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REVIEW: Teksoft's brand new Pocket PC utility suite Smart Bar

Teksoft, developer of the excellent BlueMusic application (see for example this article & the links), has just come out with a brand new suite, Smart Bar, of system management applications. I decided to give it a try as it’s a pretty capable suite of utilities with some really excellent modules.
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They even promise an application capable of recording both (!) parties in a phone conversation (so far, this has been impossible with all Pocket PC Phone Edition devices of both HTC and ASUSTeK (Fujitsu-Siemens T8x0)); I think it’ll work by directly “tapping into” the Bluetooth unit as can be seen for example in here.
Availability, price
The suite is available here. To review the (pretty good and recommended) manual, visit this link. There is a(n unfortunately, pretty restricted) trial version too.
The “price” of the suite is 200 credits; that is, between 20 and 25 euros (depending on the amount of money you transfer to your online credit account). The registration is a one-device only (that is, CPU ID- and not PPC owner name-based); licenses can be transferred to other devices in case of a device change (for example, when the previous one bites the dust and gets exchanged).
Install
Use smartbar_setup.exe for pre-WM5 and the CAB files for WM5; see install.en.txt for the latter case.
Compatibility
It’s stated to be compatible with strictly QVGA devices with at least the WM2003 operating system. (I’ve also tested it on Pocket PC 2002; it indeed doesn’t work.)
You can, of course, try to install it on VGA devices, but I don’t think you should give it a go. I’ve tested it on three different VGA devices (Dell Axim x51v A12, WM5 iPAQ hx4700 2.01, WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720). On the hx4700, the PowerPlugin Today screen plug-in was absolutely useless; on the two other devices, it was shown, but not anything else. On the Dell Axim x51v, I’ve received frequent gwes.exe crashes after a reboot, because of which I had to entirely disable PowerPlugin.
Of the PowerPlugin, few features were accessible on these VGA devices; in the following chart, I’ve summarized all this (note that it also contains HTC Wizard-related info):
Note that, as far as the Wizard is concerned, I’ve listed two ROM’s: the O2 2.21.4.1 WWE (3/9/0) ROM and the “cooked”, widely known AKU3.2 one by KTamas / bepe. This means there are differences between different ROM versions / builds – all icons may work with your particular ROM version. The developer has promised they would test the suite with other ROM versions.
As can clearly be seen, the majority of the features PowerPlugin has can’t be used - not even on the QVGA HTC Wizard (with some ROM versions).
One of the central features of the application, Smartbar, wasn’t accessible either on any of my VGA devices. Self-standing apps like the screen capture, the network troubleshooter and the task manager applications, however, did work on VGA devices.
Also, it’s very important that you BACKUP (see the Backup Bible if you’re unsure) your device before installing the application. My absolutely clean, freshly hard reset WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210, after the install, couldn’t boot in at all and I ended up having to hard reset the PDA (I’ve tested this two times). I haven’t tried to boot into Safe Mode (read this roundup & tutorial if interested in Safe Mode on the Pocket PC); it may have helped .
Today plug-in (PowerPlugin)
It’s a simple plug-in with shortcuts to en/disable wireless units, suspend the device, show whether it's connected to the Net (IMHO, this is pretty useless on a WM2003+ device - after all, the Connectivity icon is always visible on the taskbar) and a backlight slider. It doesn’t contain for example battery or memory meters, unlike most other Today launchers (please see this iLauncher review and the links to earlier reviews to find out what a decent Today launcher should offer.)
Unfortunately, the majority of the functionality it’s supposed to offer didn’t work on my test devices. For example, as far as en/disabling wireless functionality is concerned, it was only on the x51v that it was able to both en- and disable Wi-Fi; on the Wizard, it was only able to enable it and on the PL720, wasn’t able to do anything. As far as Bluetooth is concerned, it didn’t work on any of my test devices in any direction. The backlight slider only worked on the PL720. (See the chart at the top, in the Compatibility section for more info.) The only exception is the HTC Wizard with the O2 ROM, where everything worked. (Again, more information on the compliance with other HTC Wizard ROM versions will be published / announced later.)
Also note that, while it has, in addition to the backlight slider, a backlight icon. It, now, doesn’t do anything. Hope the Teksoft folks wire it to the backlight / brightness applet of the device as is the case with all the other, similar Today plug-ins.
Task manager
This is one of the best features of the suite.
Pretty cool. Better than the built-in task manager: it lists the memory used, whether it’s a windowed app/process and if yes, is it visible; the title and the window class name. However, it doesn’t display other advanced & useful stuff like CPU usage and has no “Stop all processes”. Also, it’s not possible to “hide” system processes either – that is, for a newbie, this task manager can prove pretty dangerous.
Ultra Keyboard
This is probably the most unique feature of this suite: it allows for controlling some functionality using the keyboard. The most important of this is text insert macroing capabilities, which has always been missing from Pocket PC’s (except for some, not very capable Software Input Panels (SIP's) like Resco Keyboard Pro and Biomobility’s CopyText Pro; also see this thread for more info if interested).
When you use text insert macroing and assign a macro to, say, the series of characters “bye”, Smart Bar will constantly monitor the keys you press on the built-in (or external) keyboard of your PDA and when it sees the keys b, y and e pressed in order, it’ll delete back the three characters and insert the replacement text.
It's really cool but, unfortunately, only works with built-in keyboards or external ones (like those of desktop-based PDA controllers; see this roundup for more information on them.) Even in this case it can prove useful - most built-in thumb boards are pretty awkward to enter text on them.
You can initiate the following functionality from the keyboard: Replace with phrase; Execute a file; Turn device off; Reset device; Call number and Screen Capture. Note that if your keyboard has a different layout than your current ROM language, the default layout will be used. For example, if you have a German MDA Vario (= HTC Wizard) with English ROM but use the keyboard in German mode so that you find all keys at once, you will need to enter ‘bze’ instead of ‘bye’ for the ‘bye’ script to be executed. Also, note that not even in this case will everything execute – that is, try not to use anything that have relocated letters.
In my tests, all these functions worked OK.
Smartbar
This is a shortcut bar at the bottom of the Today screen for accessing active apps (closing / activating them) and activating other built-in apps (and the Desktop mode) of the Smart Bar suite. Unfortunately, task control-wise, it is probably the worst module in the entire suite; hope this will be greatly enhanced in subsequent releases.

Compared to (better) task managers like iLauncher, Magic Button or Spb Pocket Plus, its disadvantages are as follows:
It can only be accessed on the Today screen, not on the taskbar (and / or the Close / Minimize icon itself)
It supports no mass operations like “close all but this one”, “close all”, unlike with Magic Button or the built-in iTask of Compaq / HP iPAQ’s
It doesn’t override the Minimize / Close (x) icon
Hope these disadvantages will be soon be fixed and the task management functionalities of the application greatly enhanced.
Note that while it doesn’t have explicit scrolling icons / menus (unlike Magic Button as can be seen in here but NOT iLauncher 3, which is suffering from the complete lack of scrollbars as can be seen in this and this screenshots), you can scroll the active task icon list if there are more than five (Portrait) / seven (Landscape) of them.
I’ve also tested the CPU usage of smart.exe to see whether it causes any CPU load, particularly with more than a handful programs active. (For example, Magic Button causes a constant CPU usage of about 1-3% all the time.) The results are acceptable and not much worse than those of Magic Button:
Desktop
Yes, a WisBar Advance Desktop (WAD) clone! It’s in no way so advanced as WAD; still, if you like these kinds of applications, you may find the one in Smart Bar suitable.
Screen capture
Smart bar also contains built-in screen capturing capabilities. Please see the Screen Capture Bible for more information; in the following pros/cons list, I build on the information and explanations of that guide.
Compared to other screen capturer applications,
Pros
Uses a 3-second delay by default; that is, it can be used to make menu screenshots (without using the periodic screenshot capabilities)
Able to capture images periodically (albeit with some limitations, particularly when it comes to the frequency of taking shots). Note that it’s the “Stop interval” drop-down list that lets you fine-tune the interval it’ll take screenshots (between 10 seconds and 10 minutes as can be seen here and here)
If you use it on a device with a built-in thumb/keyboard and you enable screen capturing through Ultra Keyboard, you will be able to capture almost any game screen any time (!) by just entering the Ultra Keyboard shortcut (“CAP” by default). In this respect, the suite is unbeatable and unrivalled.
Periodic screenshot capturing is fast and, therefore, gaming-friendly (unlike, say, BeniSoft ScreenShotCE)
Both BMP and JPG output; the latter with settable quality
Can save files to anywhere, not just the main storage
Can capture images, in addition to the original (100%) size, at double and triple (200% / 300%) size – very useful on QVGA devices to avoid further enlargement and unique among all the screen capturer applications
Landscape & VGA compliant even in SE VGA mode
Cons
Multishot (periodic) capabilities are a bit limited – you can’t instruct the app to make shots less frequently than every two second
While the screenshot utility is a self-standing app, it cannot be invoked from a custom-written nScriptm script to fine-tune periodic screenshot making parameters
(Trial version useless: it inserts a message in the captured images)
All in all, the screenshot capabilities of the app are excellent, especially when you take the price of the suite into account and the only problem with this module are the too frequent screenshots in auto mode. Also, as has already been pointed out, the ability to make hardware keyboard-based screenshots of games is unbeatable and unique.
Network Tools
The suite also contains a simple (it’s in no way as advanced as, say, vxUtil) network troubleshooting utility, Network Tools.
It’s able to ping and traceroute to find out possible networking problems. It also uses DNS lookups; that is, if you for example enter www.yahoo.com, the contents of the input field will revert to 209.73.186.238 (or something very similar, with a different ending), showing the IP address of the given computer (it doesn’t do the reverse).
It also exports the traceroute results to a file. (Note that I didn’t have a “real” wireless connection during the tests and the utility had problems accessing the net via USB (in both WM5 AKU2+ networking modes); I could only access the desktop computer my PDA was hooked up to; this is why there is only one entry in the tracelog.)
It’s pretty cool to have if you don’t happen to have Windows Mobile Network Analyzer PowerToy or vxUtil around.
Verdict
This app is certainly promising. Hope subsequent builds / versions will fix the issues / implement the missing functionality (most importantly, overridden Close / Minimize button) I’ve elaborated on. Then, I’ll recommend it heartily, without conditions. Now, in the present state, I do recommend it too – but conditionally.
First, the bad. It does have compatibility issues. If it does work on your PDA model, it won’t likely to support all the features of the Today plug-in (PowerPlugin) and has no for example storage meters. Also, the task management functionalities / program shutdown capabilities of Smartbar are certainly inferior to most similar apps like iLauncher, Magic Button or Spb Pocket Plus. I find this the biggest stumbling block of the application.
Second, the good. It’s, as an all-in-one application, is really good. That is, if you don’t want to struggle with installing many applications (say, WAD + Magic Button + some advanced (!) screenshot app + vxUtil) to achieve the same (or even better! See for example the screenshot utility) functionality (without keyboard macros, of course), give it a go. Also, if you need keyboard macroing (again, it won’t work with on-screen keyboards, only hardware ones!), this is the application to go.
The same stands for taking screenshots: this application clearly excels in this area (except for the too frequent screenshot taking in repetitive mode – hope the developer fixes this too), particularly when it comes to making screenshots of anything (most importantly, games) that inhibits hardware button access and, therefore, renders hotkey-based screen grabbing impossible. Then, Ultra Keyboard’s excellent keyboard-based shortcuts will prove highly useful.
All in all, if you still don’t have any application to implement the above-listed functionalities or, for example, losing the excellent task management functionalities of other task managers isn’t a problem, definitely give it a go. Remember, however, that
do NOT get it if you are a VGA user; wait for the soon-to-be-released VGA-specific / compliant version
do backup your device before installing or, at least, make sure you have an active Safe Mode application

