pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/Browser_War_top.jpg" width="807" height="350" style="display:block;float:none;" //p div style='float:right; margin-left:-9px;'script type="text/javascript" digg_skin = 'compact'; digg_bgcolor = '#f1f8fa'; digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gadgets/Mobile_Browser_Battle_Which_Phones_Deliver_The_Real_Web'; /scriptscript src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript" /script/div pBefore 2007, using the internet on your phone would make you want to kill yourself, if you were dumb enough to believe the crap splattered across that tiny screen even was the "internet." But the combination of increased bandwidth and better mobile software means that more phones really are promising to deliver the ireal/i internet, in living color. We tested eight different browsers, and while some put smiles on our faces, others proved that rendering HTML correctly is a far cry from actually giving you an awesome web experience. And what about 3G vs. Wi-Fi? Everything the carriers have told you is a lie. This is the true state of mobile web./p pBefore we give you the rundown of each of the most prevalent mobile browsers, here's how they all stacked up in a timed test of how fast (and how well) they could render websites, chosen for their diversity and particular challenges:/p pstrongCHART KEY:/strong Number value is time for complete page load in seconds; page rendering is rated from "Fail" to "Excellent" for each; and the color (red, yellow, green) indicates overall performance taking into account both speed and rendering accuracy: strongGreen = good overall, Red = fail overall/strong.br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/3g_web_browsing.jpg" width="681" height="457" style="display:block;float:none;" /br clear="all"/p pThis second chart runs through the same procedure with all of the phones that had Wi-Fi options:br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/Wi-Fi_web_browsing.jpg" width="683" height="361" style="display:block;float:none;" /br clear="all"/p pIt's a pretty daunting pile of numbers, so let's break it down into standard prose, rating each browser as we go:br img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0278.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="385" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongAndroid/strongbr A fast, smart mobile browser based on WebKit. It tackles most sites with (almost) unrivaled grace and speed. Panning and zooming could be smoother and more responsive, but with a ton of options for getting around a pagemdash;various touch methods and the trackballmdash;few sites will be challenging to zip around. The only thing we really miss is multitouch for zoom. Buttons just aren't a very elegant or precise solution, and while the whole-page magnifying glass technique is nice, we'd love something a bit more refined. Overall though, we're happy campers on Android's browser. strongGrade: B+/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0205.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="539" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongBlackBerry Bold/strongbr Leaps and bounds ahead of the browser BlackBerry users have put up with for years, it renders most pages correctly, even if scripts give it a conniption fit (hence its long load times for Wikipedia and the WSJ). It uses the standard "click to zoom" metaphor, which works well enough, though getting around a page with the trackball can be kind of a work out for you thumb. The Column View, which squeezes a whole page into a single column, is fairly convenient and makes it easier to get around wider pages, even if it doesn't work equally as well on every site (nice on Wikipedia, ugly on Giz). Hopefully they fix the script performance in the Storm, which is using an updated version of the Bold's browser. We humbly suggest they ditch their home-baked browser for one based on WebKit, which would help out there. strongGrade: B-/C+/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0246.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="418" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongiPhone/strongbr What can we say? It's still got the best mobile browser around. It crushes basically everything but Android's browsermdash;which is also based on WebKitmdash;in speed and outclasses its still classy brother-from-another-mother (and everyone else) with the ease and elegance of its multitouch zooming. Some pages still give it fits, and it's missing Flash support, but it really does deliver an unrivaled mobile web experience. We love it, but make no mistake we're eagerly waiting for something better. (Mobile Firefox? Is it you?) strongGrade: A-/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0260.