Last night a few old friends of mine came over. They don’t have any IT background and still see mobile internet as something suspicious. Before too long, our conversation turned to the economy. Someone mentioned seeing a homeless person charging an iPhone 3G out in the cold, using an exposed power plug outside a convenience store. This was received with a mix of surprise and outrage. iPhones and mobile data are expensive, aren’t they? How (and why?) does a homeless person afford the very latest of the luxurious Apple experiences?

You, my reader, are probably quite mobile-savvy, so I won’t bother re-starting the argument of how great it is to have an all-in-one 3G mobile terminal. The mobile internet is becoming an economically superior use case in North America, as opposed to being a vision shared by technologists. For the homeless man, this is a killer deal - his life should get a lot easier. He now knows the weather forecast, tracks good deals (and jobs) on Craigslist, feels like a part of the community by being able to follow any event of interest. Here in Vancouver we have a serious homelessness issue and a recent community project by Fearless City looked into giving second-hand mobiles to some of the street dwellers. Assuming the service for the donated mobiles is affordable, this could make a real difference. A fair pricing point for 3G service and a bundled device is the best all-around stimulus - and we’re finally seeing that in Canada.

@eighthree commented: “how about affording a place to live in / food ?”. While obviously basic human needs are what has to be fulfilled first, there comes a point when one has to pick the tools for their trade. Being homeless does not imply having no income whatsoever. It seems that mobile internet devices are going to make a lot of difference for everybody, not just us techies. Unless @jimpick sucks up all the 3G bandwidth =)

After the recent announcements concerning Pocket IE6 and Fennec (Mobile Firefox) it’s clear that WebKit just got some more competition in the mobile browser space. Not too long ago, Web Browsing was a Yes/No field in the phone spec. Today’s wars are fought around features (CSS3/JavaScript/AJAX/Flash) while tomorrow will probably put more emphasis on performance and power consumption.

In the desktop world, Acid Tests are one of more popular ways of measuring the completeness of the rendering engine. While most “real” browsers do just fine with the Acid 2, Acid 3 is still a work in progress. So, when every mobile browser claims to be bringing the “real” web to mobile, how do they actually perform with tests like these?

We did a quick comparison meant to save some time to those wondering about the same thing. Please note, however, that some mobile browsers have special “mobile” rendering modes that improve accessibility of websites and reduce download time. This wrecks havoc on tests like Acid that are focused on pixel-perfect rendering precision (more here). Don’t hold that against them - in the end the real-world browsing experience is what matters most.

In addition to iPhone, Android, Nokia S60 and BlackBerry Bold we picked some new featurephones (LG VU, Samsung Eternity), as well as several popular multi-platform mobile browsers (SkyFire, Opera Mobile, the pre-release Fennec and Opera Mini).

Here is the blueprint…

…and here are the results:

iPhone 3G (WebKit 525)

Android G1 (WebKit 525)

LG VU

Nokia S60 (WebKit 413)

Samsung Eternity

BlackBerry Bold

Opera Mini 4.2 (both Full and Mobile views)

Opera Mobile 8.65 - Mobile View

Opera Mobile 8.65 - Full View

SkyFire 0.85 - Mobile View aka SmartFit

* SkyFire 0.85 Full View and the pre-release Fennec would not render Acid 2.

So there you have it! WebKit really does well here. Apparently Opera 9 Mobile gets a perfect score - but it’s only on Windows Mobile at the moment and we didn’t have any WinMo devices to play with. We wish that the Nokia S60 browser tested had a more recent WebKit build - but there were no updates available for our N82 & N93. SkyFire had some glitches and Fennec did not play nice with Acid 2, but did amazingly well with Acid 3 (better than our desktop browsers!). 2009 will certainly raise the bar up a notch. Stay tuned and keep surfing.

Opera just posted their most recent stats about the users of the Opera Mini browser and the sites they visit. Strong growth worldwide is the name of the game and we couldn’t be happier! However, one thing is interesting - Motorola RAZR is not in Top 10 devices in the US. Instead it’s dominated by Nokia and Blackberry devices. The reason this stands out is the fact that AdMob Mobile Metrics put Motorola devices into the top position in terms of mobile ad impressions served in the US (at 25.2%, no less!). Both Opera and AdMob reports are dated November 2008.

Opera Mini is the best browsing experience possible on the lower end Motorola devices. It seems that in the US, there is a significant divide between the “pro” users of mobile Web services and those who just click the links delivered by a WAP push. AdMob serves the latter category, while Opera Mini caters to the expert audience. Also, it’s possible that the omnipresent RAZR comes crippled in terms of its ability to install third-party applications like the Opera Mini (can anyone comment?). It’ll be interesting to see the two categories merge as smartphone features migrate down to the mass market.

It’s good to start the new year with a new blog. This will be my online home for years to come. Welcome to igorfaletski.com!

Check out the recent discussion on entrepreneurship, passion and raising money. Good times and thanks for the opportunity!