Update: Bolt was updated to Version 2.11 today. This update fixes a long-standing Bolt bug that caused some pages to stop loading at 20%. It does not contain any new features.

Bolt 2.1 marked the end of Beta status for Bolt 2 and included several enhancements.

For iDEN users the biggest new features in 2.1 are better Facebook integration including support for Facebook chat and other web-based chat apps and the ability to post messages, links or URLs from any page displayed in BOLT directly to your Facebook account without navigating away from the currently viewed page.

The other new features in Bolt 2.1 are video related (support for HTML5 video and more more video site) and don't apply to iDEN users because the network is too slow for video streaming.

The updated version seems to run fine on my i776  and updating will get rid of the nag messages telling you to update every time you launch it. The links at the end of this post point to the latest release.

The last major update was 2.0 which added the following new features:

• Tabbed Browsing - Highlight a link and choose "Open In New Tab" from the menu. Switch between tabs by going to the top of the page and clicking a different tab  or use the keyboard shortcuts:
• New keypad shortcuts:
  • z#+left - previous tab, #+right - next tab
  • #+up - new tab and #+ down - close tab
• Facebook Integration - Update your Facebook status within Bolt. Updates are pre-populated with the current page's URL and are editable so you can add your own comments.

To Update Bolt keep your bookmarks, feeds and history: Use the "Send To Phone" button below to send Bolt 2.o2 to your Boost iDEN or Nextel phone. Then highlight Bolt in the Java Apps menu, press the "Menu" soft key and choose "Update". Choose to "Keep existing data" when prompted and you won't lose your bookmarks and settings.

This is the "Full" version of the  Bolt Browser. It's a big app that uses a lot of resources but I think that it is preferable to the "Lite" version because of two features; the password manager and copy/paste.

The password manager is a real time and aggravation saver as you only have to log into new sites once and Bolt fills in your ID and password on future visits.

Copy and paste are useful too, although a bit limited. You can only paste into another field in Bolt; like the URL box, blog comment forms, forum posts or a Google search box. You can't copy text from Bolt and paste it into another app like a text message or calendar entry, unfortunately.

Bolt Full should work best on the i9 and i856 which have faster processors than the other iDEN models. But I've found that it is fast and stable on my i776 using the following settings which were suggested by BoostApps reader Jiesen:

• Set magnification to large or greater;
• Set image quality to low or none;
• Turn off the inline text input;
• Set the display mode to mobile.

There are a few things in Bolt that don't work: The "OK" button is one, use the green "Call" key instead. Downloading and Videos don't work either due to the limitations inherent in Motorola iDEN phones.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Bitstream- Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series with Java (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.)
File Size: 239 KB

Update: The Lite version of the Bolt Browser was updated to Version 2.11 today. There are no new features in this release, however it contains a fix for a long standing Bolt bug that caused page loading to stop at 20% on some sites.

Bolt 2.1 added support for Facebook chat and other web-based chat apps and the ability to post messages, links or URLs from any page displayed in BOLT directly to your Facebook account without navigating away from the currently viewed page.

Bolt 2.0 added tabbed browsing and FaceBook integration to the  low memory version of the Bolt browser.  See the Bolt 2.11 Full Version Post for more information about the new features in 2.0 and 2.1

The links at the end of this post have been updated to point to the latest release.

To Update Bolt: Use the "Send To Phone" button below to send Bolt Lite 2.02 to your phone.  Then highlight Bolt in the Java Apps menu, press the "Menu" soft key and choose "Update".  Choose to "Keep existing data" when prompted and you won't lose your bookmarks and settings.

This is the "Lite" version which uses less memory is a smaller download (154 KB vs. 239 KB) than the "Full" version.  I don't recommend the Lite one unless you are having stability problems with the full version as it lacks two very useful features; copy/paste and the password manager. Other features found in the full version that are missing from Bolt Lite include landscape orientation, socket protocol support, favorites/feeds organization, inline editing, find in page feature, widgets and 3XL magnification.

Tip: The OK button does not work in Bolt on iDEN phones, use the green Call key instead to click links and menu items.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Bitstream- Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series with Java (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.)
File Size: 154 KB

Since I posted Opera Mini 5.1 a couple of days ago several readers have commented that it generally works OK on their i856s and i9s  but frequently crashes causing the phone to reboot. Opera Mini 3.1 and 4.2 had the same problem and the fix was to add the line:

iDEN-MIDlet-miniJIT: off

To the app's JAD file. I've done the same for Opera Mini. I don't know if this will help or not as I don't have an i856 or an i9.  So if you have one of these phones try installing this version and letting us all know if it helps or not by leaving a comment.

