A staff member of ours was at Ikeja in Lagos to carry out some business. Because of a new development on ground, he suddenly needed to check up some facts online.
Unfortunately for him, there was no cyber cafe in the vicinity. Well, he had on him a lower mid-range GPRS-enabled feature phone with a regular phone keypad. Thinking it would be a snap to get the required information on his handset, our man launched the browser and slowly typed out a search engine address. It took another few painful minutes for the phone’s low-end browser and his network’s GPRS connection to load the desired page.
Then he typed out his search keywords and hit the “Search” button. Five minutes later, he was still staring at the same page. Six minutes. Seven minutes. Ten minutes. Nada.
Well, he never did get the information he needed.
This incidence reminded us that there is not one factor responsible for a pleasant mobile web experience.
Network Data Capabilities
There is no doubt that if the phone in question had been 3G or HSDPA enabled, the search would have been smoother. The extra speeds available via 3G services would have made some difference, surely.
Browser Capabilities
Another factor is browser capability. Had the browser been a more decent application, surely we can expect better performance.
Text Input
Typing out fairly long strings of text with a regular mobile phone keypad can be painful and frustrating. SMS shorthand won’t help here because your search keywords have to be accurate. A hardware QWERTY keyboard, handwriting recognition or virtual QWERTY keyboard on a touchscreen certainly will help here.
Phone Processing Power
We all know that phones with powerful processors make everything – including loading of webpages – speedier. As such, phones with lower processing power may just lack that extra burst of energy that you may need for those quick searches and forays on the web when you are out and about.
This combination of factors, we believe, are the most vital in getting a good mobile web experience. While we are not expecting that people will need to use these features on their mobiles everyday, perhaps it is not such a bad idea that they think of the odd times that these functionalities may come in essential when thinking of their next mobile phone.
The user interface is another factor that deserves a mention, but that is a discussion for another day.
If you use the internet as a source of information, think about these things:
- Network Data Capabilities
- Browser Capabilities
- Text Imput Mechanism
- Phone Processing Power
Did we leave out anything?
This post was written by
Mister Mobility – who has written 926 posts on Mobility blog.
Founder, Mobility blog, serial lifestyle entrepreneur, speaker, & writer. Charming, passionate, tenacious & non-conformist. Will dance! Follow him on Twitter @Mister_Mobility.
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January 18th, 2010 at 6:33 am Browsing with
Additionally, battery life. You may not have a car/car charger or be close to public power supply..
Sometimes, the longevity of your phone battery power may literally save your life!
Thank God for browsers like Opera Mini & Bolt Lite & UCWeb – server based – that do not require phones with mammoth processing power to work effectively
On phones with physical keyboard, a software along the likes of QuickWrite makes text input a lot easier.
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January 18th, 2010 at 1:06 pm Browsing with
The network one is hooked to.
Imagine using Glo ’3G’ network with speeds of 2kbps. Not even Nokia N900 can save you
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January 18th, 2010 at 5:13 pm Browsing with
The biggest culprit here is the network operator. Forget about all the other factors.
Afterall, we survived very well before 3G was launched. You have no idea how much I achieved using my Nokia 7250i plus MTN GH GPRS connection. If the network was okay (as it should be) he would still be able to surf Google.com without problems.
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January 18th, 2010 at 8:35 pm Browsing with
It’s all been said. It all boils down to the network operator. Even GPRS of it was stable and reliable could have saved your friend.
P.S: About 40 minutes ago, I got a text from yeye MTN advertising their N500 internet as the most reliable. That had me boiling over.
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January 19th, 2010 at 12:00 am Browsing with
The biggest culprit is the network operator, i definitely agree u can’t really achieve much with a snail paced connection, and also if u use your cell phone for a little more than the casual social network browsing u definitely need a capable phone u can’t expect a nokia 2630 to give u the same results a nokia n900 would give u
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