In preparation for my annual trip to Bermuda and its Film Festival I thought I’d go paperless with Air Canada’s new Mobile Check-in service. And predictably, instead of ending up with a 2D barcode I got the message seen in the screen grab above.
Just so I’m clear on this… I have a phone running the number one smartphone OS in the world, made by the world’s number one handset manufacturer, and yet it’s not recognized by Air Canada.
My bad, clearly…
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…
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!
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!
The lowly Java app is the bane of the S60 user’s existence — I mean, what’s the point of having a modern, multitasking mobile operating system if some dinky little program is going to ignore your UI and suck up all your available memory while it runs?
Well, in the case of Opera Mini the hassle is entirely worth it.
I’ve been hearing about Opera Mini since my days with the CrackBerry — folks over at the HowardForums had recommended it as the web counterpart to RIM’s mobile-optimized email, offering up the ability to surf full-sized websites while saving precious kilobytes on Fido’s less-than-generous BlackBerry Connect plans. This same technology is also available for followers of the WinMo, Treo and just about any other mobile handset on the market — except the iPhone, that is… Haw-haw!
What makes this Opera sing (sorry) is the heavy-lifting going on backstage, otherwise known as server-side optimization. It goes something like this:
This is all fine and well, but what sold yours truly on Opera Mini was a demo I saw this past week on BBC World’s Click!, wherein the synchronizing of mobile bookmarks was accomplished by dragging an dropping tabs from an Opera desktop browser — on a Mac, no less!
The interface is called “Speed Dial”. You can see for yourself what it looks like on a full-sized computer by clicking on the thumbnail to the right, and/or have a look at Opera’s own Flash demo.
The other half of the equation is Opera Link. Note that to get this all working you need beta 9.5 of the desktop browser, Opera Mini 4 and an Opera Link account, all of which are 100% free.
So here’s what Speed Dial looks like on my E61i:
The “Bookmarks” link leads to my vast directory of mobile portals and whatnot that I’ve been collecting since my first smartphone. These nine shortcuts are more easily accessed via the pop-up menu seen below:
You may notice that my Speed Dial links are all mobile-friendly web pages to begin with. Let’s just say I’m really stingy with data.
It took me an evening and the following morning to get everything up and running, and I’ve yet to try out the software on other platforms, but so far Opera Mini has proven itself worthy of a coveted spot on my Nokia’s standby screen:
You’ll notice that Nokia’s own web and WAP browsers are nowhere in sight! Kudos to you Opera Mini, for making the Wee World Web a better place…
