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User:TheDJ/Mobile access

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File:Wikipedia-m-mobil.jpg
Wikipedia mobile on an iPod Touch

It is possible to access Wikipedia on wireless devices such as mobile telephones and PDAs. Several methods exist for this and each has advantages and disadvantages.

Official online version

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The official mobile version of the English Wikipedia. Users of supported mobile devices will be automatically redirected to this Mobile webinterface of Wikipedia.

The mobile version is available for all versions of Wikipedia. It is actively developed, supported and translated. Editing is not yet possible and you might want to use a third party solution as an alternative. If you do no appreciate the mobile interface, you can navigate to the actual Wikipedia or choose to disable the mobile interface permanently on your device. You can find these options at the bottom of any page. I you have permanently disabled the automatic redirect to the mobile interface and have since changed your mind, you can use the activation page, to restore the automatic redirect behavior.

Opera Mini

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Wikipedia mobile on Opera Mini 5.

Many older phones have poor browsers. If you have a Java capable browser, you might consider installing Opera Mini, a Java-based Internet browser for mobile phones. Opera Mini has a built-in Wikipedia search facility.

Official iPhone application

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The official iPhone application from the Wikimedia Foundation is Wikipedia Mobile. It is free and provides a read-only version of Wikipedia, that is very similar to the mobile web version of Wikipedia.

Mobile access provided by 3rd parties

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Many users and developers have created their own systems to access Wikipedia on a variety of devices.

Wapedia

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One of the most prominent Wikipedia portals for mobile devices is Wapedia. Having started in August 2004, Wapedia offers the recent version of every article. Next to Wikipedia, it can provide access to the sister projects Wiktionary, Wikiquote and many other popular wikis. Wapedia pages currently contain advertisements inserted by the site's owners.[1] It supports a wide range of devices and even some of the oldest mobile devices can be used to access Wikipedia trough this website.

Sevenfal

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Sevenval AG offers a free real-time transformation of the current Wikipedia. The link to the service is http://wikipedia.7val.com. It offers a full-blown version of Wikipedia for all kinds of mobile devices. This enables mobile users to edit articles and administer their personal accounts. Wikipedia's sister projects – Wiktionary, etc. – can be accessed via this service as well. 50 languages of Wikipedia are supported. [2]

The following features are currently available.

  • Device recognition of mobiles, smartphones, PDAs, etc., which enables the individualised adaptation of the presentation transmitted to different types of devices.
  • Complete administration of articles including editing*, history, discussions, etc.
  • Complete administration of user accounts and automatic login if cookies are allowed.
  • Automatic language recognition at wikipedia.7val.com.
  • Direct access to 50 language by using a URL prefix, for example http://en.wikipedia.7val.com for English and http://fi.wikipedia.7val.com for Finnish. A list of languages can found here.

* Editing is currently disabled on the English wikipedia due to the service being blocked as an open proxy.

Pediaphon

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A computer-generated audio (speech synthesis) version of all Wikipedia articles is provided by the Pediaphon service. It is usable on- and off-line with common MP3 players, PDAs, cell phones (WAP) and with every phone via voice call. Pediaphon can be used as a location based service.

Miniwiki

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Miniwiki is a simple mobile site for Pocket PC and Palm device. It synchronizes its content with Wikipedia at real time.

Boopsie

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A read only version of Wikipedia is available at http://wikipedia.boopsie.com/. This mobile phone download supports BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian S60, J2ME, Android, and iPhone. (A BREW version is available but must be side-loaded.)

Applications

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iPhone applications

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Several iPhone applications exist for browsing Wikipedia. All the applications so far are read-only versions of Wikipedia. Currently, the only way to edit Wikipedia on an iPhone is to access it via Safari. The links will open the iTunes Store:

Android applications

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WikiPock

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WikiPock for Windows Mobile screenshots

WikiPock is a mobile application that provides offline access to all Wikipedia articles in 19 languages for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android and Symbian OS mobile phones. All the articles are stored in the mobile phone's memory.

Refs

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  1. ^ Wapedia.mobi - Homepage. Retrieved 2010-02-18.
  2. ^ "Sevenval: Wikipedia:". Retrieved 2008-02-25.