If you already have Opera Mini 5.1 on your phone, Download Apps will not automatically prompt you to install the new version after downloading it. You need to go to Java Apps, highlight Opera Mini 5.1, press the menu key and choose "Update". Say yes to the prompt "Keep existing application data" so that you don't lose your bookmarks.

If your are trying to run Opera Mini 5.1 on an i465 or any other iDEN handset except the i856 and i9 , it probably won't work. If you want to try it anyway  this version of Opera Mini will probably run even more slowly than the generic 5.1 available here.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Opera Software - Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: i9 and  i856 only
File Size: 267 KB

A new version of Opera Mini was released today that is supposed to work better on phones with small screens (less than 200 px wide) and/or low memory (less than 4 MB free Java Heap).  If Opera Mini 5.1 detects that it is running on a phone with low resources it uses a simplified user interface with a text rather than icon based start screen to reduce memory usage. There's also a new *+0 shortcut to quickly switch between desktop and mobile view

I had high hopes that this would work on my i776 but it doesn't. Just like with 5.0, the app installs and starts up displaying a "loading" progress bar that takes over 10 minutes to reach 90%, at which point the app hangs! I'm posting it for those of you who have a model like the i856, i9 and possibly the i465 that 5.0 worked on.  This version of Opera Mini 5.1has been modified to install alongside of Opera Mini 4.1 and 5.0 rather than replacing them.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Opera Software - Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: confirmed working on i9 and i856, possibly others.
File Size: 267 KB

I don't know much about this browser.  It's seems to be an abandoned commercial product, last updated in 2006 and no longer sold or supported. The publisher was kind enough to upload it to Getjar where it's available for free. It's a trial version but the activation code  to unlock it is 12345.  The code is posted on the GetJar download page.  BoostApps reader Ami found it Minuet on Getjar and recommended it.

Unlike Opera Mini and Bolt which use a server to compress and  optimize pages for mobile use,  Minuet downloads and process pages all by itself just like Internet Explorer or Firefox do on the desktop. Direct mobile browsers like Minuet are slower  than proxy based ones like Opera Mini.  Still Minuet seems pretty quick especially on pages without a lot of images.  I think the trick is that Minuet delivers a simplified  single column view of pages without background clors, borders or other styling. Text is always black on white and all the same size with no bold or italics.

Minuet handles small simple sites like the BoostApps mobile version well, but on larger pages not all images load.  Plus I had trouble logging into a few sites and some pages failed  to  load at all.

Keys: The OK key doesn't work, use ther Call key instead.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: TriPrince
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series (MIDP-2) with Java  (i290, i335, i465, i776 i856, i9, etc.)
File Size: 200 KB

Opera released the "final"  (not Beta) version of Opera Mini 5 today. The Opera Mini 5 changelog claims that this version has "Improved performance on low memory devices" so I had high hopes that it would work on my i776 where previous releases had not. Unfortuanately it still doesn't work on my i776.  Just like the Betas, it downloads and installs but when I try to run it it hangs when the "loading..." progress bar is at 100%. So close, yet so far.

The last Beta reportedly worked reasonably well on the i9 and i856 so I'm posting the final version for users of those two iDEN phones. It may work on other models but I doubt it.

Normally  installing this release of Opera Mini 5 would replace Opera Mini 4.2, if it's installed.  Seeing as 5 doesn't work at all on iDEN phones and prior versions had some issues even on the i9 and i856, I've renamed this copy from "Opera Mini" to "Opera Mini 5" (following this "Renaming Java Applications" tutorial) so that it can coexist with 4.2 rather than replacing it.  You can safely download and install this version of Opera Mini 5 without affecting your Opera Mini 4.2 installation.

If you download this please leave a comment as to whether it works or not and what phone you are using. And if it fails to install or you encounter bugs please also file a bug report at mini.bugs.opera.com. When filing a report it will ask you for the build number and version.  The values you should enter are 18635 and "5.0".  Filing bug reports is the best way of getting problems with software fixed.  You can also report issues on the Opera Mini User Forum, but bug reports are supposed to be more effective.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Opera Software - Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: confirmed working on i9 and i856, possibly others.

