I know that the S60 WebKit based browser is open source and looking at their page, it appears everything that would be needed should be out there, so I'm curious if there have been any projects to backport it to 2nd edition phones?

I'm in the US and have a 6682 right now, and the main reason I'm looking at upgrading is the web browser (nokia's browser is so much better than opera in my opinion). I'm wanting to wait for some newer phones to come out (N75 or import an N95) but the browsing experience on my 6682 is...less than desirable. If I had a better browser I'd be able to wait it out, otherwise I'm probably just going to get an N80ie...

I dont know what people seem to think is so much better in the S60 browser compared to Opera, but I suppose people do like different things.

There are, of course, no good alternatives to Opera on the S60 v2 platform. However, I have seen the coming version of Opera for s60 (version 9), and it really is a match for the S60 browser, if not considerably better. I cant say for sure that it will be available for S60 v2 (and not only v3), but I would expect so. A good guess would be that it is released during the 3GSM conference, but again, i have no idea.

But all this does not solve the real problem with your phone - the (relatively) low-re display. Webbrowsing will always look better on a N80 etc. due to the better screen resolution.

Personally I like the S60 browser better because I can read over the web page and scroll around MUCH faster than Opera does. Opera jumps by pages or links, whereas the S60 browser lets me scroll around the page regardless of where links/images/whatever are etc. Now obviously the N80 is better in terms of memory and screen resolution, but really it's the browser interface that bothers me, not the resolution. I don't mind scrolling around a page to read it if scrolling is quick and smooth (which it is with the S60 browser) but Opera is rather jumpy feeling...