iPhone internet browsing over GPRS...

[autopilot]

I think holding me back from buying an iPhone is how much i will miss Opera Mini. I browse the net on my Nokia a lot and most of the time i'm out of 3G signal, yet pages load quickly. As Opera Mini is not available for iPhone, and probably never will be, so i'm worried that browsing with Safari over GPRS is going to be a frustrating and painful experience.

What are people's thoughts here? How do you find it? Is there anything that can be done to improve things?

[Funkstar]

I suspect it will be like when I was using my Kaiser and Touch Diamond 2 for internet access in my old flat and only connecting with GPRS.

It wasn't pleasant. It worked, but wasn't great. Opera on my laptop was often reporting less than 1KByte/sec downloads. This is on T-Mobile though.

Adverts on forums were interesting.

[o0julius0o]

iPhone 3Gs is much much much better than the early version.


For me, my next mobile will be new iPhone.

[burble]

Originally Posted by o0julius0o

iPhone 3Gs is much much much better than the early version.

True, but the 3G coverage from O2 is pretty woeful and even when you have a 3G signal the throughput isn't fantastic.

The iPhone is a great phone that's marred greatly by O2.

[autopilot]

Originally Posted by burble

True, but the 3G coverage from O2 is pretty woeful and even when you have a 3G signal the throughput isn't fantastic.

The iPhone is a great phone that's marred greatly by O2.

Yep, it is. I was in France a few weeks back and i was flabbergasted by their 3G coverage - in the middle of nowhere, miles from any large village (let alone a town) and i has rock solid 3G signal.

I dont know what other networks are like though in the UK, as i only get O2 where i live (4 miles from a large town, yet not a sniff of 3G).

Apple don't help either. I'm pretty set on an iPhone, but in the back of my mind i cant stop thinking about the Hero running Opera Mini. Opera Mini is an absolute marvel, if only Apple could take their heads out of their ****hole and let people provide alternative browsers. The Apple fanboys rave about Safari, which i am sure is great with 3g or wifi, but i have very limited access to both where i wish to browse the net most often.

[burble]

Safari is OK, it's nothing special and not a patch on Opera Mini.

[Flibb]

I use a touch diamond 2 on t-mob, default browser is opera, although I fiddle and have 4 browsers installed to play with. 3G / HSDPA is very good around here, a lot of other people struggle for any phone connection here, let alone 3G.

[Rob_B]

Regarding the 3GS it will render faster but obviously not make up for a slow GPRS connection.

If you jailbreak the phone you can install adblock & also add an option to safari to not load images (not a perfect solution I realise) which would help.

As Opera can be had as a java app could you use that with a jailbroken iPhone (?!)

[Zathras]

I use a 2G iPhone via GPRS (T-mobile) and often find it opens smaller pages as quick as, if not faster than my girlfriend's 3G Nokia E63 on Three. I had Opera Mini on my old WM phone and personally I much prefer Safari.

[autopilot]

Originally Posted by Rob_B

If you jailbreak the phone you can install adblock & add an option to safari to not load images (not a perfect solution I realise) which would help.

Unless adblock somehow works server side, which i cant see how it does, its not going to reduce the amount of data sent over my connection though is it? I cant see how it would really help.

[Rob_B]

Umm..I imagine it works the same as the real adblock for normal browsers, if the image is on www.insertnameofadserver.com or the list of 'blocked' sites then it doesn't load/request the image reducing the amount of data

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by autopilot

Unless adblock somehow works server side, which i cant see how it does, its not going to reduce the amount of data sent over my connection though is it? I cant see how it would really help.

Yes it is actually, thats the point of it.

Adblock stops ads from being downloaded, not just displayed.

[autopilot]

Originally Posted by Rob_B

Umm..I imagine it works the same as the real adblock for normal browsers, if the image is on www.insertnameofadserver.com or the list of 'blocked' sites then it doesn't load/request the image reducing the amount of data

Excellent, i will take a look, thanks

[techiegirl]

I also like the Opera Mini but Safari's REALLY good too even if you use EDGE, 3G or WiFi.

[autopilot]

Have had the iPhone for a couple of weeks now and I have to say it's not as bad over GPRS as I thought, especially with mainly text based forums once cached. Also some of the benifits of Opera mini are offset by the fact that mini has to reload the page everytime you do anything that normally does not require a complete page reload, like toggling a check box, forum quick edits etc. On the whole, I'm absolutly amazed how good web browsing on the iPhone is.

[Spud1]

glad you are getting on with it.

I was going to post in support of safari lol..when I had my 2g iPhone I used it quite a lot for web browsing over edge/gprs and it was pretty good tbh on most sites. The browser itself is easier to use and dare i say better than opera mini, but just slower. What would be ideal is a combination of the two - the UI and rendering from Safari with the caching and speed optimisations of opera mini.