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="581" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongNokia E71 Symbian S60/strongbr Hey look, another web browser with WebKit guts! It doesn't perform quite as well as Android's or iPhone's iteration where speed or render accuracy are concerned (can any Symbian nuts explain why?), but it does a serviceable job. The big thing it has going for it is Flash Lite 3 support, though performance there is kinda assy and memory intensive. Navigation is tougher with the E71's d-pad than with a trackball, but the whole page magnifying approach makes it easy enough to get around (too bad you have to dig through a menu or two to get to it). Not bad, but short of excellent. strongGrade: B-/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0221.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="468" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongInternet Explorer on Windows Mobile/strongbr Jesus Christ. This is a joke, right Microsoft? Hahaha. No really, this is the worst smartphone browser on the planet. It couldn't render its way out of an ASCII-art paper bag. It totally screwed up every single test page, except for Wikipedia, which it only emmostly/em screwed up. Good luck navigating a page if you're granted the miraculous occurrence of it being rendered in a state that's usable. strongGrade: F-/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0248.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="464" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongOpera Mobile on Windows Mobile/strongbr Microsoft's own intentions notwithstanding, you emcan/em use the internet on a Windows Mobile phone. You just need Opera Mobile. It's kind of hobbled by Windows Mobile's assy performance, but it usually gets the job done. Not as quickly or always as accurately as its WebKit rivals, but it's definitely usable. Interestingly, it benefits more from the extra bandwidth offered by Wi-Fi than the WebKit browsers do. Menu-based zoom is annoying and imprecise. Touch-based panning worked okay, though a little laggy. We mostly navigated with the Samsung Epix's optical cursor, which worked pretty well, somewhere in between a d-pad and a trackball. strongGrade: C/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0356.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="357" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongSprint Instinct/strongbr Holy CRAP. This is emnot/em the painfully lousy browser the a href="http://gizmodo.com/5014419/samsung-instinct-full-review-verdict-best-sprint-phone-ever-best-samsung-phone-ever-too"Instinct shipped with/a a href="http://gizmodo.com/5017957/iphone-clone-battlemodo-which-one-is-the-iphoniest"not by a long shot/a. The original was slow and fairly feeble, even if it was the head of its (dumbphone) class. The a href="http://gizmodo.com/5059300/sprint-instinct-firmware-update-includes-non+crappy-browser"new 1.1 browser/a really is a life-changing upgrade. It suffers in the chart because it's much slower than most other browsers, and zooming is still clumsy, but once the page loads, it's much smoother to pan and actually move around. I got a bit annoyed that it lied about pageload time, hanging at the last 2 percent of the status bar for half the load, but it usually gets things right. This is the best non-smartphone browser you can get. strongGrade: C+/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/_DSC0218.jpg" class="center" width="800" height="409" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongLG Dare/strongbr Like the Instinct, the Dare proves you can actually get a usable browsing experience on a feature phone. It's a little nimbler at loading pages than its Korean blood rival, but the reason it ultimately posts lower marks than the Instinct is that it buckles way more easily under a moderate to heavy pageload, turning it into an unresponsive picture of the website you were trying to look at. Still, it renders most pages fairly accurately, and we like the sliding zoom scroll bar, at least in theory, since it seems like an intuitive way to deal with the zoom issue. Unfortunately, it works more like a glorified pair of buttons. (Note: I don't think the speed was actually a piddly 300 Kbpsmdash;I think it just had a problem dealing with DSL Reports' mobile speedtest, even though it's text-based for the dumbest of phones.) strongGrade: C/strong/p pstrongMethodology/strongbr We tested every browser only using the fullmdash;not mobilemdash;versions of selected sites, over 3G and, whenever possible, Wi-Fi. All scripts were turned on, and the cache was cleared before each round of testing. We took the average of a series of five sequential speedtests to give us an idea of the bandwidth we're dealing with, and timed how long it took to completely load a site according to each browser's progress bar. We assessed whether or not it rendered the page correctly, on a scale ranging from "excellent" to "good" (a couple things out of place) to "utter fail" (I've seen prettier train wrecks)./p pA few additional issues to note: Internet Explorer