All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
Does Symbian need a Mobile Browser Ballot?
Published by Ewan Spence at 12:02 UTC, March 5th 2010
This month saw the start of the Microsoft Browser Ballot in EU countries. As part of the deal with the Competition watchdogs in Europe, Windows users are being presented with a randomised “ballot” screen of alternative browsers, including Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome, as well as the company’s Internet Explorer product. Is there any implication to the mobile market in this decision? Maybe...
With the explosion of cloud computing, the browser is becoming an even more important gateway not just to traditional information-based websites, but services such as mapping, email, productivity and office suites. Couple that with Microsoft using their dominance of the Operating System market to make their Internet Explorer the default choice, and the EU were always going to look at this issue.
So the ballot is a sensible option that makes the browser choice simple for end users, without causing too much trouble in setting up a computer system.
The only question I have is when will we see a similar ballot screen on a mobile device?
Right now, the web browser on a mobile phone is tied very tightly into the operating system. It’s a vital part of how the phone works. Certainly under S60, the web browser plays a huge part in distributed computing, through the use of Widgets. Nokia have the largest market share in the mobile phone market, and as S60 pushes down into the low range handsets, that dominance could allow them to force “standards” onto sites, and not just with widgets, but with formatting of mobile sites and developers writing for a specific browser, rather than the mobile web in general.
Sound familiar?
I’m sure that Opera would like to get a stronger foothold into the smartphone market – the news from the Norwegian company is that the desktop browser ballot has resulted in a threefold increase of downloads of their browser. They already have a foothold in the mobile market with both Opera Mini (Java) and Opera Mobile (native code) versions available for multiple platforms.
Is it right that they get shut out by many because the handsets ship with a browser already installed? Mozilla have their mobile version of Firefox targeted at Maemo and the N900 devices – is there an option to do a deal with Nokia to get on the Internet Computer’s software stack? And there must be someone in Google playing around with builds of the Chrome browser on handsets other than Android.
Of course the marketplace for smartphones is much more competitive, with not only multiple handsets but multiple operating systems out there. You could argue for a long time that this provides the market with enough choice to calm competition regulators; with two year contracts being the norm now, that’s a lot of lock-in to a single platform, and not having any easy alternatives to something as vital as the browser could raise eyebrows in Brussels.
Do I think a protest is likely? No, but I do think that as an ecosystem we need to make sure that the values of openness and choice need to flow through everything in the chain – right now the browser is there, it works, but it, and the protocols it will use for cloud computing, are determined by the market leading company, and that’s a little worrying.
-- Ewan Spence, March 2010.
News Discussion
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Originally Posted by teknolog
We are working to have browser choice implemented. I can't promise it will make it into Symbian^3 :( but it should be there for S^4.
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Nokia 5230, under settings/phone/application settings. There's "Default apps". The 4 options listed for browsing, playing music, video and viewing images - select each one and it just gives one choice.
It should allow selection of Opera, but doesn't.
Very, very irritating, especially as the stock Symbian browser is basically dire. In isolation its not too bad, but after using Opera Mini and Mobile, I've not once used the Symbian browser. Its slow, doesn't handle standards well (despite being webkit based), insensitive to clicks.
Interesting how Nokia development seems inconsistent. Ovi Maps, Sports Tracker, Wellness Diary, Photo Viewer. All fantastic applications.
If only the default settings app would work - then I could have Opera as the default, photo viewer for images .... I've had 25 years in software development, and cannot even begin to understand why a device ships with options that just don't work.
We should really find out if it's not actually possible to do this at any level in Symbian or if it's just maybe an non-public API (or have we already established this). Nokia are obviously giving themselves the option to change the default, so there must be some way.
I don't quite agree about the inbuilt browser either - early releases of Opera were huge memory hogs, and even now it's not perfect. One thing the default browser is, is memory efficient - at least give it credit for that.
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Originally Posted by Tenkom
How come apple doesn't have to give you the choice on mac osx?
