I will admit two things up front, I am not a Blackberry fan at all, and I am a huge fan of the work the developers at Touch Mobile have been doing with their Iris web browser. The web browser that RIM has been including in their Blackberry devices is absolutely horrible.  I actually prefer Pocket Internet Explorer over the Blackberry browser, which says a lot about just how bad the Blackberry browser is.

Luckily, RIM must have finally figured out that they fail at making a decent web browser, so they just acquired Torch Mobile, the creators of the Iris web browser.  Iris is based on Webkit, which is the same magic behind a lot of popular web browsers including the ones on the iPhone and Palm Pre.

Iris was one of the first, if not the first, Webkit web browsers that was available on Windows Mobile.  I used it in the early alpha stages because I had switched to Google Reader for all of my RSS feeds a while back.  Iris was able to duplicate the iPhone version of Google Reader fairly well, so it was my go to web browser for catching up with tech news.  Of course, it was definitely not a final product because it would frequently lock up when dealing with heavy JavaScript pages.  With each new version, Iris was getting more and more stable.  This gave me hope that if I had to go back to Windows Mobile for my main device, that I could still get a similar, though slower, web experience as the iPhone.

But, now that hope is crushed.  I do not see anything that officially says they will no longer offer their Windows Mobile version of Iris, but considering their downloads page now gives a nice “403 Forbidden” page.  So, it looks like I will be in search for another browser for Google Reader when I switch back to Windows Mobile…

Do any other Google Reader users use the iPhone version on their Windows Mobile device?  What is your favorite browser to use with Google Reader?

Just a heads up, Iris has been updated again, although it’s a minor update and only includes minor, and the inevitable bug fixes, if you are using it you’ll want to update!

You can download the beta update Here

You have to repeat the process you followed initially to acquire the program, but it’s well worth the effort. I’m slowly adding all of my most used bookmarks to the beta and using it more and more. Actually, Iris is still not supported for my part of the world, but it’s working fine.

I’d still like to see the ability to add existing bookmarks from other mobile browsers added, but it is actually rendering pages faster than the latest Opera 9.5 Beta, and maintains all of your current settings on update installation.

One other Query I have, if I register for  the Beta every time I download it, why do I not get any email notification of updates? Just a little irk I have!

Check it out and see if you like it!

There’s been a huge amount of Windows Mobile Browser news over the past week, courtesy of the MWC. Also our friend Werner over at SmartPhoneMag has put up a full list of all the browser news, and his insights as to the current situation with Windows Mobile browsing. One of the  browsers, Iris from Torch mobile, is finally out of Beta and ready for public consumption, and it’s still free.

I have tried out Iris many a time through it’s development, and of course it didn’t last, install, try, uninstall you know the drill. Although, as with all mobile browsers, the rule of thumb is to deliver the closest thing to a desktop browsing experience on a mobile phone, as possible.

Market leaders in the Mobile browser world, Opera, have defined the feature set, paradigm, for what we expect from a WinMo browser, and all other browser developers, including Microsoft have been playing catch up for quite a while. As most WinMo users are using Opera mobile for a comparison platform for a browser, any software that comes close for free is going to be a viable option, in steps Iris…

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One of the consistent and ongoing gripes of windows mobile users is the lack of a real browser. The Native MIE is a poor sibling to opera 8.5, and of course there’s netftont, still in Beta as well. Since we’ve learned that there will be no update to MIE 6 for older devices, a lot of us still have to look to third party browsers like Iris from Torch, for a better WinMo browsing experience!

Iris mobile browser  Download.com