For those that remember internet in the late 1990s, you remember your dialup being slow, there was no such thing as tabbed browsing, web sites were clunky/cumbersome and difficult to navigate, low screen resolutions of the time meant lots and lots of scrolling, and well, you get the idea.

Thankfully we don’t have to deal with that anymore, right?

Wrong.

A smartphone’s browser interface more or less acts the same way our desktop PCs did in the late ’90s.

While it’s true that 3G connectivity – when it works – is faster than dialup was, you’re still stuck waiting for things to load. And when it does load, the browsers that smartphones have are watered down to the point where many "regular" web sites are simply unusable on a mobile device.

Developers are making continual improvements to make smartphones more usable, but the overall browsing experience hearkens back to a day when internet browsing was a chore at best.

Using the iPhone as an example, it only has a 480×320 screen resolution. That’s lower than VGA spec which is 640×480. Anybody who uses an iPhone or like mobile device knows full well that the browser has "creative" ways of getting around a resolution so low. And you have to use those creative ways (such as zoom and pan in/out) else you can’t browse with it regularly at all.

For you older ladies and gentlemen that think the kids today don’t know what it was like to browse the internet Web 1.0 style, they do because current browser technology and network speed on a smartphone is pretty darn close to the mark of what a browsing experience was like in the late 1990s.

How long will it take smartphones to graduate to a desktop PC’s level of web browsing?

Indeterminate. But there are three things that will kick-start mobile browsing forward exponentially.

The first is the network itself. 3G is just too darned slow. Better than EDGE, yes, but still slow. The next-gen network for whatever it will be called should fix that ill in short order.

The second is the hardware, namely the processor. Newer chips will be introduced within the next five years that run faster without adding any additional heat. (It’s always the heat that’s the big deal by the way.)

The third is the software, but that’s being attended to right now. All the major players have good solid OSes for their respective platforms. Better mobile browsers like Opera Mobile (which does do tabs very well by the way) means a better mobile browsing experience.

A problem all software developers for smartphones face is having to work around – meaning not with – the aforementioned points above. It seriously curtails development when your biggest roadblocks are the processing speed of a smartphone and the network in which it connects to. Shades of how software development used to be for PCs? Oh, yes. Even the programmers have to deal with Web 1.0 era style crapola.

I want to make clear that I’m not saying smartphones are unsuable. They obviously have their place in the modern tech world, and tons of people use them on a daily basis. However you have to admit, browsing on one is very reminiscent of the usability problems we had years ago.

Games on your cell phone are a great way to kill time anywhere. Whether you are waiting in a doctor’s office, getting your oil changed or are riding in a car (as a passenger of course), a game is an entertaining way to pass the time. To find games for your cell phone, check out MobileRated.

MobileRated works with the best mobile developers around the globe and offers over 1000 free mobile games and applications. Our software products are either completely free, demos or trials with options to purchase (cheap mobile phone games), or free with in-game advertising.

Basically, you just search for your phone model and then you will be presented with a list of free games you can install right on your phone.

Some people believe the iPhone was the game-changer concerning what you could do on a mobile device. I say no, because the Danger Hiptop (a.k.a. the T-Mobile Sidekick) predated the iPhone by four years all the way back in 2003.

I state this because the ability to do things ordinarily reserved for PCs and laptops only have been on mobile devices for well over 5 years. In this span of time there have been numerous improvements both to the devices and the networks they use, but The Big Question is:

Can you use a mobile device for it all?

The answer to this question is best answered by drilling it down Q/A style.

Can you use a wireless carrier as your only ISP?

Yes. Any wireless carrier that offers internet-enabled smartphones has the connectivity.

If you chose to do so, all of your internet stuff could be performed on the smartphone and nothing else.

Is using a wireless carrier as the only ISP cheaper or more expensive?

In some instances it’s actually cheaper. T-Mobile Sidekick Prepaid for example is a dollar a day, and that gives you unlimited text/web/email and more.

Data-only plans for most wireless carriers can be as low as $35 monthly. Bear in mind that’s just data. Voice plans are still considered separate, and even though you can combine the two, it does add cost. Were you to add on voice, this would most likely be an extra $40 monthly.

Is the data connectivity fast?

The opinion is generally the answer of no.

The way in which we get data connectivity on mobile changes every few years. We had EDGE, then 3G (current standard) and there will be 4G in the future.

Most people are willing to accept that 3G simply isn’t as fast as in-home broadband. This is fine because the mobility more than makes up for it.

With 4G and beyond in the future, speed won’t be an issue. But at present it is.

Is mobile web browsing the same as it is on a PC?

Somewhat.

You run into three issues when browsing the web using a smartphone.

