CNET reports that cellphone maker Nokia has dumped cash into Mozilla in the hopes of the group producing an Open Source-based cellphone browser. In response to the funding, Mozilla has created the Minimo project (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/).

The goal of Minimo (or Mini Mozilla), is to reduce the footprint of the Mozilla browser to a size suitable for small consumer devices. Mozilla has already produced a preview release (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/releases/arm/0.1/) based on the 1.7a Mozilla code. If all goes according to plan, Nokia will stake an incredible return on its investment if it could use a browser free from licensing fees on its handsets (think Netscape). In the end, it will not only benefit Nokia, but all handset manufacturers -- not to mention end-users.

Minimo v0.1 is part of the Handhelds.org (http://www.handhelds.org) stable feed.

Read the CNET article (http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/personaltech/0,39001147,39184125,00.htm).

Has anyone tried this yet? I'm very curious to give it a shot for myself and see how functional it is. I have heard nothing but bad about Pocket IE...

Not even sure if the project is still alive. Last news from Minimo is more than half a year old.

Yah, I'm sort of surprised by that. This seems like the next logical area for Mozilla to pursue, especially given the piss poor quality of Pocket IE (at least from all reports). But there doesn't seem to be much energy going into it...

Yeah, Pocket IE isn't that great. There are some nice shareware extensions for it that make it _much_ better, but I haven't lashed out on anything like that yet. I just don't surf enough with it to make it worthwhile (if you're connected to your PC, you might as well use a proper browser :) )

If I ever get that elusive WIFI SD card I want, that might change...

Craig.

Not even sure if the project is still alive. Last news from Minimo is more than half a year old.

Update: According to ZDNet (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39179896,00.htm), Minimo should be out in January.

That is *great* news. I think online browsers are still the weak link when you think of using the WiFi capabilities of your.

I've recently tried Pocket Internet Explorer (PIM) WM 2003SE and NetFront 3.1; neither of the two really satisified my needs. Believe it or not, they don't even support URL completion, which would come very handy for handhelds. According to Sunshine's article, URL completion is also supported in Minimo 0.3 ;)