4. Mobile Web

Browsing the Web on a small screen is always going to be difficult, especially since you get a cut-down version of the browser you're used to, with few plug-ins. Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile supports JavaScript (but not VBScript), FTP, cookies, SSL, XSL, animated GIFs and AJAX; you can also force wide Web pages to display in a single column, so you only scroll down and not across.

A BlackBerry might come with two browsers: the basic WAP browser, often branded to the cellular network; and a more powerful HTML browser that can render XHTML, WML, SVG and image files. The latter supports JavaScript, but this is turned off for speed: choose Options > Browser Configuration to turn on scripting, stylesheets, tables and other features. If you can't see the HTML browser, use the configuration Web site for BlackBerry email to resend the service book.

The MiniMap Nokia browser helps you navigate full-size Web sites on a small screen.

The browser you get on a Symbian phone varies depending on what the phone manufacturer decides to license. Nokia has the MiniMap browser based on the WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari Web Kit, which shows a 'map' of the Web page with a box you can move to choose which section to zoom in on. You can also open multiple Web pages at once, auto-fill fields, save passwords and subscribe to RSS feeds.

Opera Mini reformats and compresses Web pages to make them faster and make them fit the small screen.

There are several alternative browsers for Windows Mobile and Symbian; the most popular is Opera, which is sometimes bundled with devices. Opera Mobile reformats pages on the screen so you don't have to scroll sideways; Opera Mini is designed for less powerful phones, and works with a server that reformats pages and compresses them by up to 90%, so pages load faster and are simpler to navigate. Minimo is a cut-down version of Mozilla for Windows Mobile that adds tabbed browsing; NetFront offers tabbed browsing for Windows Mobile and Symbian; Bitstream Thunderhawk has a split-screen mode.

To use Flash on a Symbian or Windows Mobile smartphone, get a copy of Flash Lite 2.1 from Adobe (it doesn't need to be pre-installed on phones any more). Version 3 will support video in Flash later this year - so it should let you view YouTube videos. There isn't a BlackBerry Flash player.