Can 4G feature phones rise again on the back of QVGA, thin clients, and remote browsers?
It's hard to get excited about feature phones with 320 x 240 resolution, but Shioupyn Shen thinks precisely such devices are about to bring millions of people to the web in a new way.
Shen is CEO of CloudMosa – a developer that for over a decade has offered a remote browser named Puffin. Remote browsers see devices connect to a browser running in the cloud rather than taxing the processing power of the local device. AWS and Cloudflare both offer remote browsers, and suggest they're a fine way to make web surfing – and SaaS services – more secure and manageable. Among other protections, they prevent copy and paste from browsers, disable uploads and downloads, and prevent malware from reaching a user's device.
CloudMosa has offered its own remote browser since 2010, and in 2020 Shen began to wonder if it could be used to stream websites into feature phones. And if so, how?
His interest in doing so stems from the fact that smartphones remain out of reach for hundreds of millions of people who lack the financial resources to acquire them or live in places where network coverage is scarce or spotty. Shen felt that feature phones could be in demand for many people, but also realized they don't do what people want: namely, provide access to the web.
