As John said, phone browsers vary as much (actually, more) than their
desktop counterparts.
much more actually ...
On the phone, there are a few different environments I'd test in:
1. Safari (WebKit is the primary browser on Nokia S60 devices, as well as
the iPhone of course. There are some compatibility differences, but it's
the best way to check, short of actually using the device)
2. Opera Mini (has quite significant market penetration on mobile
devices. I believe I read somewhere that it was the number 1 browser, but
that may not be true)
3. IE on a Windows Mobile device. I have no idea how to test this other
than on the device itself. I'm not aware of how it differs with IE/Win.
Those are the high-end of mobile browsers ...
Currently only a small proportion of phone browsers in actual use out there
would be using those.
What about "UP-Browser", etc?
... and those rather limited and very diverse browsers that come with phones
... phone users are more likely to be using the phone's built-in browser
than something they have to install themselves such as Opera Mini.
If the only mobile devices you are seeing in your logs are the high-end ones
you mentioned perhaps it is because it is not really a truly mobile-friendly
site!
The way to go for phones made in the last few years is mobile xhtml -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML_Mobile_Profile
- if you want to support older phones you will need a wml version as well.
(you will need both wml and xhtml versions because some of the newer phones
no longer support wml and many old phones ONLY support wml - yes its a
standards nightmare!)
Remember that phone users are usually using very small screens - keep
navigation simple - and try to avoid creating situations where the user has
to spend a lot of time scrolling to get to what they want!
also - try to break long pages up into small ones (some older phones will
not handle long pages due to memory restrictions)
Avoid using flash or javascript - not many phones in current use support
those!
some links that may be useful:
http://www.openmobilealliance.org/
http://developer.openwave.com/
http://www.forum.nokia.com/
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/p_s/imode/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language
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