The ONE and ONLY guide to emulating Nintendo NES under WM

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) (also known as Family Computer or “Famicom” in Japan or “Dendy” in the former Soviet Union) was a very famous third generation (8-bit) in the second half of the eighties with several notable games.
Being a 8-bit, comparatively simple (even when taking into the different Multi Memory Controllers I’ll later elaborate on) game console, not very powerful hardware like current Windows Mobile devices can easily run NES games at their original speed, including music. In this roundup and tutorial, I elaborate on how this can be done. In addition, I publish a reliable, dependable (I've made all the tests MYSELF and don't rely on any other, in most cases, unreliable source) compatibility list with many-many famous titles.
As with my previous emulation-related articles (see the reader feedback I’ve received to my, say, SNES emulation article), it was because of many reasons that made me publish this roundup:
There are absolutely no comparative, let alone up-to-date roundups on emulating this platform.
There are a LOT of apps to choose from (see Michu's related, excellent link / archive repository HERE), which really makes a newbie cry, given that there has been almost no comparative information on these titles on the Internet.
Users’ reports you can run into in different Windows Mobile forums are really unreliable. So are the advertisements of some software developers ;-) (never EVER believe any advertisement without reading an unbiased expert’s report / evaluation!)
While, technically, NES is pretty much inferior to fourth generation (16-bit) and fifth generation(32/64-bit) consoles released later (fourth-generation consoles - and even some of the fifth-generation ones; namely, Playstation - are very easy to emulate on Windows Mobile), the platform still has a lot of titles worth playing. For example, it was on the NES that the Final Fantasy, the Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) and the Zelda series debuted. These titles (the first three Final Fantasy and first four Dragon Warrior titles) are not necessarily available on later, technically more advanced and/or, under Windows Mobile, easily / efficiently emulated platforms (except for the Sony PSX re-releases of the Final Fantasy titles, which are perfectly playable even under the current version of the Windows mobile PlayStation emulator).
As they’re very good RPG’s, if you are into the genre, you may definitely want to check them out. The same stands for some other titles like Elite (which doesn’t have a really non-beta WM version, as is also explained in the Bible of Windows Mobile Games – Part I) and Prince of Persia, which has a pretty good NES version (Windows Mobile still lacks a decent port of this title; it’s only recently that a port has been announced and an early alpha released by Mobirate but it’s still far from being perfect).
Finally, the generic games (which I and Allen Gall have cleaned up last year - after that, we haven't received any criticism) and, particularly, the Emulators category received so much negative criticism (see for example THIS) before my starting to completely update & rework the annual Best Software Awards at Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine that I found it absolutely necessary, now that I’ve been appointed the Awards Nomination Manager, to, finally, show the whole world the right person (someone that REALLY knows what he’s doing and REALLY knows everything about the available software titles for Windows Mobile) was chosen for this task .
Bird's-eye view on NES emulation: what makes NES emulation easy / hard?
While the built-in circuitry itself in the basic NES console is pretty easy to emulate, the custom chips / electronics (for example, enhanced sound generators for the Japanese Famicom – Famicom supports external sound generator circuitries, as opposed to the NES sold in Europe / the States) present in many game cartridges requires require a lot of additional work. You can read a bit more HERE on what chips there are. Implementing emulation for all of these technologies takes a LOT of time and effort; this is one of the reasons why “from-scratch” one-man projects like SmartGear have so low a compatibility rate.
Getting game ROM files
As usual, I may not tell you were to download games from. Believe me: it's far easier than you think if you know what Google is. Fortunately, there isn't a plethora of available ROM formats: everything you run into (most probably .nes files, in most cases, in a compressed form) will run under the emulators.

The available emulators I – the three (+1) most recommended ones
First and foremost, there are three (and an additional one) major, up-to-date, recommended emulators for Windows Mobile. Note that, in the following section, I also give you some advice on how these titles should be used. Note that, as always, I also give the current version of these titles.
1. Jetech.org’s PocketNester 0.7
This is the first emulator you should check out. It is the most compatible, free and reasonably fast emulator. Some of the other, current emulators (for example, NesterJ4u) are based on this one and, therefore, have exactly the same capabilities, except for the additional support for WM5 softkeys and, with the VGA version, Landscape support.
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Its main problem is the lack of WM5 softkey (and, therefore, Smartphone / Windows Mobile Standard) and Landscape screen orientation support.
These issues, as has been already mentioned, have been fixed by for example the NesterJ4u applications. There is another PocketNester derivative implementing WM5 softkey support (and, therefore, sporting support for the Smartphone / Windows Mobile Standard platform) and offering Landscape support: Masterall’s PocketNesterPlus (see the next subsection). Unfortunately, it’s only at these two areas that it excels at; it doesn’t have anything else worth mentioning.
Using the emulator is very simple: download the archive from Sourceforge, unzip it, install and click the PocketNester icon in the Programs / Games folder. Go to File / Open ROM and select the ROM you’d like to play. The ROM can be both compressed and uncompressed and, if you use Mad Programmer’s File Dialog Changer (please read my previous emulation-related articles on how it can be installed; most importantly, the related section in my guide to running Magnetic Scrolls games), it can be anywhere in your file system. If you don’t use File Dialog Changer, it must be under either \My Documents or in either the root or a direct subdirectory under it on your storage cards.
While the emulator has on-screen controls (screenshot), you may also want to (re)assign these functionalities to hardware buttons in Options / Controllers. In there, click a … button and, as instructed, press the key you’d like to be assigned to the given functionality. Also, it’s in here (see the lowermost checkbox) that you can enable a different method for scanning hardware buttons, should you encounter problems with some (rare) Windows Mobile models.
In Graphics, you may also want to enable displaying the top- and bottommost 8 scanlines. It’s disabled by default, you will want to enable it with games supporting them (for example, 1942) so that you can see more of the screen (some games use this). To see what the difference is, this screenshot (of the game 1942) shows the scanlines enabled and this when disabled. See the difference on the top and bottom? Yes, 16 pixel rows are missing from the second screenshot. Note that, however, there are also a lot of games that don’t use these rows and even games that just display some static in there. An example is King’s Quest 5, which has some static at the bottom there as can be seen in here (see the colored line under “Game paused”. During the game, it can become pretty annoying.). If you disable the 2*8 scanline display, this won’t distract your attention (see screenshot here).
Note many emulators don’t let for enabling displaying these rows at all. Also note that I’ve also elaborated on how the individual emulators behave in this respect (see the “2*8 scanlines displayed?” row in the Comparison and Compatibility Chart).

1.1 Masterall’s PocketNesterPlus 0.9
This self-standing emulator is an enhanced version of PocketNester. Download it from the first post of the linked MoDaCo thread, unzip it and transfer PocketNesterPlus.exe to your handheld. Execute it there.
As has already been mentioned, it adds Landscape support to PocketNester (but nothing else). You can switch the orientation in Options / Display as can be seen in here. Unfortunately, currently, it’s in no way compatible with VGA devices.
2. MorphGear 2.4.0.9
A not very fast (but, on current, fast Windows Mobile devices, speed-wise, still perfectly sufficient), commercial emulator with somewhat limited compatibility (and some other emulators; most importantly for the GameBoy). I recommend it mostly because of the NAMCO106 compatibility and the native support for landscape / stretching / on-screen buttons.
Getting and installing MorphGear is easy: download THIS (main program) and THIS (Morat’s module) CAB files; unzip them, transfer them to your PDA and click them for installing. Then, click the new MorphGear icon in the Programs / Games group. Click the
icon in order to select a ROM to load. After this, the game will start (if it’s compatible).

As, by default, MG uses the Portrait orientation and the 100% (one source pixel equals one target pixel) rendering mode, particularly on VGA devices, you will want to make sure you override this setting so that the rendering becomes full screen. To do this, first, click the
icon and select iNES (NES) in the list. Now, click Screen Size on the upper left; a drop-down list will be displayed on the right. Select Window Size in the drop-down list.
You can also fine-tune other parameters here: for example, the sound and the frame dropping ones. On current, fast devices, you can safely leave the sound settings at their default, high-quality settings; on slower ones, you will want to either disable sound completely or select “Low (11 kHz)” in the Quality drop-down list. Also, at the bottom of this settings dialog, you can reassign the buttons of your mobile device. As with all the other apps in this roundup, you can utilize any button on your mobile device, even WM5 hardware softkeys and the red/green phone buttons.
Finally, if you want to play games in Landscape orientation, click the
icon again and, now, select “Global Settings” in the menu. Click Orientation and, from the drop-down menu, select either West or East, depending on whether you’re right- or left-handed.

