During last few days I was taking closer look to web browsers available on Maemo 5. This time I will give you something that we can rely more than just personal opinion, a benchmark! After you already know what it can do and if it is really good from analytical point of view you can choose one as default for your N900.
I used Browser Benchmark from Rightware, which is designed to check weather mobile browser is fast enough, with commercial version for use of browser developers, nevertheless it measures mostly the browser engine. So here are the results (more is better) and my overall score after what I’ve seen and how it really works for me:
Fennec (Firefox Mobile) – benchmark: 14726, my score: 7/10

Benchmark score for Fennec is pretty promising, nevertheless it’s measuring only the engine and cannot say much about operatibility of user interface. In my opinion it’s going in good way, just needs small improvement in speed.
Opera Mobile – benchmark: 12290, my score: 8/10
Great speed and nice browsing experience going with nice benchmark score. Opera Mobile is really good solution for people who just want to browse pages and read the contents. They shouldn’t be bothered by Opera website’s style overriding to fit the text on the screen.
Midori – benchmark: 10927, my score: 6/10

Another nice score from benchmark and nice features like keyboard shortcuts, still some work to be done to work nice and smoothly on touchscreen device and operate properly using kinetic scrolling.
MicroB (Maemo Browser) – benchmark: 9646, my score: 8/10

Default browser and it appears to be one of the best (at least in my opinion). This is the browser for which most of add-ons will go to when you install them from App manager. This is what you get by default and at the time is one of the best.
Chromium – benchmark: failed, my score: 4/10
Unfortunately  Chromium haven’t finished the benchmark tests, no matter what I’ve tried to do (cleaning cache, rebooting etc.), so I cannot say what would be the result if it would. I think there is a lot to do with this port …

The last non-standard browser I’m going to write about is Midori, it showed up on N900 quite a while ago, but I’ve never had enough inspiration to take a closer look.
Midori goes to your application menu as green (‘midori’ means ‘green’ in japanese) icon and welcomes with speed dial page after launching. Page opening seems to be a little slow but looks pretty good and standard-compliant. Kinetic scrolling that most people use on Maemo 5 (because it’s default part of UI) needs some more effort to be perfect, but is already usable, even if it sometimes marks part of webpage. If you play a bit more time you may notice it has it’s own portrait mode, where you can still use keyboard. This is especially nice, because Midori allows you to modify keyboard shortcuts, so you it’s easy to make it very useful one-handed.
Midori apart from small glitches, mostly related to touchscreen UI in my opinion, has nice features, pretty good standards compatibility and may pretend to be equal among 5 browsers I’ve used on N900. Next time I’ll try to gather all of the browsers information with one comparison, including some benchmark results and then you can choose which is the best for you.
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

When talking about web browsers it’s fair to mention Google’s product called Chrome. It has open source version called Chromium that is available also for N900.
I’ve never had more in common with Chrome than watching my collegues using it. Mobile version looks very similar, with tabs and toolbar on top. What’s not so nice it looks almost exactly the same, without any modifications for mobile device or touchscreen to improve usability. Same thing goes context menus and option screens, I find it hard to use them without stylus. Browsing is quite similar to other browsers, but gives another reason not to like UI because of the scrollbars working the same way as on desktop computers. It would be really nice if someone work a bit more on UI modifications for touchscreen devices.
Pages generation looks pretty good and fast, nevertheless I’ve encountered error screen numerous times, also while I was trying to test the browser using Browser Benchmark. The most funny thing is that Google browser has problems with Google main page, maybe because today’s PacMan’s 30th birthday, so Google has it’s new and fancy holiday look.
Since Chromium appeared not to be comfortable or stable enough I wasn’t playing with it for long. For today I find it still incomplete and not so well tested, Chromium may become as good as it’s desktop version if  some more work was put in it.
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

If it comes to web browsers it’s worth mentioning Opera Mobile. Recently it came also to N900 with all of it’s features, with official news at Opera Labs.
At first glance it runs well, no slow-downs or glitches. First page is reserved for speed dial that can be customized with pages of your choice. Interface doesn’t invade in browsing area, address bar hides when scrolling down the page. Almost every part of interface is animated but not in the way overwhelming user with windows flying around and works pretty smooth.
When looking into settings you can see that Opera already has automatic portrait mode, so it’s possible to browse with one hand. Full screen gives really nice experience, while browser takes care of text width to fit the screen. This is is default behaviour of Opera Mobile and Mini browsers, as well as showing full page with zoom window visible, while ‘back’ button works as zoom-out. Tabs, another feature we cannot live without, is located on the bottom and animates miniatures of opened tabs.
I think Opera may be first serious rival for MicroB browser. It’s way faster than Fennec on N900, looks nice and well balanced between eye-candy and simplicity. Still this is Opera, browser which customizes page layout to be readable on small screens, so it’s up to you what you really need.
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

