, that doesn't exist on smartphones.

 

[Gromit]

I have no intention of using any other browser than Safari on my iPhone. It does the job very very well so why change.

Many websites code to go to mobile versions for smartphones.
This pisses me off. Especially Facebook which because of this no longer allows me to access certain pages on my phone. Only via PC. Because if I try on the phone it switches every time to the mobile version of certain pages which do not have what I want on em grrrr. Even though i'd switch to the full site, which then shows me the main page once again not the full page of the page i was on grr.

 

[teuchter]

Exactly Opera Mini was originally created to solve a problem, that doesn't exist on smartphones.

Not entirely true.

How easy is it to navigate around a non-mobile-optimised website on something like Safari using only one hand?




(The existence of those applications like the one that reads vBulletin boards, that everyone got so excited about recently, demonstrates that using Safari has its limitations)

 

[Gromit]

Not entirely true.

How easy is it to navigate around a non-mobile-optimised website on something like Safari using only one hand?

As a habitual masturbater I'd have to say very easy thankfully.

 

[Kanda]

Not entirely true.

How easy is it to navigate around a non-mobile-optimised website on something like Safari using only one hand?

Erm.. really fucking easy. I just done it with the BBC site.