What Constitutes a Good WAP Phone

By Daniel Cheung
WAP phones in Australia at the moment are pretty limited in terms of range at
the moment. However, overseas there is a variety of products that are
available. We at iMobile have some of the WAP phone offerings that have
appeared (or soon will) in Australia. We give our opinions of each WAP
phone and also a simple summary. Watch out for further details on these
phones on our Future Phones section.
What is WAP?
Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP, is a set of technological
standards that allows mobile phones to surf the Internet. For more
information on how WAP works, click here.
How WAP Works
WAP mobile phones surf the Internet by reading specially-created web
pages. These web pages are different from the web pages (written using
html) that you can access on your home PC. WAP mobile phones read wml web
pages instead. Usually these wml pages are in text-only format, with
simple pictures only. This is to cater for two things: firstly, the amount
of data that can be transmitted over a mobile connection is limited - only 9.4
Kbps at best; secondly, WAP phones at the moment only display information in
black and white.
WAP Phones on Offer in Australia
The following are some of the WAP phones that you already see or will see in
the Australian market.
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