If the 21st century has so far been characterized by amazing technological prowess, then it will surely, one day also be remembered for the neglect of the brightest breakthrough in recent years: the ability to surf the web from your cell phone.
Why do the stream of business, banking, entertainment and news information need to halt just because your computer or pc isn’t at hand, when you can access the web from wherever you are with your cell phone?   
The popular response would probably be that cell phones don’t provide as good a web experience as computers. Probably, but it is but compounding the problem.
The real reason why users have been reluctant to use their cell phones more often is because of the pricing structure that operators have been implementing, charging users for all the downloaded data, regardless if they wanted it or not.

So, why is the user experience still not good enough? Mainly because no one envisaged that cell phones would become popular. Secondly, when they became popular, who would have thought that cell phones would be used for anything but making calls let alone have more than 60 functions of which browsing is but one?

The good old days are finally about to change with manufacturers creating smartphones for the exact purpose of browsing (of course it still has all the other functions, SMSing, calling, etc). At this stage, Symbian is the leader of the pack in the operating systems market, while Opera is doing the same, in terms of browsers.

Rumor has it that Opera is the only mobile browser with access to the whole web, rather than a WAP-only version.
That is not even the most impressive aspect about the browser: It takes between 5 – 7 seconds to access a site and then half that time to move within it; Opera compresses data sufficiently so that users save between 80% and 90% on pay-as-you-go and it accounts for more than 50% of mobile data usage; it is also the browser of choice for Motorola, Sony Ericsson and HTC.

Then there’s Yahoo!'s oneSearch, that will have a ‘carousel’ feature which will enable users to move between news, instant email and weather reports, instantly. With new products from Apple and Google also on the horizon, it is plain to see that consumers will have their hands full deciding with what browser to go.