[cyberax]

> My 640x480 HTC Universal with a plastic keyboard felt antiquated compared to the 320x480 iPhone, especially starting with the 3GS

Opera Mobile existed at that time, though.

[juliendorra]

As I remember it, all these mobile browsers for Windows Mobile were not exactly the same code and rendering engine / javascript engine that on desktop. They were ports

As the iPhone OS was Mac OS at its core, Safari was exactly the same engines, and that was a quite novel and enticing promise: the real web in your pocket (minus proprietary plugins like Flash)

[cyberax]

Opera was a direct port, with some mobile adaptations. The problem was the IE6-only sites and other braindead web-development practices that affected Opera even on desktops.