The other WebKit-powered phone(s)

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One of the iPhone’s strengths is the amazing web browser that it uses: Safari. Safari itself is based on an open source web browser called WebKit, and Nokia is also a huge fan of this software. They’ve embedded the browser into a number of their high-end phones. The video shown above is taken from my Nokia 6290, a clamshell that retails for about $400 unlocked (I got mine for $275 on eBay).

After using both phones, there is absolutely no question that the Apple implementation is much easier to use, but oh, the Nokia phones are super hackable. The very fact that I could get video off of it is proof enough of that: I used the Mobiola Screen Capture utility, a third party tool that displays your phone’s screen on a Windows PC. (From Windows, I used the open source CamStudio to record the action.) I’ll admit that I ran out of memory a few times while doing this, but if you think about it… running a powerful web browser and a utility that’s pumping a video stream over USB at the same time is a mighty stress test. iPod-friendly video

Resources

• Nokia’s WebKit-based browser – Link
• Mobiola Screen Capture – Link
• CamStudio – Link
• WebKit.org – Link