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Depending on your mobile connection speed (3g or 2g), surfing on the "interwebs" on your phone can either be fast and fun or slow and frustrating.
Sure, you can’t update your WM device’s radio to a faster protocol, but there is one little trick that takes less than 2 minutes to do that can greatly increase the speed of your mobile browser…switch your DNS severs to OpenDNS.
Read on below for one of the easiest tricks to improve your mobile browsing!
Of course this begs the question of what is DNS and why does it matter? DNS is stands for Domain Name System and acts like a translator for IP address which is a website’s real address e.g. if you want to go to CNN’s website, you just type in www.cnn.com, but it’s real address is 64.236.91.23—of course it would be silly to try and remember that set of numbers, hence DNS. All of this happens transparently: you type in a website name, it then goes to a DNS server to get the real address, sends it back and you’re off to CNN.com.
This process happens on any device that resolves website names: computers, laptops and yes, your mobile phone browser. Luckily, the folks at Microsoft blessed us with a Network Connection panel to modify your DNS server. Why do that? Currently, your DNS server is whatever your carrier (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, etc.) uses—but they might not put such a high priority on DNS lookups, have slow computers or are suffering from network traffic. In turn, this “slows down” your browsing experience—the longer to resolve the DNS, the longer it takes to find that site (the infamous “Locating…” message in your browser). Switching it a faster more efficient system will improve your browsing speed (but not your upload/download speeds)—that system is OpenDNS.com.
Most WM devices should be able do this, depending on your version and if the carrier hid the settings or not. Unfortunately, my Sprint Moto Q does not have the option so AFAIK, you can’t do on that specific Sprint phone, but a device like the 700wx, 6800 and others should have no problems. The folks at OpenDNS have even provided a walk-through to set up your PPC or smartphone, so if you have a minute to spare, head on over and apply this tweak—you’ll be glad you did!
PS Yes, some 3rd party browsers can use this trick too if they have a setting for DNS servers. Post in the comments section if you can tell us what browsers you've been able to use this on or what phones can't use it!
You can also edit the registry on the Sprint Moto Q9c. You will need a registry editor. With the registry editor go to:
HKEY_Local_Machine\Comm\Cellular Line\Parms\TcpIp\DNS
Then you would change the default values to the one mentioned in this article. Always write down the default value in case you need to revert it back to the original settings. Credit to Bid-D at Everythingq.com.