If you haven’t yet heard, Fido has now joined Bell Canada and Telus Mobility in offering cheap, unlimited data — with a catch: $7/month will get you unlimited web surfing, but only through their crap-tastic WAP portal on a Fido-branded handset.
And just how bad is their WAP portal? For this test I attempted to retrieve movie listings for a popular cinema here in Toronto, the ScotiaBank Theatre. I compared Fido’s mobile portal (wap.fido.ca) with AvantGo and the recently-reviewed Opera Mini. I’ll let this series of screen grabs tell the tale…
wap.fido.ca via Nokia S60 WAP Browser:
Here’s a thoughtful touch: An option to sign up for unlimited browsing right from Fido’s disclaimer page…
Hang on, unlimited web surfing and all I get is this?
I would have put movie listings on the main page, but whatevs…
Ah, Cinema Clock… A trusted source for Canadian movie listings on the full-sized internet, and a good choice for this test — they’ve passed on a publicly-available mobile site and have chosen instead to deal directly with (and exclusively through) the carriers.
Okay, fair enough… Fido is after all a national carrier. Sure has been a lot of clicks, though…
Almost there…
My thumb is starting to cramp up now…
Excuse me, but aren’t there more than two movie theatres in downtown Toronto?!
Number of screens to destination: 8
Total data used: 27 kB
Goal achieved? Hells no!
AvantGo via Opera Mini:
Damn, wish there was some way to turn off this S60 permissions nag. I’ll have to count this as two screens.
Yup, AvantGo is still alive and kicking!
You can only get mobile access to FilmCan through an AvantGo account — seems silly but it’s about to pay off…
Through your desktop browser you can pre-load your favourite cinemas into your FilmCan listings — an extra step I suppose, but you only have to do it once!
Et voilà! Sadly, I missed the 9:50pm screening of 27 Dresses… Dang!
Number of screens to destination: 6
Total data used: 35 kB
Goal achieved? Hells yeah!
So what did we learn today?
- Carrier portals suck.
- Companies that have a mobile online presence exclusively through carriers also suck.
- AvantGo still has a place in the 21st century — who knew?!
3 Comments
AC:
While I don’t have personal experience with #2 or #3, I agree with #1–Bell’s Mobile Browser is a complete piece of crap. I detest having to page through bookmarks I don’t want but can’t change to just check the weather. Bell’s portal is geared towards selling me stuff, like ring tones. That’ll learn me for signing the contract and not getting a smartphone….
Ed
So I guess you haven’t been able to install Opera Mini on your LG, then?
AC:
Not yet. But I need to check out what’s available online that I could use on my phone. So far, I’ve only added the Gmail app, which works.
Ed