3. HanaHo Games / Bitbank Software’s SmartGear
(Note that the official homepage of the developer doesn’t even mention SmartGear. Use the Modaco link to download the emulator from.)
A blazingly fast and efficient, commercial emulator: it runs flawlessly even on Windows Mobile devices underclocked to 104 MHz. It, however, has severe compatibility problems and is only compatible with about 60-70% of the current NES games, as opposed to PocketNester(Plus) and even MorphGear, which have a compatibility ratio of around 96-99%. It's not compatible with VGA devices either.
Download the file from the above-linked Modaco thread (you’ll need to register yourself as a forum member). Decompress the archive and transfer SmartGear_PPC.exe to anywhere on your Windows Mobile device. Execute it.
In the Options / Settings section, you may want to make sure “Throttle framerate” remains checked in (it is enabled by default); otherwise, the games will be FAR too quick. (This will be the case with some games even with it enabled; for example, Super Mario Bros 2.)
Also, you will need to redefine the A, B, Start and Select buttons in Options because, by default, they are assigned to the numeric keys (even if they don’t exist – it’s been written for Smartphones, which do have numeric keys) 1, 2, 3 and 4 as can be seen in here. Therefore, you’ll need to click all of them in turn, click Define and press the hardware button on your Windows Mobile handheld you’d like to assign the given functionality to. I also recommend reassigning the Exit functionality so that you can easily stop running a game and bringing up the GUI of the emulator – with the traditional, stylus-based method, this may take some 2-3 seconds.
After this, you can load the ROM image in File / Open and enjoy gaming.
Note that in order to really save battery life, you must manually underclock your handheld to, say, 208 MHz (if it’s an XScale one). It’s only this way, if you use SmartGear, that you will save significant battery life. The sole reason for this that SmartGear, as with both MorphGear and PocketNester, uses all the CPU cycles of the handheld even when it doesn’t actually need it. (For example, when you do make sure “Throttle framerate” remains enabled.)
An example CPU usage graph showing this fact can be seen HERE. The first, about a minute long 100% peak shows running a Mario game in PocketNester, the second shows MorphGear and, finally, the third shows SmartGear. All in all, you will need to underclock your handheld. Please see my battery life saving-related articles (there are quite a few of them) for more info on this.
The available emulators II – the less recommended emulators
Now, I also list and elaborate on the other, older and not any more recommended emulators; for example, Jogosoft’s PocketNES, YameCE, NesCE, InfoNES etc.
NesterJ4u
These two emulators, except for some minor issues, are almost the same as PocketNester. There isn’t much point in preferring them over PocketNester – unless you have a VGA device (it doesn't run on QVGA ones) AND you want to run your games in Landscape. Then, the Sharp build will be your friend.
Jogosoft PocketNES 1.0
This was the first Pocket PC-specific NES emulator (in addition to the Pocket PC-compatible YameCE). Now, because of it not supporting several mappers and lacking for example Landscape support makes it a worse alternative.
InfoNES for PocketPC 0.97
Note that the official homepage of the developer only contains the old (v0.76b) Japanese binaries; the latest, 0.97 version can be accessed either in Michu’s database (pre-WM5 and WM5) or HERE.
This emulator isn't really notable: it has stuttering sound even at 624 MHz. Most of the alternative emulators are FAR better.
nesCE 2.0
(See the download at the bottom of the page). A non-recommended title. See the comparison chart for more info on why I don’t recommend it.
YameCE
This emulator used to be the first really fast NES (but NOT SNES! Its SNES emulation is very slow) emulator to be released for WindowsCE. Now, however, with the advent of fast Windows Mobile devices and the later versions of both PocketNester and, particularly, the unbelievably fast SmartGear, the initial speed advantage has gone. This means it’s no longer worth sticking to this emulator, particularly because it is only able to work for some 3-4 minutes under WM5+. After that, it becomes unable to emulate anything and only a soft reset (!) helps the situation. (Under pre-WM5 OS’es, this problem doesn’t exist.)
(Also see THIS PG thread)
The comparison & compatibility chart
... is available here (click the link!). Based on the info above (and in my previous articles – read them!), you will understand what it contains.
Note that, compatibility-wise, I’ve not only tested most of the possible mappers, but also some generic, famous games.
I’ve included two versions of the most recommended NES emulator, PocketNester, in the chart: an earlier 0.5.4 and the latest 0.7, the latter occupying in the first column in the chart. All this in order to be able to compare how it has evolved over time.
Recommended links
My other game emulator reviews in the Games section of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog. I plan to cover / discuss ALL emulators available for Windows Mobile and have already published some of these articles. Do make sure you follow / read this articles - nowhere else will you find a better source of emulation-related information, I'm absolutely sure.

UPDATE (05/28/2007): New, 0.24 version of excellent multiplatform gaming console emulator SmartGear out! It is definitely an enhanced version with a lot of new functionality (lowered CPU usage (no need to underclock your device to conserve battery life), configurable rapid fire, working Landscape support with NES emulation, in-game menus now accessible, screen size settings, new, even more effective “quick and dirty” rendering mode) and fixes some problems. Unfortunately, it still has the same, not very good game compliance ratio and still doesn’t support high-res VGA devices.
See THIS for more info. Note that I will NOT edit the original article below to reflect the changes – after reading the original article, move on to reading the changes so that you’ll see what has been changed.
UPDATE (05/25/2007): getting the Sticky status, along with ALL my other emulation-related tutorials & roundups, in the Emulators forum of one of the most active Windows Mobile forums, AximSite. By no other than Michu, the manager of the well-known Emupage! This certainly shows – along with the other for example PocketGamer.org and YAMM frontpages – these tutorials & roundups are simply the best.

dont know how i missed this one too!
this is one hell of a guide! cheers.

Glad you liked it
(And don't forget to check out my other articles )

Beautiful! Comprehensive guides such as yours are invaluable especially given the remarkable speed and effectiveness of Google's indexing this site. Thanks for sharing.

this is great!!
only thing is i can not get pocketnester .7 and nesterplus .9 to work at all!!!
i had DLed the plus to my phone and installed ok.. when i tried to play a game, the screen would flicker bad and cause all kinds of problems to be reported. so i un-installed.
same with pocket .7 dl'ed the zip file, and copied it to my storage card. tried to unzip the files but it didnt really install anything, all it did was just extract the files. i read something about unzipping it to your pc first and trying from there but i cant figure it out!!!!!
i have htc hd2 tmob.
thanks for any help!

EL_REY666 said:
this is great!!
only thing is i can not get pocketnester .7 and nesterplus .9 to work at all!!!
i had DLed the plus to my phone and installed ok.. when i tried to play a game, the screen would flicker bad and cause all kinds of problems to be reported. so i un-installed.
same with pocket .7 dl'ed the zip file, and copied it to my storage card. tried to unzip the files but it didnt really install anything, all it did was just extract the files. i read something about unzipping it to your pc first and trying from there but i cant figure it out!!!!!
i have htc hd2 tmob.
thanks for any help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Give a try to SmartGear, it has become really good lately with even support for BT game controllers.

Menneisyys said:
Give a try to SmartGear, it has become really good lately with even support for BT game controllers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
will give it a try
thanks!!

Smartgear works great.
I was just about to post how it is too bad that it doesn't work in WVGA, but I just figured it out. Silly me.
Anyway, SMB3 played full speed, with audio (enabling audio in Morphgear is painful). Works great using a Wiimote (via CobaltController).
Pros
-Full speed with audio
-Full screen on WVGA (with or without stretching)
-Supports touch screen buttons
Cons
-Not free
-Possibly still limited support for games
Note that I did my testing on a LG IQ (eXpo) - 1GHz Snapdragon

Web Browsing News as of 10/18/2007: new Opera Mobile, Picsel, Spb Pocket Plus

A lot has happened in the last month on the Web browser scene. Let’s go over the news!
1. Opera Mobile 8.65 Final released!
Since this March, there have been two beta versions of Opera Mobile, without doubt the BEST, fastest and most standards compliant Web browser for the Windows Mobile platform. Now, almost half a year after the release of the first Beta, the final version has, finally, been released, of which I was also a (closed) betatester, working closely together with the developers and decision makers of Opera.
Compared to the 8.65 betas, which I thoroughly elaborated on in the Web Browsing Bible (and, therefore, in here, I don’t elaborate on these new features – make sure you read my roundup above), there are only few changes. There, on the other hand, have been several bugfixes; for example, the really annoying DEFBROWSER bug I’ve, independent of some other people doing the same, discovered and reported HERE).
Design decisions
Single column layout removed. This is a design decision I don’t really agree with. Particularly if you have a VGA device, you MAY find the lack of the single column mode annoying, particularly with sites / pages that, otherwise, would work much better with a well-working One Column mode. An example: a Wikipedia article in PIE’s One Column mode on a VGA device in Landscape mode (Largest charsize, High Resolution enabled) (the same with Fit to screen – as can be seen, it’s pretty much useless) and the same in Opera Mobile (Minimum font size: 8; Zoom: 100%). As can clearly be seen, One Column modes will ALWAYS be able to present more information. You can, of course, use zoom facilities so that the horizontal screen estate is fully filled in but, then, the character size will also grow and, what is worse, the images will also become pixelizated. (Also see THIS thread for more info / discussion.)
Desktop view, which has been made the default (!) viewing mode, has been made much friendlier. Now, it’s using a bit smaller characters than before. Should you still find them too big, switch to the default (fit to screen) viewing mode because setting Menu / Tools / Settings / Minimum font size to even 8 doesn’t seem to do the trick. Thanks to the, most of the time, excellently working new wrapping functionality, makes it possible to live without having to scroll around. This is shown in the following (VGA Landscape) screenshot with the View menu shown:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Now, the cache is stored on the same drive as the executable program itself. While this is what many people have been asked for (particularly with devices only having 64 Mbytes of Flash ROM, meaning only 10-11 Mbytes of it available to the users – for example, the HTC Oxygen / s310 Smartphone is one of them –, you will definitely like this.
Note that, however, this approach might have negative consequences. As has been explained in my Web Browsing Bible, storing the browser cache on a slow-to-create-files-on storage card (most non-high-end cards are like this) may result in the slowdown of the page loading. If this is a concern to you (because you visit pages that contain a LOT of different images, which are all cached), make sure you manually (!) relocate the cache to somewhere else – or, for that matter, completely disable it in Menu / Tools / Settings / History / Cache Size as can be seen in HERE. To relocate it back to the main storage (or even a RAMdisk, if its being completely deleted each reset and the decrease of RAM memory isn’t a problem either because, for example, you use a 128M RAM model), just follow my previous Opera cache relocation tutorial.
Problems I’ve discovered and/or fixed in the meantime
On MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) phones, when you have really low RAM memory (you’re running out of it), problems may occur with keyboard shortcuts. Namely, no matter what hardware shortcut button you press, the same functionality (in general, Reload and / or Back) will be executed. This can lead to confusion – at first, it caused me a lot of headache too until I’ve understood how this all works.
All in all, if your hardware dialpad buttons don’t do what they’re supposed to do, you may want to shut down (some) other apps and / or Opera Mobile tabs. This will free up some RAM, which will result in the buttons working again.
There’s still no hardware application button support (you can only tie button shortcuts to dialpad / keyboard buttons), but now that I’ve published a FULL tutorial and explanation of all decent Windows Mobile button enhancers, including how you can configure your hardware buttons to simulate the pressing of numeric (dialpad) buttons, this isn’t that big an issue. Just make sure you read the Button Enhancer Bible and do what’s there.
There had been a problem with non-English operating systems because of the wired-in (English) directory names with the initial release. This, along with manually fixing it, has been fixed in the meantime; that is, current builds no longer have this problem.
Verdict
Opera Mobile is and, as it seems, definitely remaining the best browser for both Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones. While there still are some glitches (the worst of them, the lack for hardware app buttons, having been fixed by me), these problems are nothing compared to the generic sluggishness and/or Web standards incompatibility with (most of) the other browsers. Make sure you get at least the trial version.
2. New (1.0.5) Picsel version released!
There is (see THIS) also a new version of the Picsel Web browser. To get it, download the CAB file here (mirror HERE). You only need to download the CAB file; you do NOT need to install the previous Picsel version first, no matter what is stated HERE
As opposed to some XDA-Dev folks, I haven’t found much improvement. For example, the CSS compliance is still very bad (the result of the Acid2 test is HERE; that of the CSS1 test is HERE). The Ajax compliance isn’t a tad better either (tested with THIS and THIS test suite).
All in all, there isn’t much improvement. You may still want to give it a try if you are a big fan of the GUI. I, myself, would still stick to either Opera Mini or Mobile. Don’t necessarily believe the hype

