Microsoft’s mobile IE6 still a poor competitor to Opera
Microsoft’s released emulators for the new IE6 mobile. Early reviews have criticized the browser for its high technical requirements and missing features such as tabbed browsing.
With other mobile browsers like Opera’s Opera Mini, Nokia’s own Symbian-based browser, Apple’s Safari for the iPhone available for comparison, the new WinMo browser pales in comparison. PC World’s writeup on the new IE Mobile 6 frankly discusses Microsoft’s shortcomings in the mobile space.
One shortcoming is the ridiculous hardware requirements: 128MB of RAM, and a 400MHz processor? You’re not going to see IE Mobile 6 on any budget phones in that case. As usual, Microsoft won’t release the browser as a separately downloadable app, choosing instead to work with device manufacturers to supply the browsers to them.
This is contrasted with Opera’s approach to its mobile browser, which allows users to download it direct from their site. Though the version that runs on the current Windows Mobile OS is a beta, users merely need to surf to http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/ to give the browser a try.
The new IE for Mobile will finally allow users to display standard Web pages and view Adobe Flash content. But the code is practically ancient – based on the older version of the desktop IE 6, released in 2001. You do get previews of AJAX and Jscript 5.7 from the soon-to-come IE8. There will also be user interface tweaks that incorporate touch (not multi-touch as on the iPhone), zooming as well as integrated search in the browser bar.
But wait – doesn’t the already freely available Opera browser, as well as Nokia’s browser for its newer handsets already have most of those features? And when it comes to Web standards, Bruce Lawson of the non-profit Web Standards Project was decidedly unimpressed, detailing just why on his blog. His take? “Twenty percent of the world’s population [China] are being offered an ancient, discredited browser.” IE 6 Mobile is set to launch on phones first in China, sometime in 2009.
Microsoft has a huge mobile division – the question right now is, what the heck are they doing over there? The new IE Mobile 6 isn’t out yet, and already it lags behind the innovations we’re seeing from Opera, Symbian as well as the Android team. The consensus here is that IE Mobile 6 isn’t going to differ much from its predecessors. It looks like it’ll keep the same old shortcomings – behind with the featureset, bloated, non-Web standards compliant and pretty much a poor substitute for everything else on offer.
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December 22nd, 2008
Same old shortcomings – I agree. You can check out my thoughts here: http://www.techurbia.com/2008/12/new-ie-mobile-based-on-ie-6-really-4.html