N95 bests iPhone in mobile browsing stats by 6 to 1?

I'm most amazed by the PSP being at the top there!

It doesn't even have a keypad, so just entering a website address is a bit painful.

Incidentally, I just looked at my own sites' stats and the S60 browser seems to be listed as "Safari / SymbianOS". I wonder how many people have assumed that all their Safari traffic is Macs and iPhones.

What would be interesting and I believe would tell a very different story is usage of the BBC's web site.

I think that PC Pro readers are more likely to be people that got the N95 early because what excites them is long feature lists and now find themselves locked into 12 or 18 month contracts. They use the N95 because they have to, not because they have a great experience using it.

Stats from the BBC will, I think, be quite different. They'll show a huge number of regular iPhone users using their site that would only have received a bad experience using mobile browsers in the past.

What's important is mainstream usage of mobile browsers, not geek niche usage.

I also note that my website stats show Nokia S60 access as Safari. Not Safari/S60, just Safari. It's AWStats.

As for being locked in to 12 or 18 months, remember non iPhones are available on far cheaper contracts and PAYG.

The other factor here for mobile web access is that iPhone is restricted to WiFi, doesn't have 3G so isn't as truly mobile as other devices, for instance a normal phone sold on a network with an inclusive data plan wil browse websites anywhere practically as fast as WiFi. An iPhone restricted to a poor EDGE infrastructure is actually a pretty awful browsing experience I can vouch. In all the places I have Wi-Fi I have 17 Inch screens and qwerty.

As for geek phones, the two handed operation of a touchscreen in public is, frankly, embarassing. iPhone pretty geeky it has to be said.

Anyone want to buy out my 02 contract... no. thought not. Why would you?

"regular iPhone users"?

I'm pretty sure the majority of the UK excluding the geeks would think twice before spending �250 on a phone and being locked into an 18 month contract.

The only "regular" iPhone users are probably the posers or those with too much money to spend.

I think the stats from one obscure website don't actually constitute a statistically valid sample.

If it was BBC.com I might be more impressed.

Unregistered wrote:

As for geek phones, the two handed operation of a touchscreen in public is, frankly, embarassing. iPhone pretty geeky it has to be said.

Anyone want to buy out my 02 contract... no. thought not. Why would you?

LOL, blackberry should be quite embarrassing as well then, besides who cares what people think, BBC iPlayer is launching for iPhone, and believe or not it does offers great user experience.

as for the 02 contract, 600min/500txt/unlimited internet and voicemail - 35 quid, why not, it is great tariff, T-Mobile Flext is not cheaper and has limitations.

As for stats, why would i go to PC Pro? BBC - yes, Facebook - yes, Digg- Yes, Google Reader & Gmail, Yahoo - yes, engadget - yes.
First to be surprised with iPhone browsing stats was Google, i do trust them.

Unregistered wrote:"regular iPhone users"?

I'm pretty sure the majority of the UK excluding the geeks would think twice before spending �250 on a phone and being locked into an 18 month contract.

The only "regular" iPhone users are probably the posers or those with too much money to spend.

that's very true, but why geeks? are people who bought Nokia 8800 with less features geeks?

Don't forget you are buying an iPod + Phone, not a phone! so, if you deduce iPod touch of 199 pounds, means you pay 50 pounds for the phone.

I am not defending, but i just don't seem why people think of it as a phone only, that's incorrect way of comparing. Now of course you will start comparing it to the N95 which doesn't offer big display and great battery life, and it's music player usability is questionable, not taking touch screen capability - but that would be too geeky.

I know it is hard to take a change, but don't think of iPhone as a phone, think of it as iPod Touch + phone capabilities.

What's important is mainstream usage of mobile browsers, not geek niche usage.

If we're talking about truly mainstream usage of mobile browsers, then it's the simple XHTML browsers that will dominate all statistics because they're built into practically all phones, even the cheapest models. The trouble is that most websites don't have a version which can be rendered on an XHTML browser (though there are exceptions, the BBC for example has a very very extensive mobile-friendly version of its site).

The iPhone, and indeed the N95, are very expensive devices indeed, only a tiny percentage of people on the planet will ever own one. Cheap phones by contrast have sold something like 2 billion units so far, which covers one in three people in the world.

Any phone browser revolution will only happen when advanced browsers are available in the kind of phone most people use, which means phones that cost about 100 euros or less. I'd bet that we will first reach a 100 euro smartphone with S60 models, as Apple has never shown an interest in the cheap end of any market, their devices are always mid to high end.

iPhone will fade into its well-deserved irrelevance in about two years

'as for the 02 contract, 600min/500txt/unlimited internet and voicemail - 35 quid, why not, it is great tariff, T-Mobile Flext is not cheaper and has limitations.'

Are you joking? This is a network with a limited EDGE for a iPhone that can uses EDGE? and has no 3G? How can they justify that with huge initial fee to take the phone away? There are some mugs in this country.

'LOL, blackberry should be quite embarrassing as well then'

Agreed.

"May 2008 issue of PCPro"
-Hey Steve, you got a time machine? I think you had wanted to write as March.

Nope. May. Magazines have silly date stamps in the UK these days 8-(

"Don't forget you are buying an iPod + Phone, not a phone! so, if you deduce iPod touch of 199 pounds, means you pay 50 pounds for the phone."

Don't be silly. All but the most pathetic, basic phones are mp3 players too. If you take 200 off the price of the iPhone, you have to take the same of the other devices too.

Unregistered wrote:'as for the 02 contract, 600min/500txt/unlimited internet and voicemail - 35 quid, why not, it is great tariff, T-Mobile Flext is not cheaper and has limitations.'

