Tuesday, April 03, 2007 Limpag: Judging a man by his phone By Max Limpag Celltalk
PHONE BRANDS. The Nielsen Media Research released last week results of a survey on mobile phone preferences.
The survey in Australia, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, indicated that certain customer types were attracted to certain brands. According to the survey, Nokia users were likely to be family-minded, balance seekers, health-conscious, and middle managers. Sony Ericsson users are likely to be ambitious young men, professionals, success-driven, and individualistic. For a self-confessed Sony Ericsson fan boy, that just boosts the ego, doesn’t it? Motorola users, according to the study, are likely to be fashion conscious, fun seekers, under 24, and individualistic. LG phones, on the other hand, are said to be favorites of mothers, stay-at-home parents and people who are success driven and harmony seekers. Samsung, meanwhile, is said to be preferred by young women and people who are career focused, success driven, and fun seekers.
NEW MOBILE BROWSER. Microsoft launched last week an early and test version of Deepfish, a new phone browser that, judging by its online demo and features list, appears to improve the mobile Internet experience. The idea behind it is nothing new. The browser serves as a client to a server that formats a regular web page into something that can be viewed on a small screen. This is the principle behind the Opera Mini browser. I’ve tackled this setup repeatedly in previous columns—that the best way forward for mobile Internet is to turn the phone into a thin-client of a server that pre-processes regular pages. WAP didn’t take off because many websites didn’t bother providing a mobile version of their pages.
What’s different between Opera Mini and Deepfish is that the Microsoft browser apparently turns the web page into an image that you can view and zoom into in your phone. Deepfish runs on Windows Mobile 5.0 devices and is available only for limited downloads from the Microsoft Live Labs. If you’ve only heard about Deepfish from this column, chances are you can no longer download it, what with the rush to the site by early adopters. The Deepfish solution is an ingenious one. Your server no longer has to worry about pre-processing web pages to work in different devices and their different ways of rendering content. But the technology behind it still does not support ActiveX controls, Ajax, Javascript, and HTTP POST, tools used by a lot of sites for flashy effects. If you can no longer download Deepfish or your phone isn’t supported, don’t fret. Get the Opera Mini browser instead.
