Most mobile phones are equipped with one or many browsers that will read information from the internet similar to a web browser. There are different page standards intended for mobile use, WML, XHTML Basic, XHTML-MP, cHtml etc, and different browsers in phones supports one, or a couple of them.
Many modern devices also support HTML, but HTML is not originally intended for mobile use. Web-pages often has to be re-authored for use by a mobile phone, or the user has to perform extensive scrolling, and risks missing information that is based on scripts or plug-ins.
Covering a variety of devices with the same service, means using a “lowest common denominator” between the standards, in practice meaning a document flow with a few basic form items for text input and links. This virtually limits the design to browser pages reminding of “the very early web”. Mobile browsers also require external state-mechanisms, web browsers for PC. This become complicated in the mobile world, as the “pages” are very small compared to web pages, and support for cookies and local scripting is very limited.
Mobile browsing gives no standardized access to phone facilities such as the camera or GPS, as the concept is transaction based; there is no common way of pushing session data to the device in real-time.
Using mobile browser pages gives a very good coverage concerning devices, but the price is their limitations in functionality and performance.
