I've been an avid smart phone users since the days of the Treo 600. Yes, I'm that old… In those days the web browsers were quite limited in their functionality. The connectivity was just as limited, no Wifi, no 3G, perhaps EDGE, GPRS was a rule. As you understand surfing the web wit a 30kbit/sec bandwidth - at best, made you look for alternative, lite, versions of the websites you were interested in. RSS versions - if they existed was quite useful due to the limited band with they required from the client.
Fast forward to current day. The handsets available today have multiple connectivity, Wifi, HiSpeed 3G and so on. The screens have increased in size and resolution, some even supports flash. You can check the sites you are interested in from just wherever you are whenever you want. A close friend of me confessed that he regarded a visit to the restroom without his iPhone a waste of time. I have to agree. You check e-mail, Twitter, Facebook. Stock Exchange, news sites, Youtube, Flicker, and many other sites depending on your particular interests regularly as soon as you get a moment.
Many modern smart phones claims that they can browse the full websites, the iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows mobile, they all claim that they can give you the "full desktop web experience". In my mind I don't se that as a advantage - at least not always. Any serious website almost always provide a "mobile enhanced" version of their "normal" website. Unfortunately they have a bad habit of hiding the address. Most often the site name is changed from e.g. http://www.engadget.com to http://i.engadget.com. An increasing number of sites can actually detect that you are using a mobile web browser and automagically redirect you to the mobile version of their website. This have in fact led me to increase the amount of browsing I do on my iPhone. Why? Well, to start with I lose all the blinking, shouting, distracting flash based animations and ads. What a relief. The amount of advertises on the mobile enhanced sites are decreased to a bare minimum. The mobile websites I visit regularly have a better overall design than their desktop counterparts. All news and updates on the site is presented in a clear and effective manner and the whole page loads really fast - with a minimal hit on the bandwith. What not to like ?
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? If I visit the full web site from my computer once, I will visit it from my handheld 20-30 times. No advertises, no website design that draws away your attention from why you came there. Just a clean, effective interface allowing you to do exactly what you had in mind - without any distraction. E.g. the number of Twitter clients on the iPhone is staggering, it's very unlikely that you can't find a client that you like. All major smart phones of today have a native Facebook client. If not - you can use the mobile version of Facebook at http://m.facebook.com.
If you haven't tried i yet - start visiting your daily websites from you smartphone instead. I think you'll be surprised how much clutter and crap you are spared. N.b. if you don't have unlimited data in you contract please be sure to use the WiFi connectivity instead since mobile data over 3G comes with a price tag.
