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Mobile Browser Wars

Well, maybe just browser skirmishes. Certainly nothing like the browser wars on the desktop when Netscape and Microsoft duked it out for supremacy in the late 1990s. There are a surprising number of third-party browsers for mobile devices.

Opera has the Opera Mobile browser for Windows Mobile and UIQ. This is a full-blown browser that installs on your device and renders the content locally, attempting to compensate for the device's small screen and limited capabilities when compared with a PC. Opera also has Opera Mini that works on the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian, as well as the aging PalmOS platform. Data is compressed on Opera's servers and rendered on the device.

Skyfire has a browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian that really renders all content on the Skyfire servers just as it would on your desktop, including Flash, Silverlight, streaming video, and anything else you might do on your PC. It then sends the info to your device in the browser window, allowing you to have a reasonable experience on your handheld.

Mozilla is even getting into the game with a mobile version of Firefox for Windows Mobile. Be careful if you download and install this one, though, as it is pre-Alpha software, which may cause problems on your device.

As far as I know, there are no third-party browsers for the iPhone as Apple doesn't sell apps that compete with applications included on the device. You can read more about these and more browsers, including screenshots, at this MSDN blog entry. Everything there is on a Windows Mobile Standard (non-touchscreen) device, but much of the info would apply to other platforms the browser supports.

It surprises me there are so many choices for alternate browsers on mobile devices, but given how anemic the included browsers are on some platforms, it's good to have alternatives. If your mobile browser just isn't cutting it for you, take a look at some of these, or see if there are others available. This list isn't comprehensive, by any means, and the above browsers all have more features than I've listed.

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