3. New Spb Pocket Plus
Spb Pocket Plus has always been one of the best Pocket PC (Windows Mobile Pro / Classic) system enhancers. The brand new, just released 4.0 version boasts, in addition to a lot of new functionalities, a, compared to the much less significant changes during the 2.x-3.x version jump, considerable
(screenshot showing the four tabs, all populated, and the drop-down list (now, only having one element) of the invisible tabs in the upper right corner. For comparison: a screenshot of the context menu of the old, 3.x-series version HERE, also showing there haven’t been any new buttons / any tabs in it.)
It has received the following niceties:
screen dragging mode; note that the autoscroll can be a bit of a pain in the back; it’s sometimes the best to disable it
tabs (with a pretty welcome context menu – very few other products have the same, as can also be seen in the “Tab context menu (if any)” row of the chart of the Web Browsing Bible)
adding the ability to switch off / on keyboard dragging in the context menu
a separate quick access button, next to the “Action” button of the address bar; note that “Search” here makes a quick Google search with the text you enter in the address field.
The settings screen has remained similarly simple – as you can see, there isn’t much to choose from. The same stands for Menu / Spb Pocket Plus, which didn’t change either as can be seen in HERE. As far as saving Web pages is concerned, you can still only save them as simple HTML files – no MHT or full HTML page saving is possible. Incidentally, as can also be seen in the last screenshot, the new SPP version has a system-level (not only available when saving pages, but from every app that would, otherwise, use the system-level, default, very dumb file dialog) file dialog box like that of Mad Programmer, whose FileDialogChanger I’ve often recommended. HERE’s a screenshot of the Setup program where you can en or disable it. (note that, as opposed to Mad Programmer’s FileDialogChanger, you can’t define exceptions – there’re no configuration capabilities of the new “File Open/Save Dialog”).
Compare this to the immense setting / menu options of PIEPlus or even MultiIE and you understand why I still recommend either of these for the serious Internet Explorer Mobile user, as opposed to Spb Pocket Plus. Not that SPP would be THAT bad any more.
It also has some bugs, but, knowing how great the Spb folks at bugfixing are, I’m pretty sure they’ll be fixed VERY soon:
clicking the cross in the upper right corner (to close the IE window) doesn’t work if there are more than one tabs open. You MUST manually bring up the Start menu and switch (in cases, re-run so that the execution is switched to it) to the program you want to. Of course, if you use a third-party task switcher (for example, the highly recommended Magic Button, PHM’s Alt-Tab or almost all the hardware app button enhancers reviewed HERE)
the smooth scrolling mode isn’t really doing what it’s supposed to: in Landscape mode, it’s, in general, scrolling more than it should or even scrolls multiple pages. Some people have also reported other problems with it; see for example THIS.
4. New version of jb5
In the MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible, I’ve elaborated on the brand new web browser jb5, which, back then, only had a Smartphone version. Late August, a brand new, 5.0.79 version has been released for both the Smartphone and, now, the WM5+ Pocket PC’s. While it’s still having problems and I still consider it much inferior to Opera Mobile / Mini, if you need the special features (for example, in-page text search, which, on the Windows Mobile platform, is only supported by the currently unavailable NetFront and the memory hog & on several handheld models super-slow Minimo) jb5 offers, you might want to check it out. I’ll let you know as soon as it receives a really useful and recommended version.
5. Web Viewer for WM5
There is a brand new multitab IEM plug-in, “Web Viewer for WM5”, HERE.
Unfortunately, this title still has a lot of problems and, consequently, I don’t recommend it. As with jb5, I’ll announce when a useful, bug-free version is released. I also recommend the comments HERE.
6. Other stuff
In some of my earlier articles, I’ve already elaborated on two not really recommended newcomers: TeaShark and UCWEB. IMHO, it’s, currently, pretty useless to bother about these browsers. I’ll let you know when a considerably better version is released.

Menneisyys said:
All in all, there isn’t much improvement. You may still want to give it a try if you are a big fan of the GUI. I, myself, would still stick to either Opera Mini or Mobile. Don’t necessarily believe the hype
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it doesn't have any of the cool updated stuff found at the following link?
http://www.picsel.com/flash/uploads/index.html
May not be the best web browser ever, but the pdf and Office viewing is superb. I mean really, was adobe kidding with that awful LE edition?
NS

NotShorty said:
So it doesn't have any of the cool updated stuff found at the following link?
http://www.picsel.com/flash/uploads/index.html
May not be the best web browser ever, but the pdf and Office viewing is superb. I mean really, was adobe kidding with that awful LE edition?
NS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've only compared the Web browsing fcuntionality.

When using Picsel on my phone and the rotate option, it rotates the browser window 90 counter-clockwise. Does anyone know how to change this to 90 clockwise? I ask because I use a P4000/Titan and it rotates the image away from the keyboard.
I've tried some of the registry entries, such as rotatedirection, but they didn't do anything.... or I put the wrong values

Web Browsing News as of 10/18/2007: new Opera Mobile, Picsel, Spb Pocket Plus

A lot has happened in the last month on the Web browser scene. Let’s go over the news!
1. Opera Mobile 8.65 Final released!
Since this March, there have been two beta versions of Opera Mobile, without doubt the BEST, fastest and most standards compliant Web browser for the Windows Mobile platform. Now, almost half a year after the release of the first Beta, the final version has, finally, been released, of which I was also a (closed) betatester, working closely together with the developers and decision makers of Opera.
Compared to the 8.65 betas, which I thoroughly elaborated on in the Web Browsing Bible (and, therefore, in here, I don’t elaborate on these new features – make sure you read my roundup above), there are only few changes. There, on the other hand, have been several bugfixes; for example, the really annoying DEFBROWSER bug I’ve, independent of some other people doing the same, discovered and reported HERE).
Design decisions
Single column layout removed. This is a design decision I don’t really agree with. Particularly if you have a VGA device, you MAY find the lack of the single column mode annoying, particularly with sites / pages that, otherwise, would work much better with a well-working One Column mode. An example: a Wikipedia article in PIE’s One Column mode on a VGA device in Landscape mode (Largest charsize, High Resolution enabled) (the same with Fit to screen – as can be seen, it’s pretty much useless) and the same in Opera Mobile (Minimum font size: 8; Zoom: 100%). As can clearly be seen, One Column modes will ALWAYS be able to present more information. You can, of course, use zoom facilities so that the horizontal screen estate is fully filled in but, then, the character size will also grow and, what is worse, the images will also become pixelizated. (Also see THIS thread for more info / discussion.)
Desktop view, which has been made the default (!) viewing mode, has been made much friendlier. Now, it’s using a bit smaller characters than before. Should you still find them too big, switch to the default (fit to screen) viewing mode because setting Menu / Tools / Settings / Minimum font size to even 8 doesn’t seem to do the trick. Thanks to the, most of the time, excellently working new wrapping functionality, makes it possible to live without having to scroll around. This is shown in the following (VGA Landscape) screenshot with the View menu shown:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Now, the cache is stored on the same drive as the executable program itself. While this is what many people have been asked for (particularly with devices only having 64 Mbytes of Flash ROM, meaning only 10-11 Mbytes of it available to the users – for example, the HTC Oxygen / s310 Smartphone is one of them –, you will definitely like this.
Note that, however, this approach might have negative consequences. As has been explained in my Web Browsing Bible, storing the browser cache on a slow-to-create-files-on storage card (most non-high-end cards are like this) may result in the slowdown of the page loading. If this is a concern to you (because you visit pages that contain a LOT of different images, which are all cached), make sure you manually (!) relocate the cache to somewhere else – or, for that matter, completely disable it in Menu / Tools / Settings / History / Cache Size as can be seen in HERE. To relocate it back to the main storage (or even a RAMdisk, if its being completely deleted each reset and the decrease of RAM memory isn’t a problem either because, for example, you use a 128M RAM model), just follow my previous Opera cache relocation tutorial.
Problems I’ve discovered and/or fixed in the meantime
On MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) phones, when you have really low RAM memory (you’re running out of it), problems may occur with keyboard shortcuts. Namely, no matter what hardware shortcut button you press, the same functionality (in general, Reload and / or Back) will be executed. This can lead to confusion – at first, it caused me a lot of headache too until I’ve understood how this all works.
All in all, if your hardware dialpad buttons don’t do what they’re supposed to do, you may want to shut down (some) other apps and / or Opera Mobile tabs. This will free up some RAM, which will result in the buttons working again.
There’s still no hardware application button support (you can only tie button shortcuts to dialpad / keyboard buttons), but now that I’ve published a FULL tutorial and explanation of all decent Windows Mobile button enhancers, including how you can configure your hardware buttons to simulate the pressing of numeric (dialpad) buttons, this isn’t that big an issue. Just make sure you read the Button Enhancer Bible and do what’s there.
There had been a problem with non-English operating systems because of the wired-in (English) directory names with the initial release. This, along with manually fixing it, has been fixed in the meantime; that is, current builds no longer have this problem.
Verdict
Opera Mobile is and, as it seems, definitely remaining the best browser for both Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones. While there still are some glitches (the worst of them, the lack for hardware app buttons, having been fixed by me), these problems are nothing compared to the generic sluggishness and/or Web standards incompatibility with (most of) the other browsers. Make sure you get at least the trial version.
2. New (1.0.5) Picsel version released!
There is (see THIS) also a new version of the Picsel Web browser.
As opposed to some XDA-Dev folks, I haven’t found much improvement. For example, the CSS compliance is still very bad (the result of the Acid2 test is HERE; that of the CSS1 test is HERE). The Ajax compliance isn’t a tad better either (tested with THIS and THIS test suite).
All in all, there isn’t much improvement. You may still want to give it a try if you are a big fan of the GUI. I, myself, would still stick to either Opera Mini or Mobile. Don’t necessarily believe the hype