First is the issue of no mouse. This is replaced by your finger on touchscreen-enabled phones. Some people don’t have a problem with this. Others hate it.

Second is the issue of browser plugin support. Namely, Flash. If you’re using Flash on a mobile browser, it’s Flash Lite. This is obviously not the same as regular Flash. Most Flash content will work with it.

Third is the issue of screen size. You’re working with a 3.5-inch screen and while it’s true you have zooming capabilities, it’s still small. And the problem is that you can’t go any larger else the phone won’t fit in your pocket. Sure, we’d all love to have 5-inch screens on our phones, but that’s just too big for mobile use.

(Incidentally, the solution to this problem would be a flip-out dual screen setup, one on handset and one on flip, with touch enabled on both screens.)

Do I have the ability to use real-world apps on my phone?

Yes, you can use Word, Excel and PowerPoint on mobile. With your browser you have all the access you’d ever want to email. All the big webmail names have mobile versions (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail) and they all work great. And with app stores you can get all the other stuff you need easily.

But it all boils down to three things

1. Can you deal with a 3.5-inch screen?
2. Can you deal with a touchscreen or thumbpad as your only keyboard?
3. Can you deal with the only sound coming from tiny chintzy speakers?

Here are my three answers:

No, no and no.

I like my monitors (I have a dual screen setup).

I like my full-sized keyboard.

My speakers, even though dirt cheap, still sound better than anything that comes out of a smartphone.

There’s no way I could ever switch 100% to mobile for those three reasons. There are others, but those are the biggies.

However that’s not to say I wouldn’t entertain the idea of using mobile with 4G (when available) and tethering capability. Using a smartphone with tethering so you have both the mobile and the "big" laptop (or desktop for that matter) is a good combination. In this fashion you have the best of both worlds, that being mobile and in-home when sitting at the desk.

But 100% mobile? I personally just couldn’t do it.

The phrase traffic shaping is a polite term for bandwidth throttling. It’s when an ISP purposely slows download speeds during peak usage hours of the day. This includes weekends.

And if you hadn’t heard, traffic shaping is most likely going mobile. If it happens industry wide, it’ll be a joke to label 3G as fast after that.

The people who get cheated most from the shaping are those who specifically pay extra each month for an upgraded "fast" ISP account.

For example, your ISP has a super-duper fiber package that promises "lightning" (they like using that word a lot) fast connectivity. "Blazing" (there’s another) speeds, super-fast everything and oh yeah, this is totally worth the money and you should get a second or third job just to have it.

So you get it. Then one day you’re using the internet and everything is slow. You reboot your computer. OK. You check/restart the router. OK. You check/restart the modem. OK. Nothing is wrong.

What happened?

You might be a victim of traffic shaping.

How to check if this is so? Examine your ISP’s terms of service and acceptable use policy. Look for things like "moderation of speed" or the like. If you see it, your ISP does use traffic shaping.

What to do after that? Tell your friends (especially if they’re on the same ISP). Blog it. Spread the word around. Make it very well known your ISP does this.

An ISP that promises fast speeds with upgraded accounts only to knock those speeds down from shaping later is just plain wrong because at that point you’re paying for nothing. It’s like if you bought a Chevrolet Corvette and the engine was programmed to only deliver full power between 1am and 5am. That’s not what you bought the car for. You bought it so you could have all power under your right foot whenever it suits you. That’s how a premium ISP account should act as well, period.

How long is it going to take before people get so angry that they’ll sue the ISP for not delivering on their advertised claims – again?

Wireless phone chargers come in all shapes and sizes. And that’s annoying. What works for one phone probably won’t work for the other. Granted, there are many phones that can be charged via USB – but – some require "special" mini-USB chargers to be used (Motorola springs to mind) so the universal nature of USB is out the window when that happens as it often does.

There is, thankfully, a plan in effect for an industry-wide standard for mobile phone chargers.

I pray this comes true. According to the article linked above, this could be in effect by as early as 2012.

The battle for a universal standard has been raging on for years and some progress will (hopefully) finally be made and this will become real. It definitely needs to happen.

Keep your fingers crossed on this one.

It was only a matter of time, but Intel has brought out the big guns and now has quad-core available for laptops. Five of them, to be exact.

Surprisingly, it won’t be that expensive. According to the article linked above, you can score an Acer Aspire laptop with an 18.4-inch screen (that’s frappin’ huge for a laptop) for $1,799. Not bad considering the horsepower that’s under the hood. However bear in mind it’s being billed as a gaming rig.

And what about the Macbooks? Oh, trust me, Intel will make their quad-core presence(s) in them soon enough, not to worry.

I estimate that more reasonably-sized laptops will get quad-core (i.e. 15 to 17-inch screens) in the 3rd quarter of ‘09 or possibly sooner.

