Believe it or not, but people are using their mobile browser less and less each passing year. One would think that the proliferation of internet and the Web would result in a spike, but that’s actually not the case, as more people are turning to specific apps for queries.
But a browser is still a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to any smartphone experience. We may not be using it as much, but we still do and there’s little worse than reading a website on a frustratingly slow or buggy browser. Thankfully, Android users have plenty of options when it comes to browsers, so they can keep rotating between them to try them all out. Besides the ability to select a different browser for new links through the native app picker menu means, you can simultaneously use many browsers.
We have been pecking at that app picker menu for over two months now, experimenting with a bunch of different browsers on Android. We decided to not use Google’s default Chrome or the older AOSP browser, but instead chose to focus on third-party offerings alone, since these are the real alternatives.
After the initial culling of the bad crop, we decided to focus on Opera, which recently saw a major update, long-time Android favourites Maxthon and Dolphin and the stable build of Mozilla Firefox. These we expected to enter the race without much trouble. But among the unknown lot, we went with Javelin which sports a very refreshing design and could turn heads as development continues. Then there’s Now Browser, the newest offering which claims to have Google’s new Material Design at heart.
We decided to ditch page loading times (since the difference is insignificant) and instead chose to test their features (and whether they are any good) in everyday conditions, fluctuating network reception, poor public Wi-Fi and what not. Is there a winner? There sure is. Let’s begin in no particular order.
Maxthon
Maxthon has been around for ages on Android and it’s one of the few browsers that’s available for damn near every platform – from Windows, Linux and Mac to Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
As a browser, it’s feature packed with cloud-syncing for sharing of tabs, files, links, etc to multiple devices. You can even sync favourites and bookmarks across devices. It works as advertised and our Windows bookmarks synced perfectly with our Android phone.
Tabs UI and a plethora of custom views
Users can set up gestures for quickly switching tabs and there’s a Reader mode for when all those ads and pictures get too distracting. In addition, Maxthon has a read-ahead mode where it can pre-load pages automatically. This is haphazard in practice, because it doesn’t always load the right page. I found myself using this less and less, so it’s really not that much of a time saver.
Another feature is gesture actions, which lets you open, close, switch and restore tabs by using simple directional gestures. It works, but it really depends on how quickly you can make these signs. After the first few times you get the hang of it, but it’s hit and miss till then.
Full-screen video player
Maxthon has also taken steps towards news discovery with something called NewsBites. With just a few news sites signed on, the collection is limited. We saw The Guardian, The Telegraph, BBC Sports and The Times London, so it looks like only some UK sites have tied up.
Maxthon’s UI is snappy; opening menus is smooth and there’s a full-screen mode to keep those nav buttons away. We especially like the night mode, which dims the display to keep your eyes from getting stung.
Overall, we were impressed with how fast the browser opened up; from a fresh installation, it took less than a second. Maxthon offers a bunch of features but we found ourselves craving a less bloated experience. The NewsBite feature is rather bland, gesture actions need some more polish, and the read-ahead mode is a bit hit-and-miss.
Rating: 3.5/5
Opera browser for Android
Opera brings a lot of the same features as Maxthon, but in a snappy interface and of course its biggest trump card is data compression in something called Off-Road Mode, since it uses cloud-based compression seen in Opera Mini, the lightweight alternative. This allows Opera to reduce the amount of data used by a site. In Off-Road Mode, images do take time to load, but if your objective is to just read, then Opera meets needs well.
Opera’s Speed Dial page also allows you to make folders, which is a great way to organise bookmarks of a similar nature and also helps in organisation for research and work, if at all you have moved to mobile at your workplace.
Opera lets you customise the UI for your device. This is the Tablet view with bigger tabs
For browsing of a casual nature, Opera offers something called Discover, which is essentially an aggregated news feed for various topics. It’s laid out in grid fashion and is pretty snappy, so this browser can be used as a Flipboard alternative too. With the latest version of Opera, you can use WebRTC standards to make browser to browser video calls, without installing a third-party app, which is a handy feature.
Off-Road mode saves data, Discovery page, Folders in Speed dial
Opera is fast, the interface is clean, uncluttered and less bulky than some of its rivals. The features are great too. Discover has plenty of options and you can even sort categories, while Off-Road Mode ended up saving me about 40 percent data in about a week’s use. Folders in Speed Dial are great too, if you are anything like me and have tons of bookmarks.
Rating: 4/5
Firefox for Android
Firefox is a name you can trust on any platform and on Android the reputation remains intact. With all the bells and whistles of the PC version, the Android app brings a Trojan horse in the form of Firefox OS apps.
Yes, you can download and use Firefox OS apps on your Android phone with Mozilla’s browser, but we wouldn’t advise it. They can be installed like regular Android apps and will be in your app drawer. But user experience is not even close to the native Android app experience. For example, the AirBnB app sports the new icon, but loads the older version of the website. The Etsy app on Android is a joy to use with big visuals and a clean interface, but install it using Firefox and you are just seeing the website packaged into an app.
Getting Firefox OS apps, browsing, and the add-ons store
You also get the usual add-ons, extensions and themes for Firefox on Android. Add-on selection is robust, but Dolphin has a better assortment of themes and uses them more prominently. Firefox’s theme application is not smooth either. Sometimes it takes about a couple of restarts before a theme gets applied.
With a Firefox account, you can sync all your open tabs across devices and this works well in practice. There’s little to no latency in how tabs appear, and you can even sync passwords, themes and add-ons if you choose. Though not all add-ons work as well as they do in the PC version.