3. New Spb Pocket Plus
Spb Pocket Plus has always been one of the best Pocket PC (Windows Mobile Pro / Classic) system enhancers. The brand new, just released 4.0 version boasts, in addition to a lot of new functionalities, a, compared to the much less significant changes during the 2.x-3.x version jump, considerable
(screenshot showing the four tabs, all populated, and the drop-down list (now, only having one element) of the invisible tabs in the upper right corner. For comparison: a screenshot of the context menu of the old, 3.x-series version HERE, also showing there haven’t been any new buttons / any tabs in it.)
It has received the following niceties:
screen dragging mode; note that the autoscroll can be a bit of a pain in the back; it’s sometimes the best to disable it
tabs (with a pretty welcome context menu – very few other products have the same, as can also be seen in the “Tab context menu (if any)” row of the chart of the Web Browsing Bible)
adding the ability to switch off / on keyboard dragging in the context menu
a separate quick access button, next to the “Action” button of the address bar; note that “Search” here makes a quick Google search with the text you enter in the address field.
The settings screen has remained similarly simple – as you can see, there isn’t much to choose from. The same stands for Menu / Spb Pocket Plus, which didn’t change either as can be seen in HERE. As far as saving Web pages is concerned, you can still only save them as simple HTML files – no MHT or full HTML page saving is possible. Incidentally, as can also be seen in the last screenshot, the new SPP version has a system-level (not only available when saving pages, but from every app that would, otherwise, use the system-level, default, very dumb file dialog) file dialog box like that of Mad Programmer, whose FileDialogChanger I’ve often recommended. HERE’s a screenshot of the Setup program where you can en or disable it. (note that, as opposed to Mad Programmer’s FileDialogChanger, you can’t define exceptions – there’re no configuration capabilities of the new “File Open/Save Dialog”).
Compare this to the immense setting / menu options of PIEPlus or even MultiIE and you understand why I still recommend either of these for the serious Internet Explorer Mobile user, as opposed to Spb Pocket Plus. Not that SPP would be THAT bad any more.
It also has some bugs, but, knowing how great the Spb folks at bugfixing are, I’m pretty sure they’ll be fixed VERY soon:
clicking the cross in the upper right corner (to close the IE window) doesn’t work if there are more than one tabs open. You MUST manually bring up the Start menu and switch (in cases, re-run so that the execution is switched to it) to the program you want to. Of course, if you use a third-party task switcher (for example, the highly recommended Magic Button, PHM’s Alt-Tab or almost all the hardware app button enhancers reviewed HERE)
the smooth scrolling mode isn’t really doing what it’s supposed to: in Landscape mode, it’s, in general, scrolling more than it should or even scrolls multiple pages. Some people have also reported other problems with it; see for example THIS.
4. New version of jb5
In the MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible, I’ve elaborated on the brand new web browser jb5, which, back then, only had a Smartphone version. Late August, a brand new, 5.0.79 version has been released for both the Smartphone and, now, the WM5+ Pocket PC’s. While it’s still having problems and I still consider it much inferior to Opera Mobile / Mini, if you need the special features (for example, in-page text search, which, on the Windows Mobile platform, is only supported by the currently unavailable NetFront and the memory hog & on several handheld models super-slow Minimo) jb5 offers, you might want to check it out. I’ll let you know as soon as it receives a really useful and recommended version.
5. Web Viewer for WM5
There is a brand new multitab IEM plug-in, “Web Viewer for WM5”, HERE.
Unfortunately, this title still has a lot of problems and, consequently, I don’t recommend it. As with jb5, I’ll announce when a useful, bug-free version is released. I also recommend the comments HERE.
6. Other stuff
In some of my earlier articles, I’ve already elaborated on two not really recommended newcomers: TeaShark and UCWEB. IMHO, it’s, currently, pretty useless to bother about these browsers. I’ll let you know when a considerably better version is released.

FULL ROUNDUP:Browsing the Web on Windows Mobile just like on iPhone,incl. IEM6 review

After purchasing an iPhone 3G, I immediately fell in love with Safari, its Web browser. Granted, it's somewhat less capable as the best, comparable Windows Mobile (WinMo for short) titles (no Flash, no page saving, no copy/paste, no Opera Link, no explicit text size settings, no caching etc.) and, from time to time, it crashes even with the last, 2.2 firmware version, but it's still much better usable and much faster than anything on Windows Mobile.
Needless to say, seeing the immense success and popularity of iPhone's Safari, Windows Mobile software developers followed suit and, for quite some time now, have been trying to simulate the interface and easy controllability of Safari. Sure, they can't circumvent the problems caused by the hardware (namely, the resistive touchscreen, which, in cases, require a lot of pressure, unlike on the capacitive iPhone); nevertheless, the Windows Mobile developers have indeed managed to come up with some really decent alternatives.
In this roundup, I mostly explain how current Windows Mobile Web browsers are able to provide the same user experience as Safari on the iPhone (again, apart from the much inferior hardware, touchscreen-wise). There have been several shots of providing the same; see for example THIS and, most importantly, THIS article. The latter one, unfortunately, severely lacks in that it only compares Internet Explorer Mobile and Opera Mobile 9.5 - read: no SkyFire, no Iris, no NetFront, no Opera Mini. In addition, the date of the article also shows that it doesn't test the latest Explorer Mobile 6 and the latest, further enhanced builds of Opera Mobile.
Being focused on Safari-like finger-only controllability, I've also reduced the stuff that is more technical: for example, Web compliance testing, strict benchmarking and documenting even the most hidden features. Please consult my previous all-in-one article (my W3C speech) for more info and further links on all these.
I've only tested browsers capable of finger-based scrolling. This is why I've completely disregarded older, non finger-based scrolling-capable plug-ins and that I used Spb Pocket Plus with the older (but still exclusively used) Internet Explorer in order to add this kind of functionality.
Note that I provide a lot of info never before published; for example, a decent (!) comparison of the latest buzz, Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (IEM6) to the previous version, running on real(!) devices - and not just emulators. As you will see, the current IEM6 version is simply not worth bothering with - it's definitely slower and, configurability-wise (see the lack of One Column mode or the lack of the, on (W)VGA devices, highly useful Use High Resolution switch), far less capable than the previous IEM. It's just not worth flashing your device with a ROM containing IEM6 - for example, Tomal 8.5 for the HTC Universal and MoDaCo's Touch HD ROM's - currently, there [still] aren't easily-installable CAB distributions of IEM6, you need to hunt down an XDA-Devs or MoDaCo-cooked ROM coming with it; currently, it's the only way to get the browser onto your phone.
Also note that, now with high-resolution screens being increasingly used in devices like the Diamond and Diamond Pro (VGA) and the X1 and the HD (WVGA), I've found it sufficient to run the tests on VGA devices, and only some on QVGA ones (mostly for testing QVGA-only versions). Therefore, most of the screenshots and the additional hacks (for example, the VGA Jbed one) I provide are for VGA devices.
Note that I paid special attention to elaborating on how the reviewed Web browsers are able to use large(r) fonts so that you'll be able to use them while, for example, commuting to/from work. (Actually, it was, at first, because of this that I started testing browsers in this regard. I generally love riding the bike in the gym. I want to remain thin and biking is the best way to do this. It, however, can become very tedious, particularly if you ride three hours without any pause so that you can always keep your pulse over 120. Watching a movie from one of my 15" UXGA ThinkPads is one way of killing the time during this; another is browsing the Web on my PDA's and smartphones. This, however, requires you to use comparatively large characters as you're constantly moving and keep the device in your hand.) In this regard, the VGA screenshots I present and the approach I take (let's find out whether the browser is able to render the test pages with sufficiently large characters) can be perfectly applied to QVGA devices. After all, it's only when rendering text with small character sizes ("requiring a magnifying glass") that there's significant difference between low-res (QVGA) and hi-res (VGA or WVGA) screens; with large character sizes used, the difference pretty much diminishes. (Apart from the characters' being much prettier and less blocky / pixelizated, of course.)
Mozilla's Mozilla / Firefox port still has no Windows Mobile version. Finally, note that while Makayama's Touch Browser does support iPhone-like scrolling, I just don't see any point in actually paying for it. In the tests of the latest, 1.16 version on my HP iPAQ 210, it proved to be vastly inferior to the IEM + Spb Pocket Plus 4 combo. The latter scrolls pages orders of magnitude faster and nicer. There is just no comparison between the speed of the two browsers. Speed issues aside, the current, 1.16 version still isn't much better than the initial version I've reviewed HERE (albeit some of my biggest, interface-related, complains have indeed been fixed; for example, a QWERTY keyboard has been added.)

1.1 Opera Mobile 9.5
Let's start with Opera Mobile, which is, especially with its latest version (so far, only released for the Samsung Omnia, but already ripped by the XDA-Developers folks and released as an easily-installable CAB file), offers everything a decent Safari-alike should - and more. With Opera Mobile, the only difference in browsing the Web will only be your having to actually hold down the touchscreen for it to work.
Currently, there several versions of Opera Mobile. Of them, I’ve reviewed the (currently) official and, compared to the Omnia version, old (Oct. 2008) version 9.51b2 available for download HERE and the much more recommended, latest, unofficial Samsung Omnia version available HERE (direct links to download HERE and HERE. Note that there’s a combined VGA + QVGA + Flash Lite 3.1 version HERE; it has all the three CAB’s in one RAR file). The latter is the way to go if you have a QVGA Pocket PC or want to see embedded, Flash Lite 3.1-compliant videos (currently, YouTube, Google Video, blip.tv and PornoTube - nothing else; please see THIS for more info). If you, on the other hand, have a VGA model, you absolutely don't want built-in support for the above-mentioned video services or don't need the freedom of the zooming the new version offers (most of the time, you'll find the old, official version in this regard just OK), you may want to stick to the official version.
Note that there’re a lot of (slightly) older “unofficial” Opera Mobile builds. Some are, in some respects, better than the Omni release reviewed in this roundup; for example, some support being installed to a memory card, while the Omni version doesn’t. I haven’t included these older builds in the article to keep its size down.
Speaking of “unofficial” “rips”, also the question of legality should be mentioned. While, strictly, it’s not really legal to rip a browser off a ROM (and installing it on a device), as Opera, currently, doesn’t offer any kind of a downloadable and purchasable, stable and final version of Opera Mobile, I think that, for the time being, you can freely install these XDA-Devs rips on your phone. However, when a commercial (and superior) version of Opera Mobile is released, you will want to upgrade to it. Not only because you it’s everyone’s interest to support the, currently, best multiplatform browser developer that produces browsers that are really pleasant to work with on both desktop PC’s and mobile phones / PDA’s so that they can continue improving their products, but also because the final version will surely have Opera Link.
Support for Opera Link, unfortunately, is severely missing from the currently available 9.x Opera Mobile builds. I’ve played a bit with overwriting \Application Data\Opera9\opera6.adr with the desktop Opera’s \Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\opera6.adr, but in vain: it didn’t work. (The reason for this may have been my bookmark file containing some 3000 bookmarks.) I’ll go on with hacking the file to see whether there’s an easy way of doing so. If I succeed, it’ll mean you’ll be able to easily replicate your desktop Opera favorites on your WinMo phone (and vice versa), which will, to some extent, fix the lack of Opera Link.
1.1.1 Problems on VGA devices
Note that the CAB above is strictly meant for QVGA devices; if you want to install Opera Mobile on VGA devices, you'll need THIS file instead. It fixes all the issues of the original version: provides a VGA skin (directly available HERE, should you want to deploy it on the original, QVGA version), which, in addition to providing large icons, also doubles the size of the on-screen zoom arrow and, finally, increases the zoom magnification to 200%.
You may want to know what the latter means (even if you no longer need it - the VGA CAB comes with the hack applied) - after all, Opera Mobile has excellent (!) configuration and tweaking capabilities worth knowing of (some of them are listed HERE - and, of course, my chart.) With the QVGA version, automatic (the one with double-taps) zoom-in seems to calculate the right zoom level based on QVGA horizontal sizes; that is, the zoomed-in state will contain at most half the size of the actual, zoomed-in contents as can be seen in the following screenshots:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
The same screenshot taken showing the exact same screenshot on a QVGA model (also showing the newly-introduced, albeit, for quick positioning, useless minimap in the upper left corner):
This means you, unless you do the hack I'll describe soon, almost always want to prefer using manual zoom to correctly zoom into the text. To avoid having to do this, just enter "opera:config" in the address bar:

Then, select Adaptive Zoom (it's on the top) and scroll down to Maximum zoom. Change 100 to 200:
After this, automatic (!) zooming will work just fine.
Important: this version (both the QVGA one with the additional tweaks explained above and the VGA one) uses pixel doubling with images (and videos). This, to my knowledge, can't be fixed. Nevertheless, it, otherwise, works just fine on VGA models.
1.2 SkyFire
The second, particularly for QVGA users, most recommended browser is SkyFire, which works in exactly the same way as the pretty much useless, incapable and, since then, cancelled DeepFish did: everything is done on the central server(s) of the developer. The server only transfers (QVGA-resolution) images to the client. In this regard, it's less data use- and CPU-efficient, than Opera Mini, the other (current and recommended) solution using the central server approach. Yes, it constantly uses your data connection and CPU; which means both (at times, dramatically) decreased battery life and increased data usage. Keep this in mind if you plan to use it over a non-unlimited cellular connection. Furthermore, if you have a VGA device, you may want to look for something else if you can't put up with the low-resolution, pixel doubled text and graphics.
It has a lot of goodies. For example, it has one of the best zoom-in algorithms: it has never failed to zoom into text. With all (!) of the other browsers, there have been problems doing this with some sites or forums - even the latest, b15233 version of Opera failed at this sometimes, necessitating some kind of a manual zoom-in, let alone the others.
Furthermore, it supports playing Flash, Java applets, Ajax and everything else Firefox / Mozilla on the desktop Windows supports. This means it's capable of playing back YouTube etc. videos - and not only them, but virtually everything: as it uses the "real" Flash behind the scenes, it has no problems playing back Flash 9 contents either - that is, the video services Flash Lite 3.1, used together with Opera Mobile b15233, is incompatible with.
Note that it does have some disadvantages at playing back YouTube (Google etc.) Video compared to the Flash Lite 3.1 + Opera Mobile b15233 combo. Granted, it's far better in that
1, it uses far less CPU at rendering videos than Opera Mobile: about 40-50% on my 624 MHz HP iPAQ 210, while Opera Mobile is around 90%.
2, initially loading a page containing several compatible videos doesn't result in a major performance hit. Just try to load a TouchArcade page containing more than two or three videos in Opera Mobile and you'll see what I mean. Opera spends minutes loading it; SkyFire, on the other hand, only spends some seconds. Quite big a difference! (Note that the same stands for the Opera Mobile & Flash Lite vs. iPhone Safari relationship – the latter loads pages having a lot of directly embedded YouTube videos - like TouchArcade – in some seconds only. Yes, at times, not having true Flash Lite, “only” YouTube support pays off.)
3, video playback works just great on slow Pocket PC's; for example, ones based on 195 MHz TI OMAP CPU's like the HTC Wizard. The Opera Mobile + Flash Lite 3.1 is plain incapable of playing back any videos on this kind of a CPU without major stuttering and pauses.
However, particularly in not supported countries, the speed of the video playback will be much lower - between 4-5 fps (frame per second) and there will be times there won’t be any sound at all (and, if there is, it’ll be of worse quality than with direct, non-streaming playback like that of Flash Lite). While, on faster WinMo devices, Flash Lite 3.1 has no problems in playing them back at full speed - that is, 25-30 fps.
Fortunately, now SkyFire is accessible from all around the world – in the first few year of service, you could only register to it from the US and Canada.
1.3 Opera Mini 4.2.13337
Opera Mini, along with all Jbed versions (the MIDlet manager - that is, the execution environment - I recommend the most to be used with Opera Mini), offers a lot of goodies; for example, finger-based scrolling. It surely isn't as nice as Safari or Opera Mobile (there're no "rubberband", that is, inertia effects); however, the traditional strengths of Opera Mini (for example, the very low data traffic essential if you're on a limited cellular data subscription and Opera Link, which, unfortunately, is still not supported in the latest Opera Mobile versions) can easily make this browser the browser of choice.
For VGA users, I especially recommend the VGA-hacked Jbed 5.1 version; please see THIS for more info. For QVGA users, you can safely stick with older versions of Jbed.
Opera Mini behaved pretty nice in my tests - it zoomed into text very well and reflown the columns intelligently. No problems in here - much as it's "only" a Java MIDlet, it's still a very decent browser, particularly if you want to make use of its excellent (!) Opera Link and multitab capabilities.
Finally, note that, after my W3C speech, I've published a full tutorial on making Opera Mini your default system browser.
1.4 Iris 1.0.16 (1.1.0 b3)
This browser was another nice surprise - no wonder for example the MSMobiles folks liked it very much. While it's still lacking a bit here and there (the most important of them being the lack of keeping the previously zoomed-to screen contents horizontally aligned when finger-scrolling vertically), it can already be rightfully compared to the other browsers available on Windows Mobile. I, however, would still stick with Opera Mobile, SkyFire or Opera Mini (depending on your needs) instead - they're (still) superior.

1.5 Pre-6 Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) with Spb Pocket Plus 4.0.2
Unfotunately, the "old" (but still the only built-in IEM version shipped with even the latest devices) Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) is far inferior to anything else, even with the really decent, 4-series Spb Pocket Plus plug-in to allow for multitabbing and iPhone-like scrolling.
The biggest problem with this browser, along with the heavily outdated HTML / scripting engine, is the inability to dynamically zoom in/out to/from the page: to switch between reading some text (with sufficiently large and readable characters) in the zoomed-in state and the page overview. All the other browsers are capable of this via single or double taps on the selected (textual) area. (Yes, even Opera Mini - it's just that you can't use the same screentap(s) to switch back to zoomed-out, page overview mode but have to use the hardware Action button [if available] or a menu command to do so.)
Add the poor testpage rendering results to this (many times, you will need to switch to One Column mode very often to be able to make use of the entire screen estate), the comparatively slow page loading speed and you'll see why I don't recommend this browser at all.
1.6 Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (IEM6)
Unfortunately, the current version of IEM6 has turned out to be a real disaster. While it supports goodies like dynamic zooming (with screen taps) and built-in, rubberband-like finger scrolling, it is very slow (actually, much-much slower than even the previous, pre-6 IEM version(s)), its zoom-in capabilities are really bad (doesn't take advantage of the entire screen and, in addition, it uses really small characters, which can't be fixed) and, what is more, you can't even use the One Column mode to make it render properly.
All in all, stay away. This browser is pretty bad and, currently, not worth installing (which, currently, involves flashing an entire XDA-Devs or MoDaCo “cooked” ROM). Hope Microsoft does fix these issues before releasing a "real" version for OEM's to be included in their ROM's. Again, note that the current version of IEM6 most probably doesn’t represent the final version Microsoft releases some time. I’m absolutely sure they’ll for example include for example the “Use High Resolution” checkbox, which will make it possible to make it render large(r) fonts. That is, my “trashing” the current IEM6 doesn’t mean the final, official version will be this bad at all. The current version is definitely an early alpha.
1.7 NetFront (NF) 3.5.009 b729
NF has recently received screen dragging support. Unfortunately, it can barely be used as, as soon as you start to drag the screen, in most cases, the context menu is displayed. The situation is way worse than with other browsers also having a context menu (Opera Mobile etc.).
It has other problems too: compared to the, in this regard, best browsers (Opera Mobile / Mini, SkyFire and, of course, the really fast iPhone Safari), it is slow to load pages. Even screen orientation or view mode changes require (lengthy) page reloads, unlike with most other browsers (except for Opera Mini and SkyFire, which also reloads pages if you dynamically change your screen orientation).
All in all, I cannot recommend NetFront at all. There is simply no point in preferring it to the three most recommended browsers: Opera Mobile, SkyFire and Opera Mini.
2. The feature / comparison chart
It's available HERE. Make sure you open it in a maximized (F11 in all the three major Web browsers under Windows) Web browser window. Also use zoom in/out (Ctrl+mouse wheel on all the browsers; if you don't have a wheel, Shift + and - in Opera; Ctrl + and Ctrl - in both Mozilla / Firefox and IE) to avoid having to scroll the chart horizontally.
Explanation (and additional comments) of the chart:
2.1 Real-world rendering tests
The first part of the chart elaborates on rendering some forum engines, also with some that caused iPhone Safari some problems. Note that I've tested (and published) the results in both orientations because, at times, you'll want to prefer browsing in Portrait mode simply because most phones are easier to hold that way, particularly while walking / doing some physical exercise - or, if you have a phone / PDA with a screen that has issues like that of the Dell Axim x50v / x51v. I used the letter "L" to denote landscape and "P" the portrait orientation.
A very important note: I’ve evaluated the browsers based on their ability to render text with large, well-readable-even-when-commuting-or-walking characters (or, with character sizes that are well readable on 2.8” VGA or 3” WVGA screens like those of the HTC Diamond, HTC Diamond Pro or the S-E X1), NOT based on the overall rendering quality of the engine. That is, I’ve only given “Poor” to browsers that could render textual content with small characters, regardless of the overall quality and standards compliance of the engine.
This is why IEM6, which is plain incapable of rendering text with acceptable-sized, in general, got very bad marks. Nevertheless, the IEM6 engine isn’t THAT bad – it’s pretty much on par with, say, NetFront. That is, based on the “Poor” and “Unacceptable” marks I’ve given IEM6 in most cases, don’t think it is THAT bad. It’s currently bad for reading in circumstances where you do need considerably larger characters. If you have a (W)VGA phone (like the HP iPAQ 210, hx4700, the HTC Touch HD or the Athena with the 5” screen) with a large (at least 3.8”) screen AND you aren’t moving, you may find IEM6’s rendering quality just fine. (It’s another question IEM6, being just an alpha version, severely fails in many other areas: speed, capabilities etc.)
The first link takes you to a pretty problematic site with code not compatible with the zoom-in engine of any of the Web browsers (except for Mozilla / Firefox, which has no problems with zooming them in) - which is a major problem on higher-resolution, but not very large screen like the UXGA 15" or WUXGA 15.6" screens of high-end ThinkPad models. I've paid special attention to checking out how the browsers render the number of the post (it's in the upper right corner of every individual entry). As you can see (of the three most recommended browsers), Opera Mobile is the best to retain this - at least in Landscape mode, using automatic (non-manual) zoom and large char. Unfortunately, only the first part of this number is visible in Opera Mini (and only in Landscape), unless you switch to the more restrictive (albeit a bit more bandwidth-friendly) Mobile View mode (either the “Mobile View” context menu or in Settings) – then, it’ll show these numbers without problems. SkyFire fares the worst in this regard: it not only hides the number of the post, but also (in Landscape, part of) the date.
Other than these, I haven't found other problems related to zooming-in in order to display large characters (where it was at all possible - for example, the maximal size I could get was still very tiny with IEM6 and it was only by switching to the very restrictive One Column mode that I could get readably large chars with Iris.)
(Incidentally, you can easily make these forum pages work in the desktop Opera by just removing all occurrences of <div class="art_t"> [and the accompanying </div>] from the source. Nevertheless, the Opera / Microsoft folks could really look into this problem to make the non-Mozilla/Firefox folks' life easier that long for the ability to freely zoom in.)
The second link takes you to the Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage. I've chosen this page to one of the standard test pages because iPhone Safari severely fails at rendering the contents of this, otherwise, when it comes to the HTML source, very simple page: it uses relatively small characters you may not be able to read (particularly not while moving). In this regard, all of the Windows Mobile browsers behaved orders of magnitude better - except for, again, IEM6, which behaved far worse than anything else.
The third link points to a Thinkpads.com thread, where one of the posts contain a very long thread. iPhone's Safari fails at rendering these kinds of HTML pages without any advanced markup. Needless to say, zooming in (with pinching the screen) doesn't help either - Safari isn't as sophisticated as Opera Mobile, where the latest build already supports reflowing the text at any (manual) zoom level - not just automatic ones. IEM6, as usual, sucks really bad; with Iris, you again have to switch to the One Column mode, but even then the charsize may still turn out to be too low. Speaking of the most recommended three browsers, Opera Mini and SkyFire had no problems with fully taking advantage of the available screen estate (note that, in SkyFire, you can hide the address bar as is also explained in the "Full screen" row). Opera Mobile, in Landscape mode and using Large characters, only used the two-third of the screen on the left (and left the rest unused); this is why I only gave it a "Fair". Again, only using dynamic, automatic zooming; I haven't tested the text reflowing capabilities of b15233, used together by manual zoom fine-tuning, with this particular case. You might want to give it a try to see whether, then, you can use the entire screen estate or not - I bet you will.

