Nokia shows off N900's sweet web browsing skills on video
[Via HotHardware, thanks dafrabbit]
firefox posts

We can't be certain, but we're fairly sure we just heard the remnants of a million celebratory shouts from Symbian users the world over. Mobile Firefox, the promising web browser that just went alpha a few months back, is reportedly well on its way to S60 land. According to Mozilla's Christian Sejersen, the team feels that "in order for Mozilla to be relevant in the smartphone space, it needs to have a presence on the Symbian platform." Better still, the crew has already sparked up conversation with Symbian engineers, and early word has it that an initial release could be but months away. It's cool, you have every right to be thoroughly stoked.

Initial feedback seems to be overwhelmingly negative, but have hope -- Nokia's Beta Labs is all about getting dirty, cobbled-together implementations of cool ideas out into the public's hands before a final release, so we suppose we've got to keep that in perspective here. Anyway, PC Phone is a brand new joint from Nokia that plugs into Firefox on your desktop PC (we're hearing Internet Explorer will soon be supported, too) and allows you to access your compatible phone's phone, messaging, and address book functions remotely. It seems that it works about as well as an early-build Sidekick Slide at the moment, though, with rampant errors and incompatibilities holding it back from actually serving any useful function; let's hope the good folks over at Beta Labs get 'er patched up right quick, because frankly, we're really tired of taking our hands off the keyboard when we need to dial a number.
First, the good news: Mozilla has officially announces plans to "rock" the mobile web. Now, the bad: the true, legitimate Mobile Firefox (as opposed to the hackery that is Minimo) won't come until after Firefox 3 is released. Mozilla's Mike Schroepfer has detailed where the organization's headed with its mobile initiatives in a blog post this week, noting that Mozilla 2 will see mobile devices be promoted to tier 1 -- a move that means architectural decisions about the platform will be made specifically with handsets in mind. Although he says Minimo provided tons of valuable info on how Mozilla can be adapted to the small screen, it's being basically abandoned in favor of the true Mobile Firefox, a browser that'll take advantage of the heavyweight processors and storage afforded by modern phones. Opera Mini, get ready (finally) for some serious competition.







