I couldn’t focus on every country in the world, as that would have simply taken too much time, so I narrowed down the study to the BRIC and Next 11 nations. Sadly, Opera are much less forthcoming with the data that is useful to us than it used to be, but there is still a lot of useful info that we can dig out. Opera publishes this data through its State of the Mobile Web series. Fortunately, as Opera Mini is a proxy browser–and is the most popular browser in much of the developing world–it has reams of data on what devices access the Web through its servers. Details are quite hard to get a hold of, with even StatCounter (which is good about breaking down its data per country) only breaking down per screen resolution. Great you should ask, as I’ve just spent the last few days poring over the facts, and collating all the details I could find. What is the average phone used by the rest of the world? Although there is demand for these kind of sites in the developing world, with Facebook the number 1 site across much of the globe, it will require much more than a bit of extra testing and attention to details to get these sites working on basic phones. Its a whole different challenge for JavaScript heavy apps meant to compete with native apps. To make it clear I’m talking here about sites with informational content. If you have a separate site, make sure it still works when the screen size is even smaller that you may have tested already. If you use Media Queries, add tests to make sure the layout doesn’t break down at small sizes. No, they don’t need to look the same you don’t need every wizz bang transition, or rounded corner, but having clear navigable access to the content of your site at small screen sizes and via keypad input is invaluable.
If you publish information on the Web, I can’t encourage you enough to try design your site with these devices in mind. The video in Bruce’s post helps put a face to some of those people, and a window into the joy they experience when being able to access the Web. Having access to information helps people help themselves. As Bruce Lawson wrote in his great post on the Opera DevRel team blog Comparison between Indian states shows that a 10% increase in mobile phone penetration rate leads to a 1.2% increase in GDP. However rudimentary their devices may be, being able to access information on their mobile phone is as empowering for them as it has been for us, if not more so.
Lack of access to online information is only increasing the digital divide. If you care about keeping the World in WWW, and ensuring the content you create is accessible to all, then it will be a reality for you as well. These restrictions are an everyday reality for those that are not as lucky as we are, with our super computers in our pockets. But, key attributes that web developers care about, such as screen size and resolution, and input method are still stuck in the previous era. Sure, the raw horsepower may have gone up, and more memory means less of those dreaded out of memory errors. The browsers have gotten better since then, but surprisingly many of the devices used in the developing world haven’t significantly. Running out of memory on large pages, or simply getting lost as the page layout was too complex for the tiny screen you were using. One that might be familiar to those of you who were pioneers on the mobile web before the iPhone came out and changed our mobile experience forever.Įntering long URLs and form data on a keypad designed for entering phone number and typing txt messages, not for writing novels, navigating with arrow keys instead directly touching the object on the screen. Move away from the wealthy few of the industrialised world, and a whole different picture emerges.
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In our world of ever increasing high resolution displays, multi-core, multi gigahertz processors, 4G networks and touch enabled experiences, it is often easy to forget how the rest of the world lives.īeyond the latest iPhones, and Android devices, there are a multitude of devices out there, enabling the next billion to experience the World Wide Web for the first time.