would not work on Wi-Fi. Opera yes, our Skyfire install, yes, Internet Exploder, no. (Samsung suggested it might be because of Opera.) We didn't pursue the matter because of how IE did in the 3G tests: A page that looks like a pile of blended dog poo is going to look like that no matter how much faster it loads. Sprint's updated Instinct and Verizon's Dare, which we included as a href="http://gizmodo.com/5020820/verizons-lg-dare-full-review-verdict-best-iclone-yet"best-of-class/a examples a href="http://gizmodo.com/5014419/samsung-instinct-full-review-verdict-best-sprint-phone-ever-best-samsung-phone-ever-too"of feature phones/a, don't have Wi-Fi capabilities. We left out Opera Mini and Skyfire, since they both leave most of the hard work to servers which essentially spit out a kind of image filemdash;besides, we don't think this kind of internet-by-proxy browser will be around for much longer./p pstrongThe Big Gulp/strongbr Remember our mantra it's code that counts? It's true for mobile internet too. strongAn awesome browser can make up for a mediocre network, but a terrible browser delivers a crappy experience no matter how great the network is./strong It's all about the browser. As it stands, WebKit is clearly the best thing going, but even then, software implementation matters, or Nokia would deliver as good a performance as Android and iPhone. Proving the point, it's striking how little Wi-Fi actually boosted speed beyond 3Gmdash;hell, WebKit browsers on 3G slid past some of the others that were running on Wi-Fi./p pAnother thing to note is that the strongzoom metaphor is a tricky thing to nail/strong. Buttons are too brutish, the magnifying glass is imprecise. Multitouch seems to be the best way to handle zooming in and out in a way that's intuitive and precise. Hopefully we'll see other developers start to use multitouch interfaces in touchscreen phones (*cough*ANDROID!*cough*)./p pAs much as this blow-by-blow battlemodo shows you all the problems we encountered, the big picture is that really, mobile web is pretty dandy right now, and getting dandier. It could be more reliable, faster, maybe a little more versatile, but for the most part, yes, you can access the internet on your phone. Compared to just two years ago, that's really saying something. We can't wait to see what it'll look like in two years. Maybe Internet Exploder will actually work. Nah, that's a little emtoo/em sci-fi./p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=b99fc945506303fe3800b5378f8ba282"img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=b99fc945506303fe3800b5378f8ba282" border="0" //a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b99fc945506303fe3800b5378f8ba282" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=aLznP8J7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=H5aCVgLD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=wxeZh3aY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=wxeZh3aY" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=1eFc2MwV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=1eFc2MwV" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/QCoPm4xCM9Y" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/walmartlady.jpg" width="494" height="324" style="display:block;" /The trifecta is complete: Best Buy and Circuit City's Black Friday a href="http://gizmodo.com/5085798/best-buys-black-friday-ad"ads/a are weak, a href="http://gizmodo.com/5087033/circuit-citys-black-friday-deals"disgustingly disappointing/a sauce, leaving it up to Walmart to save Black Friday. a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/14/news/companies/walmart_blackfriday/?postversion=2008111415"CNN Money gives us the first peek/a at the ad Walmart plans to reveal Nov. 24, and reveals that there's still hope since it's happily gadget heavy, with perhaps the most promising loot yet./p pTo start, there's a 50-inch Samsung plasma HDTV for $800, Xbox 360 with Guitar Hero III and wireless guitar for $200 (likely the Arcade, but still, nice), $128 Blu-ray player, $400 HP desktop and assorted other gadget goodness. If that's all, it emwould/em blow, but CNN implies there's more where that came from. I hope so, because it'll take some emmiraculous/em deals to suck me into that circle of hell. [a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/14/news/companies/walmart_blackfriday/?postversion=2008111415"CNN Money/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=71ae9d7dcbcec7ef7633a2d5c8aa50ca"img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=71ae9d7dcbcec7ef7633a2d5c8aa50ca" border="0" //a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=71ae9d7dcbcec7ef7633a2d5c8aa50ca" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=b3rEiRYR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=z7t2b0qi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=tMMP2Dyn"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=tMMP2Dyn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=2QlV6uH7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=2QlV6uH7" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/MTfG3a-kNnw" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/upshp" width="494" height="320" style="display:block;" /The