PRODUCT REVIEW
The iPhone's Surfing Safari

First, the joy.

The Safari-based Web browser application on the iPhone renders many Web pages exactly how they were designed -- but in a mini version. By using the expand and pinch finger gestures on the touch screen, you can easily zoom in and out of the page. To center text or a photo, all you have to do is flick your finger across the screen to move the page, which is actually pretty easy and intuitive. In no time, you'll be whipping pages all over the iPhone screen with ease.

The screen, by the way, is bright and sharp. When I loaded a Web page for the first time, the mini page looked impossibly small. By zooming in, though, it reloaded and expanded quickly -- even on the fly as a page was loading. For most every Web page, the text also renders extraordinarily sharply, no matter what level of zoom you end up with. Photos, although small, also look fantastic on the iPhone's screen.

Overall, any Web page built primarily with HTML (hypertext markup language) gives you a great experience.

So Handy

Just having a powerful Web browser that lets you access the real Web, enter data in forms, buy online, and launch Web pages with a single tap from within e-mail and other iPhone applications is so handy you'll never want to go back to a regular phone.

Plus, the iPhone learns from your browsing habits. Safari stores your recent pages, which you can flick through, and while the content must reload each time you visit, having a virtual book of pages is useful for the sites you go to often. You can use your bookmarks, too, of course. A similar feature is the iPhone's memory of places you've visited before. As you type in the Web address manually, you'll get some drop down options as it tries to anticipate where you're going. Simply tap the URL you want, and it'll send you there.

Looking Up the World

You can always dial 411 if you know the name of the business or person you're trying to find a phone number for, but having online yellow pages, Wikipedia , Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) handy almost everywhere you go is a convenience that quickly becomes indispensable. To type into a form field, all you have to do is tap the little image of the form and Safari recognizes that you want to input text, so it automatically enlarges and centers the form field and brings up the touch-screen keyboard.

Like most features on the iPhone, surfing the Web gets tiresome the more you use it. This is simply due to the small form factor, and I doubt any other mobile device could possibly make the inherent problem much better. While I enjoy reading a couple articles out of the New York Times and checking out what my colleagues are writing for MacNewsWorld, my patience with the form factor only lasts for 10- to 20-minute bursts.

The iPhone's WiFi power is snappy for most pages, but AT&T's (NYSE: T) EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) network is survivable, too, particularly if you're using your iPhone off the WiFi grid, where you normally wouldn't get laptop or PC connectivity in the first place.

Blinded From Flash

By far the biggest problem with iPhone Web browsing is the lack of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash support . Many cool Web pages utilize flash (and even some that aren't particularly cool). If the Web server for a given Flash site is smart enough to realize that you're surfing in on an iPhone and that you don't have Flash support, some will redirect you to a non-Flash version -- or give you the option to navigate there.

However, that's not always an acceptable solution. Here's one example of the bitter disappointment you might feel when you really need flash.

I have a cousin-in-law who's in college, who has a band, who's actually a pretty good singer. At a family event this weekend, we were talking about his band and his songs. I did a quick Web search, didn't find his band, so called him up to get the URL. When he heard I had an iPhone, he was totally jealous, but I ended the call and typed in the URL with several family members gathered around the iPhone.

The page started to load, then boom, the curtain came down -- we needed Flash to enter the site. Not only am I not seeing the Web site, I'm stuck saying, "Sorry, everybody, the Web site uses a cool Flash technology that my iPhone doesn't support."

The band's MySpace page? Most of it loads, but not the music. Same problem.

Word on the street is that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is working on developing an Adobe Flash plug-in, which is widely expected to appear within a few months. We iPhone aficionados can only hope.

The Web, Made for iPhone

There are new applications, however, based on Web 2.0 standards that are cropping up for use with the iPhone. You can play games, like "Chess," "Blackjack," "Bowling" and "Tetris," or track your budget and spending via MyBudge for your iPhone, or use special apps for watching videos and movie trailers, or get more robust weather forecasts using AccuWeather.com's iPhone Weather Widget.

To use any of these applications, you have to have a WiFi or EDGE network connection, so they're online apps only. To find them, check out the iPhone Widget List or the iPhone Application List. They're growing all the time.

Mobile Sites On the Rise

Mobile sites are cropping up too, with content built specifically for mobile Web browsers like the iPhone's Safari. Esquire magazine, for example, lets you browse easily-digestable chunks of time-burning content via its mobile page. Others include Flickr's, Yahoo's, and Facebook's mobile pages. Another, Tappity, is a user-generated database of Web sites optimized for iPhone use.

Overall, having the Web is at least as important on your iPhone as having a Phillips-head screwdriver is on a Swiss Army knife -- you might not use it every day, but you wouldn't consider buying a Swiss Army knife without one.

Plus, I can't help but believe that the iPhone's superior mobile browsing experience is redefining the nature of the mobile Web and consumer expectations for mobile content. Surfing on the iPhone is only going to get better.