Time to go mobile?

With internet speeds ever increasing, mobile phone technology ever changing and people becoming more used to what they want when they want, the time to go mobile is finally upon us.

About 6 years ago I developed some WAP sites for the Battlemail gaming platform on the Siemens mobile phones. It was quite a coup at the time, we signed a deal with siemens and it was a buzz to be able to walk into a mobile phone shop and see something we’d actually worked on in the shops.

WAP though was not the perfect solution. This was before we had the full colour screens we have today, and well before having the actual internet on our phones was too imaginable.

Now though with browser applications such as Opera Mini etc there’s no need to develop in a different technology just to see your site on a phone. It’s all there in glorious colour at faster speeds than some people still get at home!!

I have heard the arguments that the internet on mobile phones will never really take off because the screens are too small etc. To those people I’ll say one thing “Wake up!!!” those problems are already being solved with phone browsers showing whole pages and allowing to zoom in to just the pieces of information you are interested in.

The good thing about these great little browsers is this, you probably don’t need to redevelop because they can read your existing site.

True mobile sites are in fact mini versions of our sites formatted for viewing through mobile phones and devices. all in all it’s just another nice big arena for us to show off our wares and we’ll ignore it at our own peril.