Pretending to be an iPhone

I don't have any mobile devices that can see the Internet. My phone is so old you can't even send it photos. (Well, you can try and send me a wad of data, which it will not display.) BUT, I am loving the "mobile" versions of websites. Several sites that I try to use regularly take up so much bandwidth (*cough* my bank *cough*) or have slightly broken widgets (*cough* Weight Watchers *cough*) that I can't get reliable operation out of them.

Ah, but the Mobile versions are OPTIMIZED for tiny bandwidth and "just the basics" functionality. So, say it is lunch time at work so the network may as well be dial-up: in this case I can still check transactions at the bank or enter my meal into the online WW planner. Since I'm using a regular browser, this only works for sites that let you "force" mobile, rather than asking the browser if I am really an iPhone before giving me the goods.

If you want to try this out, usually the link to the mobile version of a site is on the main page. And, of course, there's always Google if the Flash-based broken-Java ad-strewn regular website is *gasp* hiding information.