Using Mobile Phones To Surf The Web

By Author: Bonny Kominek
Total Articles: 50
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Advances in communication technology now means that we can do far more than just make calls from our mobile phones. Internet connectivity now comes as standard on almost all new mobile phones, although the level of quality that you experience when online using your phone can be variable depending on several factors.

Most new mobiles now have some kind of mobile internet connection, and there are several methods to choose from. GPRS, that is General Packet Radio Service, can reach a top speed of 128 kilobytes per second, making it the least speedy connection on the market at the moment.

EDGE, which stands for Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, is the second slowest type of mobile internet connection, with a maximum speed of 236kbs, which will allow you to transfer a 3MB file in under two minutes in optimal conditions.

You will most likely have heard of Third Generation mobile internet connections, more commonly known as 3G. These are reasonably fast connections at around a maximum data transfer rate of 384 kilobytes per second.

The more you are willing to pay for your mobile phone, the more ...
... likely it is to come equipped with an HSDPA connection, that stands for High Speed Downlink Packet Access. It allows you to connect to the web at about the speed of standard home broadband, with data transfer rates of as high as 14.4 megabytes per second.

Somewhat surprisingly, the speediest method of connecting to the internet on your mobile also happens to be the cheapest option available - connecting via WiFi. Not many phones have this capability at the moment but more and more WiFi capable mobile phones are being released all the time.

As mobile phones tend to have much smaller screens than computers, not all websites will display properly on a mobile phone. However, there are dedicated apps available for some phones to allow you access popular sites such as Facebook and YouTube in a mobile friendly format.

Your mobile phone design can have a significant bearing on the enjoyment of your use of mobile internet, with the best phones using intuitive user controls such as trackballs, joysticks or touch screen displays for ease of browsing and scrolling through pages on the web. Bonny Kominek was inspired to write this article by Vodafone UK who have some new mobile phones available.