i.engadget.com - Engadget for your iPhone or iPod touch
By Ryan Block 
posted August 20th 2008 1:34PM
posted August 20th 2008 1:34PM
So far in 2008, the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch account for some 95.8% of all mobile views on the full site. We're not even kidding. That doesn't factor the visitors who hit our current mobile version of the site, but it's pretty hard to argue with any number like that, so we're rolling out a new beta version of Engadget optimized for the iPhone at i.engadget.com. (Don't worry, we'll still be keeping original mobile site active at m.engadget.com.) Please feel free to let us know what you think in comments!
Oh, and for the stats nerds in the audience, you can check out Engadget's mobile device breakdown after the break.
Top 25 mobile / non-desktop devices hitting engadget.com (Jan 1, 2008 - Aug 20, 2008)
Note: some in the top 25 have few enough views that they don't constitute 1/10th of a percent (hence 0.0%). These stats don't include m.engadget.com
- Apple iPhone - 79.8%
- Apple iPod Touch - 16.0%
- Nintendo Wii - 1.1%
- HTC P3650 (aka Touch Cruise) - 0.5%
- Nokia N95 8GB - 0.4%
- Nokia N95 - 0.3%
- HTC X7500 - 0.2%
- LG VX10000 Voyager - 0.2%
- Nokia E90 - 0.2%
- Nokia N82 - 0.1%
- Nokia E51 - 0.1%
- Nokia N95-3 NAM - 0.1%
- Palm Treo 755p - 0.1%
- Nokia E61 - 0.1%
- Sony PlayStation Portable - 0.1%
- Nokia N73 - 0.1%
- Nokia N81 - 0.1%
- Nokia N78 - 0.0%
- Nokia 6120 classic - 0.0%
- Nokia E65 - 0.0%
- Danger Sidekick III - 0.0%
- Motorola RAZR2 V8 - 0.0%
- Samsung SCH-U940 - 0.0%
- Motorola Q9 - 0.0%
- Sony Ericsson P1i - 0.0%
Thank you, I appreciate the new i.engadget.com site. You may want to consider a native iPhone app in the future. :-)
This is really cool. I've always been one of those wishing Engadget would do this, and I tried it in joystiq and X3F worked, just by replacing www with i. Thanks Engadget, this is pretty sweet.
This is long, I apologize, but it's genuine, heartfelt feedback.
I read both Engadget and Tuaw on my original iPhone daily and a trimmed down version is certainly very welcome. (Even more so when roaming internationally!) But this design doesn't make sense and seems to disregard what your content is and how it is consumed.
I usually read from the top down to the point where I hit an already familiar post. Of course I skip certain posts that I don't care about, but I need to see the whole thing and the picture to QUICKLY determine if it's a read or not. This is what actually speeds things up! Scroll, scroll, scroll instead of having to tap each post and then back to the first screen. Put a little arrow with each post to access the comments on another page instead. I do read those here and there (as you can see) but I very selectively waste my time on that.
It's not just that the headlines are so truncated that they're useless. Those often creative and/or funny headlines, which I cherish, don't give away anything to begin with! (OK, so they often start with a brand or product name, but still...)
I would have to tap every single headline to even see if I want to read that post, then go back, tap the next line...
Sorry guys, this just isn't thought through and sadly I will have to keep using the main page.
Please rethink and rework that design! I would love to use the snappy version on EDGE!
I don't like it.
Unless I can read the whole articlw heading it's next to pointless. The NetNewsWire is the best example of a system that really works for the reader - and yes, I know it's a native app. Native or web, I don't care, it just has to achieve the objective of giving me the options at a glance, delivering the full story with ease, and returning back to surf mode (at the point where I left) with minimal fuss.
The thing is for me, that I don't care if it is a "mobile" or "iphone" version of the site. But if there is something like that why does it not feature auto-detection. Something like facebook which pops up the iphone version when you open it in Safari and has a link down at the bottom for opening the regular site. When I use NetNewsWire app and tap open in Safari I find myself opening the regular site which takes a lot more time to download than the iPhone version. If you have the device specific statistics why can't you have device specific redirections?
Works great, very useful when on the edge
Why do I need either i or m vesion of your site if I can read great RSS you have?
I use Skyfire or Opera Mini on my AT&T Tilt and I read the normal Engadget page. How does this factor into the stats?
I think the fact that iPhones even need i.engadget.com instead of using the "real" version of the website speaks for itself.
haha the Wii got 3rd!? lol Where is my Wii version of Engadget!? jk It could be, Wiigadget.
Hope you guys read this suggestion...
Is it possible to add text links to youtube videos instead of the videos themselves on the iphone version of your website? Since Safari doesn't support Flash, we are totally missing the videos; if you put a text link that sends us to the youtube video we can watch it that way, since the Youtube App will be automatically launched.
Hope you take this into consideration. Thanks and saludos from Cabo.
Ryan, appreciate the data but I'm not sure I understand WHY you yourself don't have data from m.engadget.com - or are you/mgmt choosing not to share with us? I personally don't care whether it "supports" your current decision or not (I trust you to know your customers), it would certainly be a much more interesting distribution than the one above.
Is there a technical reason you can't break out device access for m.engadget.com?
Make the titles two lines. It's crazy to have to click a link to finish reading the head.
Would prefer to have the images and and first few sentences of the article show on the main page. Or at least when you click on a headline, the full article (or first sentence) and image drops down rather than taking you to another page. And then have an option to expand all headlines. Then I'd scroll down the articles and scan fo articles of interest and minimize all the ones I don't care about... then read the ones left on the way back up.
Apologies if I make absolutely no sense.
With non-iPhone, you don't use the real webpage, just the bullet point only page. You can really surf with an iPhone and you can't really with WinCE or Blackberry.
I wouldn't mind m.engadget.com on the iphone, except that the font displays really small for some reason.