When you get brand new N900 you already have MicroB, Maemo-tailored Mozilla-based default web browser, which would be good for most of us. But you still have a choice what to use and I’d like to show you possibilities.
First of all let’s see what happened to Fennec (named after small, desert fox) a.k.a. Firefox Mobile for last few months, since it was release candidate. It has it’s engine in common with MicroB, so I was expecting something really nice and fast. After starting Fennec (named Firefox in the menu, even though process name is fennec) for first time I had to wait quite a bit, I thought that first start may do some initializations and this may take such long time. But in comparison to MicroB it’s working slower, at least in my opinion nothing interesting happened in performance area since release candidate some time ago.
First impression is quite good, address bar is on top and hides when scrolling down opened page, when you scroll to the left or right out of the screen then you will see additional spaces for tabs with miniature of webpage (on the left) and toolbar with back and forward, bookmarking and settings buttons.
When going to the settings I feel more comfortable than in MicroB, it’s more readable I think. I have the impression that Fennec was prepared to have better support for addons, since this part of browser seems to be more functional than in it’s Maemo brother, some people may really enjoy this feature.
Firefox Mobile is nice alternative if it comes to functionality, nevertheless in my opinion is too slow to be replacement for MicroB in everyday use. At least I won’t change to it untill it will work faster.
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

I don’t know if some of you are familiar to this new technology that Google is introducing to us these days. So if you aren’t aware of this, please read first the title at the end of this post about Google Wave.
For all we that are expecting to have access to use this gorgeous tendency, I’m sure that this news makes you desire even more a Nokia N900. A few days ago, I saw a video about Google Wave running on the Nokia N900, but the quality wasn´t too good and it didn´t actually show it running. So I wasn’t too confidence about it, that´s why I decided to wait. Finally, someone uploaded a new video about the same news, but showing it running. It was worth to wait for. I don’t want to bore you no more with too many words, just look!

Google Wave
They introduce this as the revolution of the email, and a quick definition would be the one on the official web page: “Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more”. If you have some time (like an hour), you can go to the official Google Wave web page and see the long video where they explain it and show the function of this new technology. The main idea is that most of the communication technologies have evolved such as SMS, Twitter, Face book, etc. but the email hasn’t. So Google Wave is the solution. I highly recommend seeing what it is all about because in my opinion they are making history and I don´t think I am overreacting.

Browsing as a subject again? That’s probably the thought of most of you when reading the new title of this post. However it looks redundant, the main idea is to show a fresh video showing the browsing power of the Nokia N900.
A nice thing about this video is also the TV-Out feature. You would see the browser through a LCD TV. The response and the clarity of the images are wonderful. Besides, this situation brought to my mind the progress on mobility. If you think it through, the Nokia N900 gives you full mobility! You can go wherever you want, and you are carrying a Multimedia Center (music, videos, Radio, photos and GPS), the Communication Center we already talk about it (Instant Messaging, SMS, MMS, Email, etc.), a game Console (why not) and Internet. It doesn’t matter if where you are going has a computer or internet, as long as you have Wi-Fi or 3G networks available you have all this things I’ve mention before. I think that we are getting into a new era of mobility, or a new meaning of this word, Don’t we?
The last interesting thing on the video that caught my attention was the app called Fennec. This is Alpha release of a new Firefox browser for handhelds devices. Different distribution of the screen and the way to show the bookmarks is what you would see on the video. I hope to see more on this new browser soon. For further details please click here.

I want to anticipate that I’m working on a comparison which it would be published soon.

I want to share this two videos I have found on the internet about the Internet Browser of the Nokia N900. You would see the incredible capability of the Nokia N900 on opening any Internet page. Where does it come from this capability? Basically because the phone is gifted with the possibility of reading WAP 2.0, xHTML, HTML protocols and also thanks to the Flash Player 9.4 included on it.
You can navigate through the YouTube page just like you were using your desktop computer, and look the videos without any problem. In addition to this, you are able to play most of Facebook games too! Like the World Challenge for example. I’m only giving examples here in order to illustrate the importance of this new step on mobile browsing.
But Are Nokia and I overreacting when we say that it´s just like on your desktop computer? Nothing has proved the opposite yet. But If this is not enough for you, you can also copy and paste text from the internet, using the simple combination of commands Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V, sounds familiar?
There are a few more cool thing like the way to zoom in-out, etc. but I want you to see it by yourself. Don’t want to take away the surprise! As I said before, this is a new step on mobile browsing and we can say that this is real mobile internet, Internet to take to everywhere you go!