Using your cell phone to surf the internet
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Posted On :
Jun-10-2009
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Article Word Count :
523
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Most new mobile phones can access the internet. However, the quality of your browsing experience is dependent on a number of factors, the most crucial of these being the connection speed that your phone is capable of.
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Most new mobile phones can access the internet. However, the quality of your browsing experience is dependent on a number of factors, the most crucial of these being the connection speed that your phone is capable of. There are four main types of web connection now available to mobile phone users: GPRS, EDGE, 3G, and HDSPA.
GPRS is the slowest of them all, and is a hangover from the 2G phone technology of the 90s. Although it can theoretically reach maximum data rates of 128kbps, which is roughly equivalent to dial up speeds, in practice the average rate is closer to 30 or 40 kbps, which is next to useless for all but the most basic, text only web services. EDGE was once the fastest 2G connection available, and could theoretically achieve data rates which put it in the 3G category, but the arrival of the 3G standard a year after its introduction ensured that virtually no mobiles were ever made that use this protocol.
The most common type of connection nowadays, however, is 3G(third generation), which is often compared to a broadband connection, although it is only three times faster than GPRS and considerably slower than the 1mbps achieved by most standard broadband connections.
The newest kid on the block is HDSPA, a souped-up version of the 3G standard, which claims a theoretical maximum data rate of 14.4Mbps, with the emphasis on the theoretical. In practice, however, they are only a little bit faster than a standard 3G connection, and are often less reliable, although this is set to improve in the years to come as more bandwidth becomes available to 3G networks.
If you are disappointed by the quality of internet access that you can achieve through the mobile networks, you may be heartened to learn that some newer mobile phones are also able to connect to the internet via the proven Wi-Fi transfer protocol.
The one drawback with Wi-Fi is that it is not available everywhere, and you are often required to buy a hot beverage or join a library in order to use it on the providers premises.
Although some websites, such as MySpace and eBay, have special editions of their websites for use with mobile phones, most standard websites have been designed for viewing on a computer monitor, making them unsuitable for use on the small screens used by mobile phones.
Some of the newer smart-phones, for example the T Mobile G1 and the Nokia N series, feature larger screens and navigating tools such as tracker balls and touch sensitive screens, that solve many of the problems of navigating the internet on mobile phones.
Very few mobile phones, however, are able to deal effectively with multiple windows, and some popular sites, such as Youtube, cannot be viewed on mobile phones at all.
In the future, there is no doubt that accessing the internet on mobile phones will be an easy and enjoyable thing to do, but at present, there are still a few too many kinks to be ironed out for it to become a popular mass activity.
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Using your cell phone to surf the internet _1061.aspx
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Author Resource :
Discover the latest Vodafone mobiles and services including mobile broadband that lets you connect to the Internet whenever you want.
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Keywords :
mobile, sim only,
Category :
Communications
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Mobile Phones
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