The fourth link shows how the DPReview main page is rendered by default. As can you see, you will most probably want to use manual fine-tuned zooming with Opera Mobile so that the text fully fills in the entire screen estate. Alternatively, if you use the latest, b15233 build with the VGA hacks I've explained (or, straight the VGA version), you won't have problems with the zoom - the screenshots here have been made with the official, earlier 9.51b2 and not the latest b15233.
The fifth link takes you to the DPReview forum. The recommended browsers have no problems rendering this, not even with large characters. Iris, again, needs to be switched to the restrictive Column Mode and IEM6 uses uselessly small characters.
2.2 Scrolling-related tests
In the first test, Scrolling speed, I've elaborated on how quickly you can scroll and how much time it takes to display the text you've just scrolled to. The best and fastest browser is, in this regard, Safari; Opera Mobile and NetFront aren't much worse, though.
The second one, "Real rubberband and inertia", elaborates on whether the tested browser is able to measure the speed of your finger when the latter leaves the screen, and if the speed is above a certain threshold, the screen will continue to ‘roll' in the last direction of your finger when it lost contact with the screen. This is one of the best features of iPhone's user interface, and, of course, Safari. As you can see, of the three most recommended titles, neither Opera Mini nor SkyFire support this. Hope this will be later implemented.
"Does it try to keep the same horizontal position while scrolling?" lists whether a slight horizontal displacement while you quickly scroll up or down results in the screen content dragged to the left / right, which, then, may result in having to re-position the text column you were previously reading. As can clearly be seen, the two Operas (and, of course, Safari) are the least sensitive to this kind of error.
"Minimap? Quick positioning possible on it?" shows whether there's any kind of a minimap on the screen and whether it can be directly used to quickly change your zoomed-in position. In this regard, Iris is by far the best. Note that it's only the QVGA version of Opera Mobile b15233 that supports minimap (but, unfortunately, no quick positioning); the VGA version doesn't have this any more. However, you can add this back with some manual hacking, should the need arise.
Other scrolling issues: here, I listed the problems you may face during scrolling the web pages. NetFront has the biggest problems of all with displaying the context menu almost as soon as you start dragging. This makes NetFront almost useless for this kind of usage.
Manual (free) zooming?: in addition to the well-known automatic zoom (which has been elaborated on in the first section), some browsers also support freely zooming into any area of the screen. You may already seen this on the iPhone, where the two-finger "pinching" of the screen does exactly this - in not only Safari, but also a lot of other apps as well. Of the other solutions, Opera Mobile b15233's is by far the best because it allows you to use any zoom level: it'll always make sure the text is correctly re-flown in the given level. Unfortunately, this kind of functionality is really missing from Safari. Yes, this is one of the areas where Opera Mobile is way better than its iPhone alternative.
2.3 Input
This group examines the various input capabilities of the browsers.
Finger-friendly drop-down lists: if you've ever used Safari, you may have already noticed it has very nice and finger-friendly drop-down selector lists:
Here, I explained (and shown) how finger-friendly Windows Mobile browsers are. Unfortunately, none of them excel; probably the best are the two Opera browsers, but they're still a far cry away from iPhone's Safari. Note that if you have a D-pad, you can use the up/down arrows to move the selection and the Action button to select the current one, which, to a certain degree, provides a solution to this problem. Too bad some WinMo phones (for example, the Touch HD) don't even have a D-pad…
How does it work together with third party full screen keyboards?: as the built-in on-screen keyboard in Windows Mobile is almost impossible to use (even after switching to Large size in Settings / Input / Large Keys) with fingers, you may want to take a look at alternative, considerably bigger (or even full-screen ones) on-screen keyboards to allow for finger-based, stylus-less input. I've, in this regard, tested Spb's Full Screen Keyboard. It turned out to be working wonderfully with all browsers, the only exception being Opera Mobile 9.51b2, which always switched back to the standard keyboard on my iPAQ 210. Fortunately, I haven't run into the same problem with version b15233 any more.
2.4 Misc
This category, as you may have guessed, lists all the miscellaneous tests I didn't want to put in other categories.
Copy / paste: iPhone's Safari is heavily lacking copy/paste capabilities. In this regard, most WinMo web browsers are clearly better. Unfortunately, two (SkyFire and Opera Mini) of the three most recommended apps fail at this: they don't support copy/paste at all. (With Opera Mini, of course, you can still save the current page and, then, find and copy the given text from a simple text viewer like Total Commander.) As usual, with the other browsers, I've explained how you can switch to the text selection mode, as the default "screen dragging" mode, in general, needs to be disabled first.
Other goodies: I've listed some additional features I didn't want to create a separate row for: finding text in the current document (Iris, Opera Mini & Mobile, NetFront), Opera Link support etc. Unfortunately, SkyFire doesn't support finding in page - the only goodie it supports is image saving (also available with all the other browsers). Note that I haven’t listed all features of Opera Mobile: in addition to what the chart contains, it also supports sending image/links via MMS, SMS and E-mail. It even has a download manager that can even pause/resume a download – as has also been explained in my two-year-old article on downloading with Windows Mobile Web browsers.
DPReview top left menus: DPReview.com has a menu in the top left area none of the WinMo browsers can invoke subcategores of - unlike Safari. (An exception is Opera Mobile if you navigate over the main menu items with the D-pad - then, they don't get selected; still, their submenus are displayed, where you can already select anything. This means Touch HD users will need to use the custom onscreen keyboard displaying a virtual D-pad to fix this problem - not the cleanest solution...)
Page saving: the two Operas, Iris, NetFront and PIE, thanks to Spb Pocket Plus, are capable of saving the current page into the local file system. Unfortunately, the pretty barebone (but, still, excellent) Safari doesn't - neither does IEM6 (not that I'd recommend it to anyone) or SkyFire.
CPU usage: I've also benchmarked the CPU (and, consequently, the battery) usage of the tested apps (except for that of iPhone, as I don't know of anything like Windows Mobile's acbTaskMan for the iPhone. I may need to write it myself? After all, Unix does support getting the CPU usage of a given process.) NetFront has turned out to be buggy if and only if it's in the background. SkyFire has a continuous CPU usage: 40% while not doing anything (on the 624 MHz iPAQ 210). This may be quite much a stumbling block for many requiring as good a battery life as possible.
Dynamic zoom, only zooming into a given column: here, I elaborated on whether the browser supports the dynamic two-tap zooming in/out pioneered by Safari. The three most recommended titles work just great in this respect. Unfortunately, IEM6 has nothing comparable.
Clicks vs zooming: here, I explained how easy it is to click / activate links. With some browsers (for example, Iris), it's a bit harder to do this on most Windows Mobile phones, unlike you're using the D-pad and the action button to do this. Sometimes, you need to re-tap the same link some three or four times in order to activate it. This isn't an issue on the iPhone, where links do get activated at once.
Makes use of VGA?: as you can see, SkyFire will always use the 320*240 (QVGA) resolution to converse bandwidth, reduce the load on their servers and speed up screen rendering. This, unfortunately, results in a not-that-spectacular rendering quality on VGA screens. Opera Mobile's current Omnia b15233 rip, having come from a QVGA device, is VGA-unaware and, therefore, displays images (and, via Flash Lite 3.1, compatible videos) pixel-doubled, resulting in low-resolution images.
Quick(!) navigation to beginning of page: in cases, it might be very important to be able to navigate to the beginning of the page without having to waste some 10-20-30 seconds to continuously scroll everything up like mad. In this case, I've explained whether the browsers have a way of quickly doing this. As most current WinMo browsers (except for PIE, IEM6 and the non-native Opera Mini) no longer have a verticalscrollbar, this, in cases, may turn out to be very tedious. Of course, you can still avoid having to scroll all the way up by just reloading the page.