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Originally Posted by Brendan Donegan
I don't quite agree about the inbuilt browser either - early releases of Opera were huge memory hogs, and even now it's not perfect. One thing the default browser is, is memory efficient - at least give it credit for that.
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I used to think that the Symbian browser was quite fast, at least on previous non-touch symbian devices. But on the 5800 and 5230 its dire. Press a link and you have to waaaiiit for it to do something. Web pages tend to look pretty terrible. Slow at loading pages. Its not useless by any means, but I'd prefer to have a browser that works well, looks good and renders pages fairly accurately than one whos main saving grace is a smaller memory footprint. Only once had a memory issue on the 5230, and that was caused by the Ovi store ....
At least Nokia (unlike Apple) have no issues with allowing alternate browsers, Opera is available via the Ovi store.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Apple don't have a dominant market position to abuse.
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Originally Posted by clonmult
... I've had 25 years in software development, and cannot even begin to understand why a device ships with options that just don't work.
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throw new NotImplementedException();
I'd be terribly surprised if you haven't seen this firsthand in 25 years. Not saying it's the right thing to do, but at least, certainly there are some very understandable reasons (ie, lack of testing/budget issues/deadlines, or all of these combined going by the general quality of the first n97 firmware)
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Originally Posted by RollerSMB
Really? It's the oldest trick in the book:
throw new NotImplementedException(); I'd be terribly surprised if you haven't seen this firsthand in 25 years. Not saying it's the right thing to do, but at least, certainly there are some very understandable reasons (ie, lack of testing/budget issues/deadlines, or all of these combined going by the general quality of the first n97 firmware) |
The only possible reason for leaving in something like this is shoddy development/testing/design practices. There is no legitimate excuse for leaving in such features, none whatsoever. Anything that you can suggest as a reason is more likely to be excuse for lazy/ignorant/incompetent staff.
it's not that i use IE, but i just feel that microsoft should be allowed to put in whatever they want into THEIR products. try telling apple that they have to ship chrome and firefox and they'll send down their army of lawyers to ask you to shove it, in marketing-appropriate words.
same goes for mobile phones. you want a s60v5 browser? GOOGLE IT!
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Originally Posted by brrip
personally, i think it's outrageous that microsoft had to do that for windows. microsoft obviously isn't particularly bothered if people use IE or not, but it doesn't make sense to me why they have to offer competition out of the box.
it's not that i use IE, but i just feel that microsoft should be allowed to put in whatever they want into THEIR products. try telling apple that they have to ship chrome and firefox and they'll send down their army of lawyers to ask you to shove it, in marketing-appropriate words. same goes for mobile phones. you want a s60v5 browser? GOOGLE IT! |
Apple's army of lawyers would be crushed by the EU, who would just create a new law to shut them up. They've already come up against the system in Germany and been well and truly slapped out of it.
As for unimplemented options, I would certainly have written code where there were unused pieces in for reasons of extendability or lack of time, or cut down features in some versions however I would never have any unusable options visible to a user, even for reasons of display layout.
I find the built in Symbian browser more than adequate, bearing in mind that I am using a portable device with a small screen i just want to do the minimum I need (I don't spend hours squinting at any phone). I've installed both Opera mobile and mini to try them, and uninstalled them both because they don't really offer me any benefit.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Not yet anyway, and does anyone have a copy of IE8 for Mac OS X laying around? Apple is slowing getting rid of all Flash on their products. They are not thinking about browsers at this moment.
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http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...rotection.html
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
As for unimplemented options, I would certainly have written code where there were unused pieces in for reasons of extendability or lack of time, or cut down features in some versions however I would never have any unusable options visible to a user, even for reasons of display layout.
I find the built in Symbian browser more than adequate, bearing in mind that I am using a portable device with a small screen i just want to do the minimum I need (I don't spend hours squinting at any phone). I've installed both Opera mobile and mini to try them, and uninstalled them both because they don't really offer me any benefit. |
I wouldn't even have unimplemented/incomplete options hidden - its a potential security risk. Until they're complete, they shouldn't be in the release version of the OS.
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