Since I use Firefox as my primary browser, the syncing feature solved a lot of headaches, but there’s nothing compelling about Firefox on Android. It’s a me-too browser which is adding features that don’t really have much significance. It used to be good, now it’s just average.
Rating: 3.5/5
Javelin
Javelin looks unlike any other browser with its big typography-heavy UI. But it’s not just about its looks; Javelin brings a ton of useful features and is seriously a browser to watch out for.
After the on-boarding process, where the key features are displayed, you start off on a search page, which has a cool background. In all our time, the background wallpaper did not change, which would like to see changed. A rotating set of images would look amazing with Javelin’s ultra-clean UI.
Spirit Mode for VPN browsing; clean UI
All your settings are hidden in side navigation bar on the left, while the bookmarks are on the right. Up front you are only given the address bar, a refresh or stop button, and a shortcut to go into reader mode, which renders the page in a easy-to-read text-only format.
As for features, Javelin boasts a Spirit Mode, which is basically a VPN service, that circumvents internet blockades. The app lets you use Spirit Mode for 1 month without any charge, while it will be $1.99 per month after that period.
Javelin also has Stack, which is a cool way for you to open links while keeping your current task going. If you are in the Twitter app for example and see a link you want to read, you open it using Javelin and a small bubble pops up indicating the progress of the web page being loaded. You can continue using Twitter and even open subsequent links which will keep getting added to the Stack. Once clicked you can see the links in the order they were loaded, and can choose to open it in the full app or in windowed mode.
Using Javelin’s Stack; you can open multiple links in this floating mode
Getting the Pro version (through in-app purchase) will let you open Stack links in reader mode, which will be significantly faster than the whole pages. One limitation is that the free version only lets you load 10 tabs at a time, which is enough for most users, but may not be for the most voracious Web consumer. The Pro version is available for $2.99, but you can choose to donate more to indie developer Steven Goh.
Javelin has the right idea. It gives users more than just an incognito mode for secure browsing and presents everything in a clean interface, that doesn’t need an action bar, but settings are still quickly accessible.
We found Stack to be a great help when using doing the morning catch-up routine on Twitter. Javelin has firmly got our attention and it’s poised to be the best Android browser in the future, if it continues the development pace. Since its early days, a lot of bugs have been ironed out, and if you have given up on it in the past, we urge you to take another look.
Rating: 4/5
Dolphin
This is perhaps the most feature-rich browser on Android and it has all the features that we saw in Maxthon and a bunch more just for fun. It’s also one browser that lets you change the entire look of the UI with themes, just like PC browsers.
Dolphin comes with a whole bunch of bookmarks right out of the APK. The pre-loaded bookmarks include most popular websites in each category. So you will find Facebook, Pinterest and the likes in social networking, and Flipkart, Amazon in shopping. (Disclosure: Dolphin pre-loads Tech2 as a bookmark).
Pre-loaded bookmarks and the Themes store; the entire UI gets the theme’s colours
Dolphin also has add-ons like the big-boy PC browsers, and though the collection is limited you get most basic use case add-ons for reader mode, bookmarks widgets, screenshot taker, Tab reload (great for web browsing battery tests), translation tools etc. There’s something called Dolphin Float, which is a lightweight browser that lets you carry on with your app task, while the link loads in the background. This is great for Twitter clients which do not have an in-app browser.
The feature I like the most is Dolphin Sonar. It activates on shake or if you have a phone with on-screen buttons, it can even take the place of Google Now. Sonar is voice-based search and it’s freaking fast, and works brilliantly even for Indian names, although it may not always spell names the right way. In fact, add the right prefix and it will load you results directly from a website. In fact, it also returns back results for Google’s Knowledge Graph. “Watch ‘Double Rainbow’” for example took us to the YouTube search results page.
Add-ons and Dolphin’s killer feature, the Sonar
Sonar was actually faster than Google Now in recognising my voice in most cases and mis-hears were few when I was not pronouncing a complicated Chinese electronics brand name. You can create an icon for your homescreen and use Sonar as your primary search service. It’s that good.
Dolphin features a full-screen immersive mode, as well as a night mode, though Maxthon beats it in the latter; Dolphin makes everything a bit too dark for my taste. This app too features a Javelin-like background browsing mode, which lets you load pages in the background, while you continue using the current app. It’s called Dolphin Float and is available as an add-on through the browser.
Even though I have a soft spot for Opera as it was the first mobile browser I ever used, I think Dolphin is the best third-party browser on Android. It may even rival Chrome, if it weren’t so ubiquitous and not pre-loaded by Google on all devices. Sonar, alone is a trump card, but Dolphin does other bits well too. I can’t recommend it enough.
Rating: 4.5/5
Now Browser
At 171KB, Now Browser is one of the lightest apps on Android, let alone a browser. And the size helps it deliver quick loading times. That’s even on low-end Android phones running Jelly Bean and with 512 MB of RAM. Pages load quickly with Now Browser, which claims to have been developed using Google’s Material Design guidelines. We didn’t see any obvious evidence of this on a KitKat phone, but the experience could be different on a Android L-running phone.
As simple as it gets
We really like the barebones approach of Now Browser, which also has a pro version that offers unlimited tabs (actually the upper limit is 100, while the free version only lets you load four tabs), cache trimming on exit, Web File compressor for data savings and the Now Browser rendering engine that claims to be ultra-fast when loading web pages. There’s also a Java Script acceleration mode for faster browsing.
Too many features buried in Pro version
We do wish that Now lets some of the Pro features creep in to the free version. At the moment, most of the bigger features are for the paid app, and the restrictions are a bit over the top (just four tabs, really?). Even so, if you are struggling with a slower Android phone, Now Browser is great.
Rating: 3/5
0 comments:
Post a Comment