It goes with out saying that mobile devices are getting faster and better. With the introduction of the iphone, G1, and new Blackberry phones, running fully compliant web browsers is now a reality for many mobile users. Previously, very small screen size and limited computing power has restricted interactivity of small mobile devices with the internet.

When mobile phones started to be come very common in the late 90s, a new protocol called WAP was developed to standardized web interfaces on mobile phones. Due to the bandwidth and screen size constraints, a the WAP protocol uses a limited subset of HTML which minimal styling features. Any phone with an internet connection and wap browser can view simplified web applications with this technology. This worked well enough for first generation cell phones with their tiny screens and puny processing power. However, with today’s mobile phones having support for browsers such as firefox, safari, and ie, WAP is no longer the only game in town.

What does the future hold for WAP applications? It won’t go away completely as there are still millions of phones out there which support the protocol (and can’t browse the regular web). And many people will choose to keep their phones rather than upgrade to the more expensive data plans. However, with the explosive growth of android and iphone applications, wap apps will continue to become less relevant int today’s market, and phone hardware and software will only get cheaper and better.

With the introduction of the next generation platforms like iphone and android, we see a shift towards heavier clients and better user experience. With phone support for full featured browsers, websites and applications can leverage the latest xhtml and css technologies on these mobile technologies and this will probably spell the end of the WAP protocol as a compelling technology in the not too distant future.

Tags: blackberry, iphone, mobile development, mobile phones, software, wap