Thread: best website width for smart phones?

I'm used to designing websites for old-school 4:3 monitors, and haven't really made the jump to the newer "wide screen monitors" yet.
But now I'm thinking of redesigning my website and width to be more friendly to mobile / smart phones. Unfortunately, I don't have a "smart" cell phone, and still use a computer for internet browsing.
Anyway, what are your opinions on what the best pixel width is for mobile / smart phone web design?
Thanks!

All smart phones seem to have different sizes, so may be better to design for one of the more popular ones with a smaller screen and set that as the template size but allow it to fill the screen 100% for larger screens.

The smartphone i'm using (HTC Wildfire S) has a 480 x 320 resolution. I have no problem viewing website 1024 x 768 for example, it just depends on the design of the site;if there are not many graphics its easier to see.

Originally Posted by Loko

The smartphone i'm using (HTC Wildfire S) has a 480 x 320 resolution. I have no problem viewing website 1024 x 768 for example, it just depends on the design of the site;if there are not many graphics its easier to see.

hey loko,
Thanks for the reply. I used a fixed width (instead of letting the website expand to fill the screen), so that I can sort of control how things work. I'm wondering if there's a good fixed width, like 800px, 900px, 1024px, or does a smart phone just scale any size to fit. I don't want it to be too small and unreadable, but I also don't want a user to have to scroll back and forth just to read each line. Does that make sense.
i.e. Does it matter if I use 800px for instance, or is that a bad idea?
Thanks!

Have your tried a smart phone emulator? It looks like there are a few available.
I'm not a usability or design export but if you like, you can send me the url of your site so i can have a look.

I've just started studying mobile web design. The problem is that there isn't any standard and almost every brand has multiple resolutions across their different models. Even the iPhones use different resolutions with different models.

There are some PHP tools available that will determine the mobile phone resolution and redirect the user to the correct mobile web page or swap out the CSS file.

The use of mobile and most important the use of Internet on smart mobile phone increase a lot today. So, it is really very important to keep in mind to fix the perfect size of your website taking into consideration that which mobiles are most popular today in market.

The smartphone i'm using (samsung galaxy note) has a 1280 x 800 resolution.it just depends on the design of the site;if there are many application its easier to see.

Yes, it depends on the design of site and it should have lesser width compared to normal.