The ultimate stupid question

[kronoSX]

If i browse the internet with a iphone/ipod touch do i use less bandwidth than a pc.I was thinking that when i browse via wfi the internet and facecloth(book)..etc i will be saving me some valuable ppdb as opposed to using my pc.

I am sure the cache is smaller with the phone but things like pictures..etc still use the same cache..right.I mean resizing uses more right.
Lets take away the ads and all the junk from firefox we will be saving.

I could be wrong cause my usage is still hghi even with the iphone and ipod touch.

 

[koffiejunkie]

You'll save a little on sites that use a lot of flash, and on sites that offer a mobile version of their content if you connect with a mobile device. But other than that Safari on the iPhone is a regular browser, it loads the page in full. It just displays it much smaller.

 

[Synaesthesia]

Yes. The iPhone does save some bandwidth simply because it's not that fast as a PC at rendering pages, so you use bandwidth slightly slower. Of course the 3GS is faster though.

 

[oradba69]

Hmmm I have a 3G (no S) and it is substantially faster browsing tethered than directly on the phone. I suppose the S will resolve this descrepency? Also does the 3g speed differ from 3G to 3GS?

 

[Synaesthesia]

Ya that's because your PC renders the pages faster and doesn't run out of memory so quickly. A 3GS is at least twice as fast, and has double the RAM, so it will be a lot better. But a PC will still be faster. Yes the 3GS supports HSDPA 7.2mbps while the 3G only supports regular 3G.

 

[koffiejunkie]

If you look at the memory usage of your web browser on your desktop, you'll see why.

 

[oradba69]

Ya that's because your PC renders the pages faster and doesn't run out of memory so quickly. A 3GS is at least twice as fast, and has double the RAM, so it will be a lot better. But a PC will still be faster. Yes the 3GS supports HSDPA 7.2mbps while the 3G only supports regular 3G.

Thanx for the info.

 

[Sheila]

Thanks guys - I was also wondering

 

[kronoSX]

So basically i might as well use Firefox and turn of pics.Damn and here i thought i was saving .

 

[kronoSX]

You'll save a little on sites that use a lot of flash, and on sites that offer a mobile version of their content if you connect with a mobile device. But other than that Safari on the iPhone is a regular browser, it loads the page in full. It just displays it much smaller.

loads the page in full.I think that sucks.hey apple can we please have a browser on the iphone that compressors the data like opera

 

[koffiejunkie]

loads the page in full.I think that sucks.hey apple can we please have a browser on the iphone that compressors ][sic] the data like opera

You realise, of course, that Opera does not compress anything. Think about it. It cannot do anything with the data until it has received the data. So once it has received the data, what good does it do compressing it?

What Opera Mini does is connect to a proxy server (run by Opera) that downloads the content, miniaturises it (not really compress - it regenerates the page for a smaller screen, down-samples images, etc.) and then pass it on to your phone. This, of course, means that using Opera Mini for your internet banking, for example, is risky.

For what it's worth, any site that gets even a moderate amount of traffic, should have compression turned on server side. This very site does. How about a quick lesson in the workings of HTTP, shall we? Uplon loading this page, here are the headers my browser sent along with the GET request:

Host	mybroadband.co.za
User-Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-gb; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100123 Firefox/3.6
Accept	text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language	en-gb
[B]Accept-Encoding	gzip,deflate[/B]
Accept-Charset	ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive	115
Connection	keep-alive
Cookie	***********
Pragma	no-cache
Cache-Control	no-cache

See the "Accept Encoding" bit? The browser tells the web server "I accept these types of compression, please send me the page compressed if you can." To which the web browser replies:

Date	Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:34:56 GMT
Server	Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny4 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g
X-Powered-By	PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny4
Cache-Control	private
Pragma	private
Vary	Accept-Encoding
[B]Content-Encoding	gzip[/B]
Content-Length	16323
Keep-Alive	timeout=15, max=196
Connection	Keep-Alive
Content-Type	text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

"why yes, I can certainly compress the html - here you go." Now, pretty much only text based files (html, css, js) is worth compressing. Images are already in compressed format, so trying to compress it further will only waste cpu cycles and more often than not make the file bigger (since it can't make it any smaller and there are overheads). So if your browser accepts compression, the content you receive are already as compressed as it's going to get.

If your browser can do decompression (iPhone Safari does), you'll get compressed content.

Some sites are smart enough to serve a miniature version of the page, with smaller graphics, etc, when the User-Agent string supplied by the browser (see the first code block) is a recognised mobile browser. Google, does this, for example.

 

[kronoSX]

You realise, of course, that Opera does not compress anything. Think about it. It cannot do anything with the data until it has received the data. So once it has received the data, what good does it do compressing it?

What Opera Mini does is connect to a proxy server (run by Opera) that downloads the content, miniaturises it (not really compress - it regenerates the page for a smaller screen, down-samples images, etc.) and then pass it on to your phone. This, of course, means that using Opera Mini for your internet banking, for example, is risky.

For what it's worth, any site that gets even a moderate amount of traffic, should have compression turned on server side. This very site does. How about a quick lesson in the workings of HTTP, shall we? Uplon loading this page, here are the headers my browser sent along with the GET request:

Host	mybroadband.co.za
User-Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-gb; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100123 Firefox/3.6
Accept	text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language	en-gb
[B]Accept-Encoding	gzip,deflate[/B]
Accept-Charset	ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive	115
Connection	keep-alive
Cookie	***********
Pragma	no-cache
Cache-Control	no-cache

See the "Accept Encoding" bit? The browser tells the web server "I accept these types of compression, please send me the page compressed if you can." To which the web browser replies:

Date	Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:34:56 GMT
Server	Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny4 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g
X-Powered-By	PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny4
Cache-Control	private
Pragma	private
Vary	Accept-Encoding
[B]Content-Encoding	gzip[/B]
Content-Length	16323
Keep-Alive	timeout=15, max=196
Connection	Keep-Alive
Content-Type	text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

"why yes, I can certainly compress the html - here you go." Now, pretty much only text based files (html, css, js) is worth compressing. Images are already in compressed format, so trying to compress it further will only waste cpu cycles and more often than not make the file bigger (since it can't make it any smaller and there are overheads). So if your browser accepts compression, the content you receive are already as compressed as it's going to get.

If your browser can do decompression (iPhone Safari does), you'll get compressed content.

Some sites are smart enough to serve a miniature version of the page, with smaller graphics, etc, when the User-Agent string supplied by the browser (see the first code block) is a recognised mobile browser. Google, does this, for example.

right so maybe an add on for the safari descaling the pictures.

 

[koffiejunkie]

There ya go: Opera Will Submit Mini Browser to iPhone App Store Next Week

 

[bmxdude]

Thanks guys also wanted to know.