Reqwireless For Blackberry Reviewed

Posted
by
Kyle McInnes
on May 26, 2005, at 7:02 AM
in Reviews
.
Comments: 6 responses
6 Comments

Features

It is a browser so there aren’t too many features necessarily. There is a feature I have become accustom to in a PC browser. The “form auto fill” feature gives you the ability to add information into the browser for when I get to a site asking for my information so I can add it to the site’s forms without typing. I was very surprised a handheld browser had this. There is also a cache which can be configured to cache site for you to help speed things up a bit for those site you hit often. Use caution here because if you cache too much you will run out of memory.

Other features include (off their site);
• Browsing of HTML content
• Images, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP formats
• Bookmarks and folders
• History
• Configurable cache
• JavaScript
• Cookies and cookie management
• Forms
• Frames
• Security via HTTPS (if supported by the device), basic authentication
• HTTP, HTTPS, mailto, FTP, and gopher URLs
• Viewing of ZIP, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Corel WordPerfect and Adobe PDF documents
• Viewing of images at their full size or scaled to fit the device’s screen width
• Optical character recognition for faxes and scanned documents
• Easy to use with no horizontal scrolling required
• Support for Unicode and many character encodings

Negative Only one negative I found that really stuck out. It could be a setting but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t OTA (over the air) installs of anything. I could go to the exact URL and install using the Blackberry browser without issue. Not sure what it is but it should be fixed especially with the popularity of 3rd party software growing.

Support

There isn’t a support number to call, not that I would have, but there is a pretty good user’s guide and FAQ that handles most of the general questions. This product has been around a while and it is obvious in the information provided by Reqwireless and in many forums out there. I was disappointed not find a forum on the Reqwireless site though. I guess with as many Blackberry forums out there it is easier to let those forum administrators handle that and just shadow their forums.

Conclusion

When you compare this browser to the Blackberry browser and the NOL browser you can tell Reqwireless has been doing this for while. The way they handle most sites without making them look jumbled up and maintain a respectable speed with or without images makes it apparent they are the class of browsers. It always made me feel like there was more under the hood but the network isn’t there to really push it.

The program is available for $29.99 at Neon Toad, http://www.neontoad.com

Reviewed by Byron Bacher

Visit the following page for screenshots …

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  • Pete

    Hi nice article, a couple of comments :-

    Webviewer (and in fact other reqwireless products) can be installed OTA on BB’s that support it via hxxp://www.reqwireless.com/wap_bb. my only other quibble would be the fact that as mentioned OTA downloads via webviewer do not appear to be supported, this may not be the end of the world as even the basic browser on the BB will now do this with most carriers, when it could be a issue (I guess) is if the site which you wish to dl from can only be accessed on webviewer and not the basic browser.

    Also as yet it does not appear to display svg (the blackberry demo portal is only show in the plain vanilla version!, thus missing out on the free games!!).

    However it’s great for online banking, ebay etc, and well worth the price if you need regular access to these sorts of sites but currently dont have this on your BB!!

  • Pete

    Hi nice article, a couple of comments :-

    Webviewer (and in fact other reqwireless products) can be installed OTA on BB’s that support it via hxxp://www.reqwireless.com/wap_bb. my only other quibble would be the fact that as mentioned OTA downloads via webviewer do not appear to be supported, this may not be the end of the world as even the basic browser on the BB will now do this with most carriers, when it could be a issue (I guess) is if the site which you wish to dl from can only be accessed on webviewer and not the basic browser.

    Also as yet it does not appear to display svg (the blackberry demo portal is only show in the plain vanilla version!, thus missing out on the free games!!).

    However it’s great for online banking, ebay etc, and well worth the price if you need regular access to these sorts of sites but currently dont have this on your BB!!

  • http://www.abidia.com/ Mike

    It would be nice to have OTA support.

  • http://www.abidia.com Mike

    It would be nice to have OTA support.

  • Babeth

    I have the reqwireless webviewer on my Nextel’s 7520 and it works very nicely, WHEN it does. The problem I’m having is that it continuously gives me the “max page opened” or “bad DNS Address” every now and then, usually when I need it the most. I usually have to turn off the device, REMOVE the battery for a couple of minutes, and then it works. But this technique does not always reset it to work either. Any advice about that?

  • Babeth

    I have the reqwireless webviewer on my Nextel’s 7520 and it works very nicely, WHEN it does. The problem I’m having is that it continuously gives me the “max page opened” or “bad DNS Address” every now and then, usually when I need it the most. I usually have to turn off the device, REMOVE the battery for a couple of minutes, and then it works. But this technique does not always reset it to work either. Any advice about that?