Included in the blurb for the google reader making its way to the iphone is:
... iPhone and iPod Touch owners know how powerful having a full-featured browser is.
The iphone's Safari browser is not to be under-estimated. Many, many years ago the company I was with was looking for some mobile solution to update tickets from the field. We tried laptops, but back then they were too expensive for everyone to have one. We tried a proprietary application running on an iPaq; but there was too much data. We tried the ATT browser on the blackberries too; but it was WML and really stunk up the joint.
In the end the version of the Blackberry with the RIM browser came out and a special version of the website was made for it. The curious thing was very few people used the special mobile website, they used the normal website and put up with the display inefficiencies.
A few of the techs eschewed the Blackberry altogether for browsing, using it only for email and phone calls. Instead they used laptops and a fully featured browser to go through the website they worked with.
The great thing about Safari on the iphone is that it makes no compromises for being a mobile application. You can view the web page is if it were on a laptop or desktop browser. It has magnifying functions which have a great algorithm for identifying blocks of text. You can also rotate the browser sideways and the view of the page will change to longways and vice versa.
However; it is a fully featured browser. That is the key IMO. It is why I like the iphone's safari browser and where the WML/WAP garbage and RIM have screwed up in the past.
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