I did an article recently for All About Symbian about the state of budget phones, partly with regard to their web browsing abilities. As an example I looked at the new Nokia 5000, which is a bottom-of-the-range budget phone aimed at developing countries:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/featu...can_do_now.php



There are two major things here:

- Nokia is now starting to bundle Opera Mini with even the cheapest new models, so even the most casual low-budget users will now have a chance to see PC websites on their phones

- Nokia has recently said they're going to put the WebKit browser on their non-smart phones as standard (they already put it on their S60 smartphones several years ago).

WebKit, for those who are unfamiliar, is the open source browser which forms the core of Apple's Safari browser and Nokia's S60 browser.

In other words, the cheapest budget phone models are soon going to have a similar browser core to the iPhone.

This could be a very interesting development indeed, because these phones cost literally one fifth to one tenth the price of a typical smartphone. You can buy them unlocked without a contract for under $100, and the lowest price models can go under $50.

Budget phones form the majority of sales worldwide, and are bought by people in even the poorest parts of the world, who often may have no other access to computing devices.