The results are surprisingly good

NJN Network on iPhone

Update – December 2013 – NJN Mobile has been retired. The new NJN Network site fits Apple, Android and Windows mobile devices without an app. This is the future.

Please give NJN Mobile a try to tell us what is working for you and what is not.  There is nothing special you need to do – just bookmark our site in your mobile browser and check it out.

When I first got an iPhone using it for web access was horribly slow. Pages were taking 1-2 minutes to appear. Moving to the next page was painful.

As the demand for smart phone access has increased, new software has improved smart phone access.

Two weeks ago we installed a widget that translates web pages into smart phone pages. Since then we’ve tweaked the software and think it’s working very well.

On 3G service, our main page loads in 6-10 seconds which isn’t that slower than on a computer. Instead of a picture thumbnail, we show the date and headline.  The front page loads faster and you can see the newest stories for the day.  Update – with faster speeds using thumbnails is possible.

The pages are sized to fit the iPhone and the text is readable.

YouTube videos play but Flash videos don’t. That’s an Apple limitation. Video on smart phone is painfully slow. You are at the mercy of bad connections and too much data.

Benchmarking NJN Network against other news sites, CBC takes about 15-30 seconds from the front page and then 10-20 seconds for the next pages.

From what I can tell, CBC sends you from their normal site to an iPhone site. Our widget determines if you are on a smart phone or computer almost immediately which saves time.

The Charlottetown Guardian does not use smart phone readers so it’s really slow – more than a minute per page. The page you get is not formatted for the iPhone. You can move around the Guardian front page with two fingers and re-size text but it’s a painfully slow process.

Of the US news sites, CNN is the fastest. They load something you can read or select in about 5 seconds. The page continues to load for up to 30 seconds after that. Getting to a selected story takes 5 seconds.  Again pictures and other things take longer but you can read quickly.

The Washington Post is slightly slower, about 10 seconds to read the front page and 10 seconds for the story.

CBS News is slower 10-20 seconds to load the page and still loading after 30 seconds. Next page times are the same, 10-20 seconds.

Turning the iPhone horizontal makes the fonts bigger on all pages except the Charlottetown Guardian.

CNN has an Money app with video, which I couldn’t test yet. None of the sites show video since 85% are using Adobe Flash and Apple doesn’t support Flash.

Give some of the services a try. We’d appreciate your opinion on NJN Mobile. Thanks