Viewing Web Pages on the AT&T TILT Cellphone - Using Both Opera Mobile and Mobile Internet Explorer

Now that Opera Mobile is inatlled on the phone, I went to a few websites, just to see what it looked like on the AT&T Tilt cellphone. None of the sites I went to could be viewed on the phone without both vertical and horizontal scrolling. The viewing of the web pages in Opera Mobile (at least this version) seems to be very similar to Mobile Internet Explorer on the phone.

We were surprised that the Opera Mobile browser doesn’t handle to page scrolling the same way as an iPhone does. It could have shown me a shrunken down version of the page and then let me skrink it down or zoom in, like the iPhone my coworker has. (My coworker is jealous of the fact that the AT&T Tilt Cellphone has a keyboard, and the iPhone does not, so I can type URLs much easier than they can).

Having to scrolling around to view web pages in the browser is not very user-friendly, and it makes reading content very hard.

Another note about viewing web pages using the Opera Mobie browser is that ost websites detect Mobile Internet Explorer, but not all are detecting Opera Mobile, and we see the straight up site geared for a desktop computer as opposed to a cell phone sometimes when using Opera Mobile instead of being forwarded to the mobile version of the site, which we would have bene if we were using Mobile Internet Explorer instead.

Viewing Web Pages On The AT&T Tilt Cell Phone – Installing Opera Mobile On The AT&T Tilt Cellphone

We are revisiting the topic of viewing web pages on the AT&T Tilt Cell Phone. We are on the Opera website, under downloads, and looking at Opera Mobile.

The option you need choose to get Opera on your AT&T tilt cellphone is not very clear on this page, but this is the version of Opera Mobile For the AT&T Tilt Cell Phone - Version 8.65 - Windows Mobile 5/6 PPC, Professional, Classic. When you click this link, you are taken to the page we’ve seen before where you must choose the “MSI” option and download the file.

Before you click the file, make sure your phone is connected to the computer via Active Synch. Then open the file and run the installer. Here are screenshots of the installation process:







The computer will tell you it has installed and tell you to check your phone to see if you need to do anything else. At this point, I looked at the tilt phone and it said, "The program is from an unknown publisher. You should only install if you trust its publisher. Do you want to continue?" We clicked “yes” and the next question I was asked was did I want to install this program on the device or on the memory card. Since I have enough free space to use the device (this information is displayed on the phone screen as well), and not everyone has a memory card, I chose to install it on the device.

After an animated loading screen, the phone now says, "Opera software Opera.CAB was successfully installed n your device". I clicked OK and the phone went back to the main page. I then went to the "Start menu, and choose programs. I now see Opera Web Browser located in the list. I clicked it, and the phone flashed its loading graphic, and then launched the browser.

I was first informed that this was a 30-day trial, and then it asked if I wanted to set it as the default browser. It then asked if I wanted it to automatically import my bookmarks from Internet Explorer. After this, the Opera browser opened.

The Opera Mobile browser is successfully installed!

The first thing I did was try to access a web page and the phone informed me that it wasn’t online. This was resolved by disconnecting the phone from my computer.

I then went to www.google.com to make sure I was online. I next went to a website that I know has Macromedia Flash on the main page, because that is one of the main reasons we wanted Opera Mobile; we were told it could run flash files. The flash file did not play on the phone when I accessed the website.

I found this page that says Opera Mobile version 9.5 is capable of displaying full Flash media content. Upon going back to the Opera page, version 9.5 isn't an option to download. Reading more on the Opera website it tells us that Opera is currently in version 8.65 , which is the version we installed on our phone. The Opera website says (see this page) that opera mobile version 9.5 was released in February of 2008, and debuted at the Mobile World Congress 2008. If you read further down this page, we see that is says “Opera Mobile 9.5 will be available on all major platforms including Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux, as both a standalone browser and as a SDK. The public beta release of Opera Mobile 9.5 will be announced separately.”

This is unfortunate! We really wanted to see Flash run on the AT&T tilt cellphone. We have to resolve ourselves to keep checking the Opera site to see when Opear Mobile 9.5 is realeased to the public.

Viewing Web Pages On The Tilt Cell Phone - Opera Web Browser - Part 2

We are now revisiting the topic of installing the opera Mobile browser on the At&T Tilt cellphone. We had an unsuccessful first attempt.

After trying the same steps on my phone, I see on the opera.com website (please note that I'm using a desktop computer becuase the Opear site does not appear as intended on the AT&T cellphone) that in order to download the browser, I am supposed to download the file from Opera.com onto my desktop computer first, then connect the phone to the computer, and then double click the file on my computer's desktop.

I do not have the cord to hook my phone to the computer with me, nor the CD with me now so it looks like I can't install the browser at this time.

Stay tuned for another blog called Installing Opera Part 3, where hopefully we can finally get this will finally work!

Viewing Web Pages On The Tilt Cell Phone - Opera Web Browser - Part 1

We tried to download the Opera browser for the AT&T tilt cell phone today. It was an undertaking that I was trying to put off but not being able to surf the web like a computer on such an advanced phone like the Tilt Cell phone was frustrating. We decided to go with the 30 day free trial to see how hard it was to install and because some of the questions we were unsure of the answers on. We found no relative results when searching for Installing Opera On AT&T Tilt Cell Phone.

The first step was to go get the browser (www.opera.com). I thought that I would just go to the website and download the browser on the phone. Makes sense right? Wrong.

The first thing I noticed was how user unfriendly the website was for mobile devices. For a company that offers such a sophisticated browser, their website should at least detect that I have a smart phone or mobile phone and send me to a different page. Oh well.

Once we got to the download page, we had to choose between two different versions of the mobile Opera Browser. I was confronted with a question about which version of Windows Mobile was running on the phone. This is not an obvious question for most newbies but most advanced users should not have a problem with this question. The AT&T Tilt Cell phone uses Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 (to find out on most windows mobile devices go to Start, Settings, About).

The next question that is asked is what type of phone do you have. The choices are for a Smart Phone and a Pocket PC. Most average consumers might not know which one to choose. If you have questions I suggest you Google your phones model number. They say that if your phone has a touch screen, you need the Pocket PC version. Since the AT&T Tilt cell phone has a touch screen my choice was easy.

The toughest question in the download process and most confusing was they wanted me to choose what type of device I have. The cryptic options that were presented where:
All Devices (CAB) or All Devices (MSI). This was a little confusing because both say “All devices”. I would suggest Opera put something online or in the download process that explains this choice a little better but we choose the default one, and clicked “download”. The page changed to a blank webpage and appeared to load a new page. I could see progress in the download bar of the browser, and all appeared to be well.

About 45 seconds passed while we waited for the download, I wondered if I should have done this on a desktop machine, and then synched the phone to the computer, and moved the file over this way… Again Opera should have detected my cellphone and sent me to an error page if this is the case. Anyways, I convinced myself to wait it out, sometimes pages do take a while to load on the phone.. The cell phones’ screen did its automatic “sleep” function; we made the display come back on by pressing the power button a couple of times.

A few moments later, the browser appeared to be done. I could see the “Back” and “Menu” buttons on the bottom, which usually means the page is done loading. We were a little confused since nothing ever asked me to install. We went to “Programs” and didn’t see the new browser listed.

We will return to this later, I have invested more than an hour in this install and documentation process so stay tuned

Viewing Webpages on your AT&T Tilt

Well we found out there a browser out there they say is as good as iPhone's Safari and works with the AT&T Tilt.

You can find it at http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/

I will make sure and have a report on it as soon as we can figure out which version to download. It's not obvious.