RIM buys Torch Mobile, BlackBerrys might finally get a decent browser
By Nilay Patel 
posted August 24th 2009 11:43AM
posted August 24th 2009 11:43AM
[Via MobileTechWorld, thanks Ike]
posted August 24th 2009 11:43AM
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Good to hear. Hopefully in 2010 with this and flash support Blackberry may have a great browser packaged in with the phone.
Blackberry won't have a decent Browser unless they license Opera or Safari mobile.
Why license Opera from those crybabies when users that want it can get it for free?
@Drew Green
Opera Mobile is not free.
Opera Mini is free.
Opera Mobile != Opera Mini
Go and educate yourself. Crybaby.
The fact is, you can get a version for free that still works on blackberry so why bother licensing it?
The rendering engine is only PART of the equation. Two other major issues are:
1) Blackberry OS does not support native hardware graphics acceleration and so is unable to utilize the graphics chipsets in modern ARM chipsets. Because of this, screen redraw when zooming, scrolling, and panning will never be as smooth as it could be.
2) RIM needs to use beefier hardware in their phones and just as importantly they need to focus on getting their operating system to utilize the latest ARM instruction set and hardware features and optimizations.
It probably won't get implemented until at least 5.2 though :(
Friday I swap my Storm for a Tour, Sunday I get a Gmail plug-in, and now this! It is like Christmas. Now I just need threaded SMS and a few GB of device memory and my BB will never leave my hands (not that it does lol)
Cute, they're pulling a Microsoft: If you can't beat 'em, buy someone else out to do the work for you.
"pulling a microsoft"? nice try.
wouldn't this be business 101? hire someone that will help you gain the edge that you can't gain otherwise?
Yeah, but it's smart to buy a company that makes good products that complement your product. You can bring them in-house, give them greater access to your code, provide more funding, and provide the end user a better experience.
The MS/Oracle model is to buy and destroy, or buy and release crappy products.
who said Borg?
EMC has been doing this as well, Iomega, SMARTS, Infra, RSA, etc... I don't see what the problem is as long as they are not doing it to buy out the competition.
I don't understand why it's so difficult for RIM to get proper imap support. Imap is so much more useful when compared to pop3. I would consider ditching my iPhone for the tour on vzw if it had imap support.
But I thought the web browsing on the Blackberry was totally sweet! And it has tons of apps! That's what Verizon's ad told me anyway.
I've got no problems with the browser on my storm. Why do people want a full desktop browsing experience on their phone? Anytime I've used the browser on any of my mobiles, WinMo 5, 6.0, 6.1, BBerry 8330 Curve, LG enV Touch, BBerry Storm... I've done it for about 5 minutes, and got the info i was looking for and closed it. I don't sit and actually BROWSE the web on my phone.
Ian, you probably don't because it's not a very nice experience. I didn't sit around listening to music with my RAZR. I *could*, but it wasn't the optimal medium. I have a laptop and an iPod touch. The laptop, which is not even a year old, has been sitting around collecting dust because I browse mostly on the iPod. It's so convenient and (for the most part) pleasant. There are lots of phones out there with adequate browsers. I was on vacation recently with a friend who had an LG Dare. The Dare came in handy a few times when we needed to look something up, but there's no way in hell I'd ever *want* to leisurely browse the web on it.
I sit around and actually BROWSE the internet with my webkit based iPhone browser all the time. Clicking on a link in SimplyTweet or in an email will usually lead in my getting off topic and browsing other articles or searching for something. I read a lot of multi-page articles on engadget or ars when i'm on the exercise bike at the gym or on the bus. It's not the same as the desktop but in some ways it's better. I wish i could double-tap to zoom into a column on firefox if i could.
Has there been much change to Iris recently? The last time I used it, it had some decent features, but it wasn't stable.
i wanted to find out for myself, but it looks like the download page is now disabled (not much of a shock there).
can anyone else download it?
It's been my default browser for a while now and the latest version 1.1.9 was rock solid for me :( I was waiting for 1.2 and it's a big blow to winmo that Iris browser is now gone :(
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/get-iris-browser.html
Mirror Download button works. 1.1.9.
So they have to port a probably C/C++ code to Java? What a waste. Java sucks. Why hasn't RIM recognized this fact?
Not if it's made native? i dunno...
As far as web browsers on mobile phones go, I would definitely have to say Safari is by far the best out right now. I used to have the Curve 8330 and the native browser was atrocious... not even acceptable by today's standards. However, I'm pretty sure they've made at least some improvements since then with the Bold, Storm, etc. Opera Mini didn't do a particularly bad job. Now, I have a Motorola Q9c (sadly :( ) running WinMo 6.1 Standard and admittedly Pocket IE actually is better than the native Blackberry browser (although I hate to admit it, as I find Blackberry's OS in general much more intuitive), but my personal preference is Skyfire which renders pages in full desktop-like form (similar to how Safari does) and is lightning fast too. However, sometimes when you have to scroll down a page, it takes quite a while longer to perform this action, as Skyfire actually renders an image of the website first, in order to achieve those quick speeds, then loads as you get into the content of the site, which takes a while. I'm definitely routing for you RIM!!! I would really love for my next phone purchase to be a Tour or Storm 2 but I really do have to have a sufficient browser.
good news, can't wait to give it a whirl! until then, my Tour wih Bolt browser combo is what i'll be rockin' :)
Tabbed browsing is already available on the leaked 5.x build for Storms, although the rest of the OS is such a beta-fest that it isn't a great idea to jump the gun on it. Seems RIM's engineers have been putting it all together before this acquisition, hopefully good things come from it.
They better still have Iris for WinMo.
hehe.. idiot. your "marketing" spam doesn't even read well.
you fail at life.
ya - I've really been looking forward to their 1.2 iris update for WinMo. It's been my default browser since the first time I used it. I'm gonna assume that this acquisition is going to pull their focus away from windows mobile. .