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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 …

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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

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Mozilla continues to develop its main product to offer a good browser for mobile phones: Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox, has reached Release Candidate status. Meaning that the first official stable version of the browser only needs to pass the final test of the developers. Back in November, we write a post about it (Firefox Fennec for Nokia N900) as it was a beta version still.
Fennec RC1 has the same engine as Firefox 3.6 and it also includes the so called Awesome Bar (a bar that displays suggestions as you type a web address), besides the possibility to sync with Mozilla Weave service and ability to navigate given the user location.
As Fennec is currently designed for phones based on Maemo system like the two models from Nokia (the N900 and N810), it exist the possibility to test this version of Firefox on our own computers, thanks to a prepared release that developers have offered for any operating system in the case that someone wants to start developing plug-ins for the Fennec browser. I only recommend it for those who are really interested in develop plug-ins.
Summarizing, in order to star testing and using this interesting web browser into your Nokia N900, please click here and it would lead you to the Fennec web page and its installation instructions.

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If you remember we have already talk about this new browser of Firefox for handheld devices called Fennec. Back on that post (New definition of Mobility? & Just a little more on mobile browsing with the Nokia N900) I only wrote a few words about it because it was a very early version, more detail it was an Alpha version.
One month later, we finally got the beta version (beta 4) and a video devoted to show Fennec, in this case on a Nokia N900, and all the new stuff that comes with it. Continues synchronization with our desktop computer is the most interesting new featured to me (thanks to the Mozilla Wave technology). You are able to open multiple tabs and also the web pages you navigated at home on your desktop computer. This cool featured it´s called Remote tabs.  Then you have most of the tools that you have on your web browser on your desktop computer such as privacy for example. A dedicated download area and the first appear of the Add-On on a mobile phone´s browser are some of the new features that Fennec is introducing.
I don´t want to take you all the fun, so check the video below!

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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.