Nokia goes Safari for smartphone browser

By Steve Malone

Posted on 3 Nov 2005 at 11:22

Along with its new 'N' series handsets, Nokia has also unveiled a Web browser for its smartphone software, the S60 platform.

The new browser is intended to provide smartphone users with a better Web experience when browsing full Web pages on the Internet. For example, it offers a 'Mini Map', which provides a semi-transparent zoomed-out view of a web page that enables users to quickly orient themselves on a small screen

The new Web browser for the S60 platform is built around the WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari Web Kit, an open source full Web rendering engine for mobile devices. It is also based on KHTML and KJS from KDE's Konqueror open source project.

Nokia says it has made 'major improvements' in website usability on smartphones, through such re-use of a proven desktop rendering engine that has been developed and optimised by the open source community.