How can anyone see a website on a cellphone?

How can anyone see a website on a cellphone?

Ok, as I age my eyes are not as good as they used to be, but even with glasses I cant make out the website on the 2" (or less) screen on my phone. Maybe these larger smart phones are a little easier to read, but I just dont see the point. Even a weather radar map is so darn small that any small storm formations are near impossible to see. I never had a cell with internet till now, and while it may be a little handy for email or seeing large storms on a radar map, otherwise it's senseless. Sure it has a zoom feature, but then I see one word at a time and have to scroll forever to read a simple webpage.

Reply to
piper
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Turn it sideways.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

Looking?

Get a better cell phone or maybe one of the cross-over phone/tablets.

Reply to
krw

Mmm... I think you need a phone with a bigger screen!

I would suggest at least a 4" screen if you're planning to do a fair amount of "general purpose" web browsing, that is, using web sites that were designed with desktop PCs in mind. (Note that many web sites *do* have "mobile" versions that remove a lot of the ornamentation and re-layout the page to make navigation easier; Amazon.Com is a good example of this.)

It's true that -- other than mobile-optimized web sites as mentioned above -- the "experience" viewing web pages even on a 4" screen isn't that great and few people find themselves just "clicking 'round and 'round" from one "interesting" site to another as you might on a desktop PC.

This is why phones have apps: Note only are they designed with the small screen in mind, but they also typically don't transfer nearly as much data as a traditional web site does to perform the same function, so they're faster.

Have you tried any weather apps though? They're quite popular...

Any phone you would have bought in the past couple of years should let you zoom in and out with very fine precision as to the magnification factor -- have you tried pinch-to-zoom rather than double-tapping?

---Joel

P.S. -- Another popular usage of Smartphones is to tether them to your laptop to use as a modem when you do want a big screen but aren't near a WiFi hotspot. :-)

Reply to
Joel Koltner

TownHall is one that does a great job of this. Drudge, not so much.

4G is pretty damned fast. ;-) Hell, even 3G is several times faster than my DSL line at home. :-(

He just needs more than a cell phone pretending to be a web device. As you say, 4" is fine, as long as you're not blind. Many GPS units aren't as big and are perfectly readable.

My problem is that I too often "tap" instead of "zoom".

My cell phone *is* a hot spot. It was cheaper than a USB tether, though it's always connected to power through the USB cable anyway.

Reply to
krw

Load Poynt. It is multi-platform. You can get what weather you need from it, and if you really need a radar map, it links to accuweather.

Most phones have a means to enlarge the text. Some do automatic column mode. They examine the page and can pretty much figure out where the "meat" of the text is located.

It would help if you mentioned what phone you were using to know what modes are available. Just about any phone can run Opera, and it will do column. Opera is a proxied browser, so it may not give you the full 4G speed. However, Opera gets to sniff the webpage before it goes to your phone, so it is a bit more reliable that using a non-proxy browser. Blackberry browser is the same way.

Reply to
miso

In the future, according to the movies, mankind is supposed to talk and have a meaningful conversation with computers.

Not going to happen soon, it's easier to put effort into snazzy visual interfaces. Video projection from mobile phones is not far.

Maybe Apple is going the right direction with Siri, but early days as yet.

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Adrian C
Reply to
Adrian C

Initially I had thoughts of E-mail and browsing on my cell-phone. Then I realized... WHY? If I'm out where I need such services I'll be carrying my laptop anyway. The only thing "modern" I've done is add Bluetooth speakerphones to both my Q45 _and_ pick-em-up truck. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

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