gauntlet you see strapped to this guy's hand is a href="http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/617988-0-0-225-121.html?jumpi=ex_r2548_go/handheldaio"HP's Handheld sp400 All-in-One/a, which is not only a hot fashion accessory, it scans barcodes and prints sorting info directly onto boxes (or someone's face, natch) with magic quick-drying ink, no paper label required. UPS has been testing it out at a ship center in Orlando, where they used it on 40,000 boxes with zero errors./p pIt replaces a whole bunch of larger, less green gearmdash;a giant thermal printer, PC, monitor and scanner. UPS says it'll save 92,456 hours, 1,338 tons of paper and 3,807 tons of carbon emissions a year. Who ever said going green had to cost green? Next please: Package teleporters. [a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/ups-goes-labeless-with-new-printer.php"Treehugger/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=17d64ec5927951eede2e79ae49f7586e" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=17d64ec5927951eede2e79ae49f7586e" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=LpW0tgAB"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=IOPe2GZZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=S1w4zpOD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=S1w4zpOD" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=CASS9hqk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=CASS9hqk" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/y6LO7WeHYaQ" height="1" width="1"/

pscript type="text/javascript" newVideoPlayer("/japanesewristcutters_gizmodo.flv", 475, 266,""); /scriptimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/stills/japanesewristcutters_gizmodo.flv.jpg" style="display:block;display: none;" /Wowowow. I have no idea what the context of this clip is. I don't want to believe that these emkawaii!/em schoolgirl wristcutters are real, peddled by schoolgirls winking and smiling as they lick the blood trickling down their wrists. But you know what? I honestly don't a href="http://gizmodo.com/5060449/tuttuki-box-is-like-an-lcd-truck-stop-bathroom-for-your-finger"know/a what's a href="http://gizmodo.com/5063902/japanese-gundam-slippers-make-giant-robot-noises"real/a or a href="http://gizmodo.com/5059753/playing-baseball-with-rocket-launchers-and-tanks-on-japanese-tv"not/a anymore. emI just don't know/em. [a href="http://vidmax.com/video/57393/Japanese_School_Girl_Wrist_Cutters_On_Japanese_Television/"Vidmax/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=3dff4c049eb623ea2e549b65733cb6cd" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=3dff4c049eb623ea2e549b65733cb6cd" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=zVoJQGOz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=qr8M2LWj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Pc4jTcK1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=Pc4jTcK1" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Y2gDd2y9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=Y2gDd2y9" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/JyklB_vmzEA" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/names.jpg" width="494" height="226" style="display:block;float:none;" /It's not really hard to guess how OS X and Windows 7 got their name. But what about IBM's ThinkPad? Or Firefox? CIO has a rundown of the origins of 10 tech products' iconic namesmdash;like just where the hell iPod and Twitter came from. Surprisingly none were picked at random out of a hat after taking a large quantity of drugs, which is how I hoped at least one came to be. They a href="http://www.cio.com/article/461879/Tech_s_Product_Name_Guru_Meet_the_Man_Who_Coined_BlackBerry_Azure_and_More"also talk to David Placek/a, the brains behind perhaps more superstar tech brands than anyone, like BlackBerry. And Zune, though he doesn't deign to explain that particular mystery. [a href="http://www.cio.com/special/slideshows/famous_tech_names/index#slideshow"CIO/a via a href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/11/188204from=rss"Slashdot/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=13d5bc6efe7d09aaff7fadd8cc5dce35" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=13d5bc6efe7d09aaff7fadd8cc5dce35" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=1mDNbybH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=iECg5nq0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=QRg5i4Vz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=QRg5i4Vz" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=exEHnNzD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=exEHnNzD" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/1jyIoHDiOcM" height="1" width="1"/