I don’t know about you, but even with the power-extreme of quad-core in a laptop, an 18-inch screen is just too much. The unit isn’t exactly all that portable at that point.

For those that ask "What about heat?", bear in mind these are mobile processors we’re talking about, so the heat should be kept in check. What matters more is whether the manufacturer has designed a laptop chassis well enough to spread the heat evenly to avoid any nasty meltdowns.

One thing is for certain: Quad-core is not going to go obsolete for quite some time – even given the rapid progress of the computer industry as a whole. It is a purchase that should stay current for at least a good 3 to 4 years (assuming the laptop lasts that long).

I’ll answer that question even before I start this article: Yes, you are. And you always have been since the first time you used text messaging on a mobile wireless network.

The reason you’re getting screwed is because those who are computer savvy even to the most basic degree understand that when you charge 20 cents for 140 bytes of data or less transferred, that’s nothing short of the rip-off of the century. More on that in a moment.

According to washingtonpost.com, all the major phone carriers deem that outside of the flat-rate monthly data plans, a text message costs 20 cents each time one is transferred.

Let’s examine that for a moment.

If you take a 140-character phrase and save it as a text file on your computer, you will see that text file is 140 bytes exactly. One byte per character.

Let’s say you live on your cell phone and send 500 text messages daily (yes that’s extreme but there are some crazy fools who actually send that much), with each being a full 140 bytes each. That’s 70,000 bytes daily or 68.4 kilobytes.

If you sent that much text messaging data every day for a whole month, that’s 2 megabytes of data. That’s it. Just 2. For the month.

You’re probably thinking "I can download more than that in a web browser in less than 5 minutes." That’s right.

Now realize that most people don’t get anywhere near 2 megabytes of plain old text data transferred per month. We’re not even talking binary transfers here, just text and text alone.

You’ve probably figured out by now that 140 bytes isn’t worth 20 cents no matter how you look at it. No way, no how. It’s an outright ridiculous price.

Consider the following (this is from the linked article above):

…600 text messages contain less data than a 1 minute phone call. It said that at 20 cents a text message, wireless carriers would collect $120 for 600 messages.

"Does $120 for the equivalent of one minute of voice seem reasonable?"

I personally don’t think that’s reasonable.

Do you?

Continued

Pictured right: The SmartBerry, a mobile messenger for children. It has disgusting cuteness all over it, a flip-out mini keyboard and a stylus that said 9-year-old can use to stab other kids with. GENIUS. (Note the sarcasm there.)

Given the fact that there are kids (even as young as seven) that do carry around their own cell phones, having a mobile text device shouldn’t be shocking to anyone I suppose.

Oddly enough: If they made a non-cute-attack version of this, adults would find this rather handy because it’s better than a pager with no keypad.

The planned price for this is 94 bucks. Too expensive? Yes.

[Source: DVICE]

Continued

I am in my second week of owning and using an Iphone 3G and I’m really liking it. Yes, I’m a nerd, so this phone strokes all the right places (that sounded weird). And nothing shows this more than how I put the phone to use on Saturday as I spent a day away from the office with my wife and daughter. Let me illustrate:

Continued

We’ve all been there. We’re spending a little free time online catching up on our web surfing and social media addictions. We find something really cool that we want to read or a video to watch. Only problem is that you don’t have time to consume that content right then.

You could bookmark it, sure. But, how about we make it truly portable.

Continued

With last week’s announcement of the Iphone 2.0 (due to be released on July 11th), I was yet again pondering the thought of switching to the Iphone. The Iphone is very revolutionary for the smartphone market. The interface is amazing. The fact that almost anyone can actually use the features of the Iphone is amazing. Anybody with a Windows Mobile phone can attest to the difficulty you will have accomplishing seemingly normal things.

But, all in all, what is the real cost of switching to the Iphone?

Continued

One of the “in” things to do online these days is lifestreaming. Lifestreaming is where you have an online record of your daily activities. You might use Twitter to share random thoughts throughout the day. You might snap photos or take videos and put them online. You’ll write blog posts. You’ll update your statuses in social networks like Facebook.

In a way, I do this. I blog regularly both here at PCMech and on DavidRisley.com. I am a regular user of Twitter and have been known to send in “tweets” even while using my cell phone when I am not in the office. I use FriendFeed and love the site because it aggregates all of these various activities into a single feed. Continued

It has been a dream for quite some time that Mobile phones become a true extension to our computer. That dream hasn’t been a reality. Even when you do have a smart phone that can get online, the interface was clunky and you couldn’t just add/remove apps as you wanted. The cell phone carrier dictates what you can and cannot do with your phone. And if you want to change it before your contract is expired, they’ll charge you a penalty for your troubles.

This is all going to be changing, though.

Continued