I've tried searching to see if it has been discussed here before, but was unable to find anything...

Vodafone routinely downgrade images when they are sent over it's 3G network, whether it's via mobile or one of their broadband dongles ... on a computer refreshing the page removes this optimisation and the images download at a regular sensible size ... the "reload" function on the n900's regular browser doesn't seem to do this tho ... it's also particularly annoying when you realise they also downgrade any images that you upload over their 3G network ...

I am told via the Vodafone forum that if the network can be fooled into thinking a browser doesn't support optimisation then optimisation won't be used ... apparently this can be done by changing the browser's "user agent" ... I have no idea how to actually do this!

So ... is anyone else having this problem on Vodafone 3G? ... and does anybody think this can be easily fixed? And is this the right place to be posting about this or should I be asking somewhere else?

Thanks for your help! Would really love if this could be sorted out!

Link to Vodafone thread: http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44577

Changing the user agent isn't hard - there are plugins for Firefox, and it can be done from within about:config. It could cause you more hassle than it's worth though - but what the hell, you can change it back.

Got a link to that vodafone forum thread?

It looks like you can change the User Agent by going to 'about:config' in the browser, clicking through the usual warning, then looking for general.useragent.vendor and changing the string. I haven't actually verified that that works, but it should do.

Also, FWIW I'm on Vodafone UK too and haven't seen this; it seems not to affect everyone.

Edit: Vodafone forum thread is here.

Back up the current UA to a file first (copy + paste it into a note) in case you have problems - the UA is how websites work out the best layout to serve you with!

I had to do the following on zoutube to make it work with o2. It seems to change the html pages too for optimisation over 3g.

Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache

Thanks guys ... I see you've found the Vodafone thread, but have also edited it into the first post ...

... sounds like something that can be fairly easily changed back and forth depending on what site I'm looking at, and whether I need high or low res images ...

Thanks heaps!

Funny thing is O2 also do optimisation but it never kicks in on my N900 but it DOES kick in on my laptop tethered to my N900.

Not sure how T-Mobile work either as I have one of their dongles and you can actually control the level of compression or turn it off on that. I hope it stays off when I finally put my T-Mobile SIM in my N900.

Ok ... when I change the user agent in about:config how exactly do I persaude it to save the changes? If I re- open user:config it's set back to the original settings ... am I doing something wrong?

... have you tried uploading a pic via 3G? ... it's not always so obvious on downloaded ones ...