Sharp’s new 904SH 3g phone has a VGA display
Yes, folks, VGA. As in 640×480 pixel. On a cellphone.
Mobile is truly coming. It’s already in Japan, it just hasn’t broken here yet. The technology is rapidly arriving, both in client capability and connections. We only need some decent business models to make the mobile internet explode. (I’ll probably write more about this soon)
We’ve come a long way in a short few years from my Treo’s 320×320 (which is unbearably painful for pretty much every site on the web except Google.com). 640×480 landscape will be quite nice.
Unfortunately, this means we web designers need to relearn all the old habits and forget the “everybody has 1024″ mindset of the last few years. While that’s true for most desktops, the world is changing, and desktops are no longer the only thing that matters.
Too bad everyone here can’t just agree to use a single network. I love sprint/cdma for my free internets, but GSM has a lot of attractive options as well (like when I need to change phones, or something… hey, its happened at least once!)
Free market has a lot of funny issues like that…
The folks at http://www.westciv.com have been talking about this for a while, promoting CSS in a big way.
CSS is one thing, but when you design a site using CSS for a 1024×768 PC monitor, that doesn’t mean it will work at all on a mobile. The problem has simply moved from markup to stylesheet, but it is still a problem. Designers in general need to reprioritize: content and markup first (make it convey what you want with zero style), then screen style, then mobile style. It’s not easy, but it can be done.
I strongly recommend Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm to anybody who has to make a website anyone but him/herself will ever read. Should be available wherever quality computer books are sold.
GSM ftw. Having your phone actually, like, work overseas?!
I can’t tell you how annoyed I am at a huuuge lack of good quad-band phones. I want my GSM900 and GSM800/850 in the same phone, dammit!