Web browser - what could beat iPhone's Safari?

[Chris Davies]

Buried in the Android announcement was the fact that they'll be using the WebKit browser - the same one that's at the heart of Safari on the iPhone and that of Nokia's S60 OS. It got me thinking, what could Google do to improve on the internet experience?

Apple's clever pinch'n'spread for zooming is great, but it's dependent on specific hardware - not every gPhone is going to have a touchscreen, I imagine, so what are the killer features of the browser that can be pretty much universal?

Chris

[ewdi]

Google sure have been enjoying great run in the web world, and it continues due to the talent on google's payroll. there are many GPL linux stack that already support phone's touch screen, but i agree with you, not all android linux powered phone will have touch screen.

The selling point for this phone lineup is open platform, not tying the main framework into any vendor. However, i really hope we can know that for sure because as many of you know, in open source world, FORKING happens and branch out to redundant effort.

[joshtheitguy]

Simple, any browser could beat anything apple puts out. AOL 1.0 comes to mind.

[Webby]

Opera Browser

[ihavemilk]

I agree with you, that not every future gPhone is going to have a touchscreen. I'm sure with the non-touchscreen phones all of the browser feature will still be available by use of either a trackball, menu features or directional keys. As with many of the non-touchscreen phones now. ( I know.. Duh!) I don't see why it wouldn't or couldn't be universal.

[mikef1182]

I think the G1's browser does a great job vs mobile safari. First off the android browser auto resizes words in a paragraph when you zoom in and out, making it easier to read with less scrolling. With safari you have to scroll left and right to read long paragraphs. Second if you have ever used Safari, you know it looks great, but crashes a heck of a lot. I have both phones (iPhone 3G and G1) and use my G1 more for web browsing latley because if it's great rendering and its stability. If they could impliment a double tap to zoom, than the G1's browser would hands down be the best.

[pllb]

This may in fact be more of a hardware thing. I've noticed a lag in browsing compared to the iPhone and iPhone does in fact have faster processor than the g1. I imagine new handsets next year will be much better.