Tinhat - How does a mobile phone show pages from the web?

Mobile screens are too small to show regular web pages properly. Some kind of translation into another format is needed so the mobile can cope.

There are four places this can happen –

1. at the original web site (web server)
2. at the search engine or directory when a search result is clicked
3. within the network system of the mobile phone provider
4. at the phone itself

In more detail:

• Web servers sometimes recognise they're sending data to a mobile phone, and they send their pages in WAP/WML format (Wireless Mark-up Language) which is fine for mobile phones to display. Alternatively they may send cut-down versions of their regular pages, in XHTML format, knowing that newer phones will be able to cope with the cut-downs. Some sites offer a mirror of their site for mobiles, accessible through a special URL (address), so users can choose to view this version of the site rather than regular pages. The BBC has such a mirror.
• Search engines and directories may also recognise they're in contact with a mobile phone, or have a special URL that users can access to tell the site they want pages in a format suitable for mobiles. Google and Yahoo, for example, offer this service. Instead of returning a regular web page when a link is clicked, they split the page into smaller XHTML chunks and remove most or all of the graphics.
• The network of a mobile phone service provider can also recognise that a user has requested a web page that won't display properly on their mobile. So it converts the page into something more readable before it sends it.
• The mobile itself may recognise that it's receiving something unsuitable, and converts it just before it reaches the screen.

And there are two extra complications.

It's up to your mobile service provider whether they tell web servers, including search engines and directories, that you're a mobile user. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Broadly speaking, a simple old-fashioned WAP phone will usually be recognised by web servers as a mobile, but new-style mobile web phones that have their own internal translation systems often won't be recognised.

As a user, it can be hard to work out where the translation is occurring. There may even be more than one translation. You might access Google one day and see its mobile pages returned, then another day access it in a different way and see something else. It's not always obvious why.

More details on translations
Back to main Tinhat directory page