Update: I've managed to modify this app to use the same US based English server as UCWEB's official English releases.  This means that Facebook, Twitter, My Opera and all the other sites that were blocked by China's "Great Firewall" are no longer blocked. In addition the start page is in English instead of Chinese (which appeared as a bunch of little boxes because iDEN phones don't have Chinese fonts).

This is an unofficial translation of the UCWEB Browser's version 6.7.0.32  for "low memory" phones.  Only these rare low memory versions work on iDEN phones. The full versions all fail to install, even the just released 7.0 version. You don't really give much up though, the main difference is that the low memory releases omit the download manager,  SMS sending and calling  features, none of which would work on iDEN phones anyway because Motorola's "security" blocks 3rd party apps from accessing the file system, microphone and messaging.

Compared with the earlier UCWEB 6.0 and 6.3 versions I've posted on BoostApps this one has a couple of very nice enhancements.  It has a new "small" bit mapped font that looks looks great on my i776 and it does word wrap instead of splitting lines in the middle of words. Scrolling is much faster than with Opera Mini 4.2 or Bolt and images and text are fit to screen width so horizontal scrolling is never needed.

The only thing I haven't been able to change is that the browser still sends "zn-ch" in the HTTP accept-language header.  This causes some sites including Google to serve their Chinese version.  It's usually possible to switch to the English one.  With Google click the  "Google in English" link at the bottom of most pages.

I really like this browser. Although pages don't look as nice as they do in Opera Mini and Bolt,  the user interface is much less "laggy" and it has tabbed browsing and copy/paste.

Some tips for getting the most out of UCWEB:

• Go into Menu -> Set -> System Settings and change the following:
• Set Text section to "Do not use sub -" To keep the browser from splitting pages which isn't needed on iDEN phones.
• Change Picture Quality to "Standard" ("Low Color" is faster but pretty ugly, "Full Color" is slow and doesn't look much better than Standard
• Change User-Agent to "Safari" if you like to see the full versions of sites or to "Openwave" if you prefer sites to server their mobile web version.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: UC.cn, translated by Sergyu - Product Page, Forum, Manual
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Today's free app download was recommended by a reader.  It's a web browser called mJetz.  It comes with a large number of predefined bookmarks for news and sports sites, web mail services, social networks and IM services plus a built in RSS reader.

mJetz has a rather quirky and inefficient user interface that takes some getting used to.

The actual browsing experience isn't bad especially with mobile web sites. Pages load quickly, as does mJetz itself. Web sites are reformatted into a single column and most formatting, including background and text colors, is removed leaving just text, links, web forms and images.

Using desktop sites in mJetz is more problematic as large pages they are split into many smaller pages and scrolling is slow.  The HowardForums.com homepage is split into no less than eight pages and that's just the first two thirds of it. The bottom third of the HoFo page is missing entirely in mJetz.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: mJetz - Product Page
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.)

This is the latest version of the UCWEB browser I've found that runs on Motorola iDEN phones.  It's an unofficial English translation of the original Chinese release of  the UCWEB 6.3 Low Memory version.  Like the official 6.0 low memory version that I posted a few weeks ago, this one has tabbed browsing and copy/paste.  New features include:

• Lots of handy new one and two key shortcuts and two key shortcuts. Choose "Open > Help" from the menu to see the one key short cuts.  Press the "#" key to show the two key shortcuts which all start with the "#"  key.
• Online help.
• Image zoom works
• View browsing history.
• Night mode - White text on black background.

There is one area where 6.3 is inferior to 6.0 however.  Although the browser's menus and prompts have been translated to English the 6.3 browser still sends a header to Web sites saying that the user's preferred language is Chinese. As a result a some sites send the Chinese version of their pages.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: UCFly, translated by mannuforall - Product Page, Forum, Manual
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Falcon Series (i776, i465, i9, i290, etc.

iDEN-MIDlet-miniJIT: off

If you want a slightly longer technical explanation it's here.
If you have an i9 or i856 you should use this version of Opera Mini 4.2.  Users of other models should use the generic version as the iDEN-MIDlet-miniJIT: off directive will cause a performance degradation on anything except the i9 and i856.

If you already have Opera Mini 4.2 on your phone, Download Apps will not automatically prompt you to install the new version after downloading it. You need to go to Java Apps, highlight Opera Mini, press the menu key and choose "Update". Say yes to the prompt "Keep existing application data" so you don't lose your bookmarks.

Type: Freeware
Vendor: Opera Software - Product Page, Online Help, Forum
Data Connection Required: Yes
Supported iDEN phones: All Zeus Series (i9, i856) only