Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Web Browsing on the G2 Cellphone

I'm still learning my way around my new Sciphone Dream G2 cellphone.

One of the questions I hear about this phone concerns the lack of a keyboard. Well, it's got a virtual keyboard that comes up in the Opera Mini web browser, at least, when you need to enter text.
Click or tap on a text field in the browser, you get this screen. Tap on the screen to start entering text.

Here's the keyboard. As small as the keyboard looks, you can use it with fingertips. The stylus is easier, though.

Once you've pressed the "OK" button, you go back to this screen. Tap on "Options" in the bottom left hand side (hard to see in this pic, but that's what's there.)

Tap "OK" on this menu. That takes you back to the browser, with your text now entered into the field.


The included web browser is Opera Mini. It's a very nice browser. It does a good job of rendering even very complex pages to the small screen (I thought my Eee PC was challenging!) There was only one thing about the browser that was not obvious: scrolling.

The pages displayed in the browser appear to have a scroll bar at the edge. I drove myself crazy trying to scroll with it, first with my finger, then with the stylus. It turns out this isn't a scroll bar! In fact, it's just showing you where you are on the displayed page. To scroll, touch some part of the screen where there isn't an active link and drag the page in the direction you want it to go. You can actually touch the page on a link or some other live element, and it will detect that you're doing a drag rather than a click. But to be safe, I try to touch an inert part of the page.
That white bar with the strip on the right edge of the screen isn't a scroll bar. It's just showing you where you are on the page. You can't scroll by dragging the red bit. You drag the page itself to scroll.


Next, using the G2 cellphone's built in camera.

My Articles on the Sciphone G2:
Posted by saundby at 2:06 PM
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