Are you joking? This is a network with a limited EDGE for a iPhone that can uses EDGE? and has no 3G? How can they justify that with huge initial fee to take the phone away? There are some mugs in this country.

what do you need 3G for? correct me if i am wrong but Blackberries are not 3G and people happy to use that, besides if you are talking about 3G without HSDPA (which is really 3.5G) the speed is the same as EDGE.

as for mugs, they don't care what to mug as long as they can do it.

Unregistered wrote:"Don't forget you are buying an iPod + Phone, not a phone! so, if you deduce iPod touch of 199 pounds, means you pay 50 pounds for the phone."

Don't be silly. All but the most pathetic, basic phones are mp3 players too. If you take 200 off the price of the iPhone, you have to take the same of the other devices too.

well you know many people say that, explain me how come iPod became so popular when there were plenty of alternatives with much better functions and cheaper?

I again i am just taking a different look at things, things not black and white.

Maczealot wrote:iPhone will fade into its well-deserved irrelevance in about two years

i have been developing Symbian since 2004 and still is on everyday basis, and with the tools Apple released to support iPhone development, i would suggest Symbian to really start thinking of improving theirs.

Anyway, no more comments from me on this thread as it is not relevant to the actual subject.

I use both an iPhone and a n95. I've never owned a apple product before hand, and have had everything from psion 3 to the p1. The best mobile web experience has got to be the iPhone. If u are in edge it is very usable, and the dataplan gives ulu unlimited cloud usage.
The moment I leave my n95 3g on the battery barely lasts a day, so it is made useless unless u keep switching between 3g and GPRS.
Saying that if you take 200 off the price of an iPhone u have to do the same for all mp3 equipped phones is rudiculus as in tests every where iPods always come out on top as mp3 players. And that's what you getting.

Here in Italy the iPhone is not distributed yet, we have only the iPod touch. In Google Analytics statistics for my Google gadgets (99% visits from Italy), there is a 7:1 ratio between "Symbian OS" and "iPod" operating systems.

May 2008?

the stats only apply to people browsing to the PCPro website...doh...hardly a place where Phone users are going to visit.

I have a prepay orange and n95 8gb free.All browser function its great to use and some 80% of time is for internet.3,50 eu for 3 months is unlimited.

"doh...hardly a place where Phone users are going to visit" - oh, exactly. Which is why I was just trying to point out that you can pick stats to support almost anything if you try hard enough.

Across the world, I'd bet that there's far more data bandwidth being used by S60 smartphones, all 100 million of them, than all iPhones, even with their flat rate plan.... 8-)

But the differences in markets, the differences in data tariffs, make this sort of thing incredibly hard to compare meaningfully.

ramzez wrote:that's very true, but why geeks? are people who bought Nokia 8800 with less features geeks?

Don't forget you are buying an iPod + Phone, not a phone! so, if you deduce iPod touch of 199 pounds, means you pay 50 pounds for the phone.

I am not defending, but i just don't seem why people think of it as a phone only, that's incorrect way of comparing. Now of course you will start comparing it to the N95 which doesn't offer big display and great battery life, and it's music player usability is questionable, not taking touch screen capability - but that would be too geeky.

I know it is hard to take a change, but don't think of iPhone as a phone, think of it as iPod Touch + phone capabilities.

Please don't try to justify the pricing of the iPhone. There is no justification for it at-all apart from the fact that good old Jobsy thinks we're as easily fooled as our friends in the US and it seems you're one of the people who has fallen for his mastery in the art of scamming.

ramzez wrote:

Don't forget you are buying an iPod + Phone, not a phone! so, if you deduce iPod touch of 199 pounds, means you pay 50 pounds for the phone.

In that case, lets take off xx amount for a GPS device, xx amount for a wireless device, xx amount for a 5mp camera....

Well I am surprised about this list. I have a N95 and I do a great deal of mobile browsing during my daily commute to work everyday. It works fine and has 3.5 but after using an iPhone over wi-fi I think it is absolutely mandatory for Nokia to follow through the web experience that you can have with an iPhone, and guess what for that I hate the N96!. Of course I haven't bought and will never buy a mobile that does not support 3g or higher so iPhone has to improve there too. Please nokia make a 3G N810 I implore you!!!

'what do you need 3G for? correct me if i am wrong but Blackberries are not 3G and people happy to use that, besides if you are talking about 3G without HSDPA (which is really 3.5G) the speed is the same as EDGE'

3G is a loose term that people use for the service available to modern phones with HSDPA, much faster than EDGE. Once I get to a place where HSDPA isn't availabe the browse performance becomes so poor that I don't bother anymore. This is the iPhone experience every where that there is no WiFi.

1. It's pretty strange they refer to Windows Mobile devices as "iPAQ HX series". (I assume they've mistaken for "iPAQ HX series" for Windows mobile in general - it's pretty much impossible the iPAQ hx models, which are in no way the dominant Pocket PC's nowadays, are around the top of the list, while much more popular models like the Kaiser are nowhere to be seen.)

2. Did they examine the original devices when receiving Opera Mini requests? Opera Mini, now, also passes the original OS in its extended (X-) HTTP request headers.

Unregistered wrote:'what do you need 3G for? correct me if i am wrong but Blackberries are not 3G and people happy to use that, besides if you are talking about 3G without HSDPA (which is really 3.5G) the speed is the same as EDGE'

3G is a loose term that people use for the service available to modern phones with HSDPA, much faster than EDGE. Once I get to a place where HSDPA isn't availabe the browse performance becomes so poor that I don't bother anymore. This is the iPhone experience every where that there is no WiFi.

well, if you use Opera Mini, the difference between pre-3G and 3+G will be MUCH smaller than with regular browsers like Opera Web.

For example, much as the N95 has a really great Web browser, I still prefer using Opera Mini on it. Just like with my Blackberry 8800.