One of the things that surprised me a bit at the Showstoppers event ahead of Mobile World Congress tonight was the emphasis a number of companies are placing on alternatives to the mobile browsers that come with your mobile phone. Several of these were browsers I've used before on less capable platforms - notably Opera and Bolt - but I hadn't really thought of them as a replacement for Safari on the iPhone or the built-in browser on Android. Each has a somewhat unique take on what people want with a mobile browser, and might fit in well for particular users.

Opera is probably the best known of the replacement browsers, and the company was showing off the latest version of its Opera Mobile browser. Opera has long pushed things like web page optimization, meaning everything goes through Opera's own servers and that therefore you load pages faster and use less bandwidth. It offers visual previews of open tabs, a built-in password manager, and a link feature for synchronizing browser preferences across devices. In recent months, the company has put out a version for Android, with new support for pinch and zoom features; and it just announced a version for tablets. If you have an Android-based device (or a phone based on Symbian or running Brew), it's worth checking out.

I used to use Bitstream's Bolt a lot on older BlackBerry devices and simple phones, but the browser has come a long way, and is poised to come out for Android now as well. The new version, called 2.5, adds support for using hardware within the device such as a GPS, and adds support for Flash video and HTM audio and video. The big push was for HTML5, with the company showing demos of how well the WebKit-based browser does on the HTML5test.com web page, saying it is more compatible than competing browsers.

appMobi was showing MobiUs, a mobile browser designed to take applications created in the company's ApiMobi platform - based on HTML5, JavaScript and CSS and deploy them to multiple devices, while bypassing the native application stores. The company says that this allows developers to create web-based applications that still can use the native features of the smartphone or tablet - such as the internal camera, GPS, and accelerometer. Such an application it says can run on multiple devices - including Apple and Android ones - but without going through the App Store or Android Market.
 
Many developers and publishers are already using standards-based Web programming languages like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to create feature-rich cross-platform mobile applications. With MobiUs, these apps run within the open-specifications MobiUs Web browser that also utilizes native smartphone and tablet features, without requiring the compiled binary files typical of downloadable native mobile apps. This combination delivers the best of both the mobile Web and native app worlds in a single application. At last, fully-featured WebApps can be distributed through any channel developers and publishers choose - including website downloads - avoiding the often steep fees and content approval processes required by traditional app stores.

It's interesting to see the steps that application developers - and publishers - are willing to do to get around the restrictions in the app stores and on the platforms. While I doubt that most iPhone or Android users are really looking for another browser, it's good to see these folks pushing the envelope. In particular, I can see people who want to use less bandwidth - those on limited plans or travelling overseas -- checking out Opera and Bolt.