Second quarter of 2012 represented three good months for planet broadband, particularly for the US which saw big gains in higher broadband speeds. In addition, Japan got faster and more countries are offering more broadband to more people. But there is some bad news as well. Read more »
Keeping the next Nexus phone under wraps is proving to be difficult: This week a Russian site shared details, photos and even an early review of the Nexus 4. Meanwhile, new markets will see Samsung’s Galaxy S III Mini and everyone can download Opera Mobile. Read more »
Opera Mobile for Android gets speedy — or should I say SPDY — with version 12.1 of the browser, now available for free in the Google Play store. The popular mobile browser also gains some web fraud detection features and wider support for HTML 5 standards Read more »
No mobile browser has passed through the first two hurdles in the Ringmark test, a tool created by Facebook that checks for a wide range of HTML5 support. That is, no mobile browser until now. The most recent beta of Dolphin Browser for Android just did. Read more »
Apple and Google still dominate the smartphone space, but look out for Microsoft, which finally has some muscle behind its mobile strategy. Meanwhile mobile-browser developers went head-to-head with native apps, and Facebook continued to buy mobile expertise via acquisition. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Yahoo launched its new Axis mobile browser for iOS devices and it’s surprisingly good. In fact, Yahoo’s peers could learn a thing or two from this fresh take on user interfaces: Axis is swipe-friendly and a fast way to get at search or other web information. Read more »
There’s quite a ruckus going on over ARM-powered Windows 8 tablets: Mozilla and Google are crying foul over third-party browser restrictions Microsoft has put in place in Windows 8. Here’s why this isn’t really a new problem and why it’s likely to get worse over time. Read more »
The Opera Mini 7 browser for Android is here, offering users a data savings of up to 90 percent. Mobile browsers that save on data sound good, but if the experience is poor, consumers won’t likely use them. Luckily, Opera Mini works well and saves data. Read more »
One of the most popular third-party web browsers for Android devices, Dolphin, gained support for cloud-based synchronization on Wednesday. The updated software syncs browsing preferences, bookmarks and even on-screen gestures over the web to other Android devices running Dolphin and the Webzine feature shows improved controls. Read more »
Opera released updated versions of its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers for Google Android devices on Tuesday. The new software includes a mobile broadband meter showing how much data has been used for browsing. Will device owners give up browsing preferences for less data usage? Read more »
Microsoft’s newest Windows Phone browser, coming soon via the Mango software update, shows improvements, but tabs aren’t part of the redesign. The small screen of a smartphone limits what controls can be in the browser, but we’ve seen some clever ways to make it work. Read more »
WebKit technology is what powers some of the top browsers (especially mobile) today. While Apple and Google are its most visible champions, the support for WebKit and ancillary technologies is coming from unlikely quarters such as Amazon and Boxee. Here’s its new BFF. Read more »
If recent news from Twitter, Pandora, Google and Amazon is any indication, it seems that a set of technologies collectively known as HTML5 are finally starting to gain a lot of momentum, and to me, that’s a good thing — especially for the mainstream users. Read more »
Twitter for Mac may have all the attention lately, but it pales in comparison with the new mobile web version of Twitter. The company recently released the new version that is is simply wonderful and a great showcase for the potential of HTML5 technologies. Read more »
Mozilla’s new Firefox Mobile 4 browser is available for Android and Maemo, boasting faster speeds, desktop synchronization and more, although support for Adobe Flash is missing. The mobile app could offset Mozilla’s falling desktop browser share, but chances are that most Android owners will stay stock. Read more »
Mozilla released the newest beta of Firefox for Android, and it’s a screamer. Benchmark tests show that Firefox’s JavaScript engine is more than twice as fast as Android’s native browser. Even the Motorola Xoom shows more speed with this new mobile version of Firefox. Read more »
Mozilla released an updated version of Fennec, its mobile browser for Nokia’s N900 and Google Android devices. Along with improved JavaScript performance, the web client includes Firefox Sync so users can seamlessly have access to bookmarks, passwords and open tabs between the desktop and smartphone. Read more »
Smartphone use for maps and navigation in the U.S. has nearly tripled in the past year as GPS radios are becoming standard fare in such devices. For the first time ever, more smartphone owners seeking navigation or maps use software as opposed to a browser. Read more »
The fragmentation that has long plagued the mobile industry gets worse by the day as new operating systems and app stores come to market. WebKit will emerge as an effective tool for developers as we move toward web-based apps, but won’t be the panacea that some ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile broadband consumption shows no signs of slowing, but the way people access the mobile web could be changing. As more smartphone titles appear, use of mobile browsers could actually decrease as applications offer more useful bite-sized chunks of the web. Read more »