…end of page: unfortunately, getting to the bottom of a page can be even more tricky if a browser doesn't have a draggable scrollbar or hardware button / key shortcuts as simple page reloading won't help in this case. This can be a real pain in the butt if you want to quickly visit discussion threads where the (new) posts you'd like to see are at the bottom of the page.
A quick note: while the iPhone Safari supports quickly going to the top of the page, there's no support of doing the opposite, unfortunately.
Multitab/page: here, I explained whether the browser supports opening more than one tabs (windows) and, if it does, whether you can force the current link to be opened in that tab. The latter is really missing from the iPhone Safari. The fact that Safari always reloads the previous page when you tap the Back icon makes things even worse. Fortunately, it's still the fastest browser to download and render pages, even when compared to Pocket PC's that have an 1.5 times faster CPU, but still...
As you can see, of the WM web browsers that do support mutitabs (unfortunately, SkyFire isn't one of them; nevertheless, it's also very fast to reload previous pages as it just sends over the image of the current viewport to the phone, not that of the entire page), Opera Mobile lets the user to select whether the link should be opened in a new tab. Note that, by default, Opera Mobile only allows for 3 tabs; this, fortunately, can really easily be raised. Opera Mini should be also mentioned: it automatically opens the link in a new tab and only after opening 30 links (new tabs) does it start closing the previous ones.
Making use of memory : especially on memory-restricted devices (for example, most Windows Mobile devices only having 64Mbytes of RAM and running WM5 or later) and with browsers supporting multitabs can the memory consumption be of high importance.
Fortunately, the best (and most recommended) browsers (the two Operas and SkyFire) all have pretty low memory requirements, even with (with the first two) tons of tabs (web pages) open. Not so with Safari: in addition to it always reloading pages when you press Back, if you load a page in another tab, the Web page on the old one will be reloaded except when the page you loaded in the new tab was a small one.
Stability: as you may have heard, Safari's stability isn't the best: it often crashes, particularly upon loading large pages (for example, the comments at the old [before the recent switch] iPhone Dev-Team Blog). Yes, this is indeed the case, even with the latest, 2.2 firmware. Fortunately, it remembers (and quickly and automatically reloads after restarting it) the last page you were on - or the one before, so, this issue isn't that bad.
In general, I've found the stability of all the tested WinMo browsers significantly better than that of the Safari. Another thumbs up for using Windows Mobile for Web browsing. (Now, I can only hope there were WinMo phones with capacitive touchscreens not requiring any kind of physical force when scrolling or doing stuff!)
Flash support?: as has also been explained in my earlier articles (particularly the one on the Flash Lite 3.1 hack and in my Flash bible), you need Flash or Flash Lite support to play back (most) Web videos, play games etc. Safari, again, is really bad at this: all it offers is playing back most YouTube videos but doesn't support Google Video (and the other, less relevant ones like blip.tv and PornoTube) at all. (Note that not even its YouTube support is as full as that of Flash Lite 3.1. For example, THIS video can't be played back in Safari. Furthermore, it doesn't play back stereo videos in stereo like THIS either, which is played back without problems by Flash Lite 3.1).
As you can clearly see, the current, hacked Flash Lite 3.1 is only compatible with the latest (b15233) Opera Mobile version (but not the official 9.51b2) - and not on all devices. (It worked OK on my HTC Wizard and HP iPAQ 210 but not my HTC Universal with Tomal 8.5.) SkyFire supports even the latest, desktop Flash (as it's running on the central server) and PIE only supports the old and pretty much useless, full Adobe 6/7 plug-ins (and the even more useless Flash Lite 2). NetFront, unfortunately, isn't a tad better either because of its sub-par Flash engine, which is even worse than the native Pocket PC Adobe 7 support.
Full screen?: finally, I elaborate on whether the browsers can use the entire (full) screen estate. Most of them can; the two exceptions being Iris (which will always display the bottom bar) and iPhone's Safari.</p>
3. Verdict – will I switch back to WinMo from iPhone Safari?
As has already been mentioned, the three most recommended Windows Mobile browsers (Opera Mobile, Mini and SkyFire), generally, are more featureful, stable (no crashes) and compatible (see for example the PPCT or the ThinkPads test cases) than iPhone Safari. The latter, however, is definitely faster at both loading and scrolling pages than any of these browsers (unless you want to do some special kind of scrolling; for example, going straight to the end of a page, which is very easy in Opera Mini.) If you can live with WinMo browsers loading your pages slower, you may want to prefer them to the iPhone.
This was strictly about the software part. As far as the hardware is concerned (and my switching back to WinMo to browse the Web), the advantage of the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone pretty much negates the software superiority of particularly Opera Mobile. It’s just far easier to scroll and control the iPhone Safari than any of the browsers on any(!) of my Pocket PC’s and Pocket PC phones. (I’ve, in this regard, tested the following Pocket PC’s with Opera Mobile 9.5: Dell Axim x51v, HTC Wizard and HP iPAQ hx4700 (all three with a high-quality, expensive [Brando] screen protector) and HP iPAQ 210 and the HTC Universal (both without a screen protector) so that I can have a picture of how each of these models, with varying force needed to make screen taps / drags registered, fare. (Yes, I did test at least Opera Mobile 9.5 on five different WinMo models and the rest of the browsers on at least one [mostly the iPAQ 210, except for IEM6, which, currently, is only available in flashable ROM images and not as freey installable CAB files] of them) It was painfully harder to scroll around a page on all(!) of them. While I have a screen protector on my iPhone 3G as well, even with it, it’s way easier to scroll around. In this regard, the Safari (that is, browsing the Web on the iPhone and not any of the current WinMo models) is simply unbeatable. (Note that I use the screen protectors that come with the Switcheasy Rebel cases; according to THIS thread, they’re Pure Reflects. They make screen taps just a little bit harder to register and make the surface a bit less slippery, meaning it’s a little bit harder to drag the screen with the screen protector on. Nevertheless, the touchscreen interface still remains orders of magnitude easier to use than any of resistive WinMo models I’ve ever tested or had.)
All in all, while I’d prefer using Opera Mobile on Windows Mobile because it’s more powerful and stable, the fact that scrolling around pages is way harder than on the iPhone, I’ll stick with the latter. I’m afraid I’ll only change my mind if and when Windows Mobile hardware manufacturers, at last, come up with real capacitive screens, as easy-to-use (even through screen protectors) than those of iPhones. Hope the Microsoft folks are listening…
If you "only" have a Windows Mobile device and, consequently, must select from the browsers available for the platform (and can't go for the iPhone instead), selecting the right one should be based on your personal preferences. In my opinion, Opera Mobile (particularly when backed up with Flash Lite 3.1) is the best. However, if you absolutely must have a browser that either supports Opera Link (Opera Mobile, currently, doesn’t) or have the lowest available data usage figures, go with Opera Mini. It’s not as spectacular as its big brother (there’s, for example, no copy/paste or “inertia” support) but still does what it’s meant to – and it’s free.
SkyFire is, on the other hand, a perfect choice if you have a QVGA device (or a VGA one, but the QVGA-resolution text / image rendering isn’t a problem), have an unlimited Internet subscription (its data usage is far higher than that of even Opera Mobile, let alone Opera Mini) and the much higher CPU usage (and, consequently, battery consumption) aren't an issue.

Very nice write up. Thanks a lot for all your hard work. This will make choosing a browser easier for many in the community.
I personally have used a combo of Opera Mobile and Mini and found that between the two I found most of my needs could be met.
Thanks again!

Thank you very much for these in-depth explanations.

UPDATE (01/05/2009 3:33 AM CET): I’ve cleaned up the article a little; for example, added a Verdict section. I've also very thoroughly explained the evaluation of the tested browsers largely reflects on how they're able to render text with large(r) characters, NOT the overall rendering fidelity / quality. After all, one of the main aims of this article is explaining which of these browsers can be used when you simply can't use small characters on a VGA screen because you're either moving, the screen physically is just too small (2.8...3") or you have bad eyesight. I’ve also added some explanation of why the current, “hacked” IEM6 version (hopefully) isn’t a representative of the final one Microsoft will release some day. (They have a lot of time bugfixing it and they too surely realize IEM6 is plain useless in many usage scenarios like the one requiring large(r) characters.)
There’s a frontpage of the article at WM Power User.

UPDATE (01/05/2009 4:26 AM CET) : MobilitySite frontpage

1. MSMobiles frontpage at http://msmobiles.com/news.php/7944.html
2. The MS folks have just published a (not very deep, but still worth checking out) roundup at http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile...urvey-of-web-browsers-for-windows-mobile.aspx

Bolt Browser
In the family of the server-optimized/rendered browser like Opera Mini or Skyfire, there is a promising newbie: the J2ME-based Bolt Browser by Bitstream. Here is a preview of that (private beta) browser.

gaelynx said:
In the family of the server-optimized/rendered browser like Opera Mini or Skyfire, there is a promising newbie: the J2ME-based Bolt Browser by Bitstream. Here is a preview of that (private beta) browser.
Click to expand...
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Promising, but even scrolling is very slow (so far, tested on my Blackberry 8800). Mobile View also involves a lot of positioning at first, which is pretty annoying as, as has already been stated, scrolling itself is very slow.
Opera Mini is WAY faster (at scrolling around, including scrolling down)- at least on my BB. That is, it still needs a lot of work. For the time being, I'd prefer Opera Mini.

You have not mentioned UCWEB6 which is my browser of choice.

i currently have Opera. as soon as Fennec releases its public beta for there browser im switching (mozilla mobile)

And what about compatibility?
Nice job with this review.
However, I did come to your post looking for a choice for flash and frames and metaframes web pages, something that makes a lot of web-based services simply UNAVAILABLE in the current PDA browsers.
Something so "simple" as checking my terra web mail, is plain impossible either in the latest Opera or IE6 browsers. Not to mention many banking services.
Any suggestion on that particular limitation?
Regards.
Edit: Found some workaround in IE6 to set the browser to identify itself as a Desktop browser instead of PDA browser.
Also some frame rendering seems to work only every other time. Hyperlinks don't always show up or work properly.
And forget about finger browsing, of course. :-(

Wow, this is the kind of USABILITY-driven stuff I love!
Fantastic framing of the issue, description of the process, and clear identification of pros and cons. This thread rates a 10 out of 10 in terms of its focus on what is now driving touchscreen phones -- web browsing as though on a laptop.
This was strictly about the software part. As far as the hardware is concerned (and my switching back to WinMo to browse the Web), the advantage of the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone pretty much negates the software superiority of particularly Opera Mobile. It’s just far easier to scroll and control the iPhone Safari than any of the browsers on any(!) of my Pocket PC’s and Pocket PC phones.... While I have a screen protector on my iPhone 3G as well, even with it, it’s way easier to scroll around. In this regard, the Safari (that is, browsing the Web on the iPhone and not any of the current WinMo models) is simply unbeatable. ..The touchscreen interface still remains orders of magnitude easier to use than any of resistive WinMo models I’ve ever tested or had.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fantastic!

Tried Fennec, its really slow on my HTC Touch Diamond

quicksite said:
Fantastic framing of the issue, description of the process, and clear identification of pros and cons. This thread rates a 10 out of 10 in terms of its focus on what is now driving touchscreen phones -- web browsing as though on a laptop.
Fantastic!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks

kosmos5457 said:
Tried Fennec, its really slow on my HTC Touch Diamond
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DOn't bother with Fennec. Remember the first alphas of Minimo? They were equally bad and buggy. Wait for half a year for a usable version to come out; in the meantime, use Opera Mini, Mobile, SkyFire or Bolt. (I'll review the latter very soon.)