The iPhone’s ‘Real Internet’ Doesn’t Matter To Me—7 WAP Sites That Do

I’ll be the first to admit, the idea of having a full on desktop browser in the palm of my hand is something to lust over. But you know what? Who cares. Sure Apple has done some really great things with Safari on the iPhone that make browsing websites on a smaller screen tolerable. I’m not into all the extra scrolling, or tapping to zoom in/out is all that necessary when you have simple WAP sites out there.

When done properly these sites allow you to get what you need quickly and easily. Sure they are abbreviated versions of their big brothers, but when I’m away from my desktop that’s all I need. The funny thing is most web apps being developed for the iPhone are nothing more than simplified versions of commonly used sites, with a cleaned up UI and fancy animations and AJAX junks. So maybe that’s were all this WAP stuff will eventually evolve into…

For now, the following are WAP enabled sites I can’t live without, especially on my lunch breaks. :-)
Oh and you don’t need a fancy smartphone to use these sites, any mobile phone with access to the Internet will do.

1. Google Reader
http://www.google.com/reader/m

I’m a RSS feed whore and Google Reader makes it so easy to keep up on all my subscriptions. The best part is if I read an article on my phone it’s marked as read and won’t show up later when I read from my iMac at home. You can do pretty much anything you’d expect to, all on your phone.

• Read articles
• Browse by tags
• Browse by subscriptions
• Star an article
• Mark articles as unread

2. Digg
http://diggriver.com

When you want to digg or browse top stories on your mobile phone, diggriver.com is the jam. It does have a few hang-ups though:

• Can’t bury stories. Can only digg them.
• Can’t view or add comments on stories.
• Viewing the original story can get screwy since it often links to non WAP sites.

3. Wikipedia
http://wapedia.mobi/en

This has come in handy a few times when I needed to know a piece of trivia to impress my friends. Sweet! Works like it’s big brother.

4. Flickr
http://m.flickr.com

Flickr makes it easy to upload photos from your mobile phone and now it’s even easier to browse them from your phone. You can’t edit photo details as far as I can tell, but other than that it gets the job done well.

• Search for photos by keyword and tags
• Upload photos (or send by email)
• View your contacts photos
• View and add comments to photos

5. Vox
http://www.vox.com

Vox is great social community for blogging that is heavily integrated with other web services. It makes sharing posts containing images, video, and music with friends and family super simple. They even have an application that you can install on your phone or Palm to make posting even easier.

• Create posts
• Read posts from your neighborhood or just explore the recently added
• Search posts
• View/add comments on posts and media
• Organize your library of media

6. Ebay
http://wap2.bonfiremedia.com

Now you don’t have to worry about being at your computer minutes before an auction ends to get in a last minute bid. Just watch an items bidding history right from your phone now! Does pretty much everything you’d need it to do.

• View items you are bidding on, watching, selling, won, and more
• Bid on items
• Search for items
• View listings with full descriptions and gallery pictures

7. Facebook
http://m.facebook.com

Wow a social networking site that actually gets it. If you’ve ever tried to open Myspace on your phone Facebook’s mobile version will be a treat. When you log in your home screen resembles one you’re used to, complete with all the things your friends have been up to. The profiles are simplified and don’t support 3rd party apps that might have been added, but all the basic information is still there.

• View profiles
• Send messages
• Leave notes on friends’ walls
• Update your status
• View photos
• Check events