browser - 5/5 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Nov

MIUI Browser ("Charming Browser") Released In English, Keeps The Party Going

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, News

Looks like the team at MIUI hasn't been resting on its laurels after releasing its insanely popular MIUI ROM - they've recently released Charming Browser for Android. Just like the ROM, the browser was initially released in Chinese. Luckily, XDA-Developers member jpsiemer immediately jumped on it and translated it to English.

Early reports indicate that aside from a few minor niggles - namely, a slightly longer initial load time - the browser performs as well as it looks. In fact, the thread is full of overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Ready to pull the trigger? Hit up the download link and let us know how it works out for you!

Nov

T-Mobile myTouch 4G Edges Out Win Over iPhone 4 In Wirefly's Browser Speed Test

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, myTouch 4G (Glacier), News, T-Mobile

Our good friends at Wirefly released a video a few days ago showing a browser speed test between the new T-Mobile myTouch 4G and Apple's iPhone 4. The results added another win for the Android crowd, as the myTouch 4G bested the iPhone 4 in both tests.

The win gets even sweeter, though: the second page loads faster on the MT4G, even with the embedded YouTube video (albeit, it doesn't actually load the video). Andrew (of Wirefly) reminds us that "... there's one big difference here - this [the MT4G] has YouTube on the page, and YouTube is, of course, Flash - whereas the iPhone 4 does not have Flash, so it can't render that part of the webpage."

[Source: Wirefly]

Oct

Opera Mobile Coming To Android "Within The Month" For Free Hardware Accelerated Browsing

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Apps/Games, News

The Norwegian browser company Opera Software has just notified readers of their blog that it will be bringing the "Mobile" version of its browser to Android sometime this month. Along with some ominous soundbytes such as "proprietary technologies will die", Opera demoed a Galaxy S running Opera Mobile while announcing that Samsung will now start shipping phones with their browser included.

Some of you may be confusedly saying you have Opera on your phone already. There is a difference between Mini and Mobile in that the Mobile browser renders webpages itself, as opposed to the server-side processing done in the Mini browser.

Oct

Firefox For Android Finally Hits Beta Status, Set To Silence Critics

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, News

As we've seen in the last few days, The Artist Formerly Known As Fennec has really been hitting its stride lately. Riding on this wave of improvement comes a shiny new Beta status, making Fennec now, officially, Firefox 4 For Android Beta.

We won't labour you with details, as many words have been written before about F4FA's arduous journey towards usability. Just get out there and download it.

You might also want to check out Mozilla's official blog post, and their little promotional video at the source link below. Sadly, our main man Matt Brubeck is not featured, but he's probably too busy making Fen*cough*Firefox 4 for Android Beta even better.

Sep

PC World Conducts "Battle Of The Android Browsers", Finds Stock Browser Isn't Best

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, News

Well, the title says most of it, and what it doesn't is pretty easily expressed in a chart: the stock browser - even in Froyo - isn't the best option available. In fact, it's not even close, especially for sites that haven't been saved alread:Skyfire 2.0 is faster by 3.3 seconds. The gap for saved sites is less significant, with Opera Mini faster by 1.4 seconds.

Surprisingly, Mozilla's Fennec comes in last in both categories; then again, Fennec is still considered alpha, and it's a fairly safe bet that times will drop as development progresses. Skyfire's faster new load time can likely be attributed to its handling of Flash - it saves time by transcoding the videos on its own servers rather than on the local device.

Aug

AndroidPolice.com RSS Add-on For Dolphin HD Now In The Android Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

In an effort to make it easier to access AndroidPolice news on the go, we have partnered with the makers of the Dolphin HD browser to release a Dolphin RSS add-on for AndroidPolice.com. This add-on is a basic RSS app with a 1-click access to the latest AnderoidPolice headlines.

Power users may not be too impressed by the simplicity of this app and may instead add our RSS feed in their favorite RSS readers instead (such as Newsrob). However, those of you who are not after too many bells and whistles may find that this simplistic approach is exactly what you've been looking for, short of a dedicated AndroidPolice app (if you want to create one for us, don't hesitate to contact Artem).

Jul

Google Android 2.2 Froyo Web Browser Versus Apple iOS4 Mobile Safari In JavaScript Benchmarks: No Contest

Posted by David Ruddock in Froyo 2.2, News

It’s rather surprising this comparison took such a long time to take place, but nonetheless, ArsTechnica published the image below comparing the performance of Android 2.2’s web browser against iOS4’s mobile Safari in two respected JavaScript benchmarks.

SunSpider

The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark measures the amount of time a certain number of various JavaScript operations take to complete. A lower score means the operations completed more quickly, and the Nexus One running Froyo beats the iPhone 4 in this regard by a sizeable ~50%.

V8

The V8 benchmark (an open source benchmark maintained by Google) tests the robustness of a phone’s ability to move through rigorous JavaScript actions found on many modern, complex web pages.

Apr

Detailed Mega Review Of Android 2.1 On Our HTC Hero - Discover All The New Features (With Lots Of Screenshots)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Development, Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Sprint

Last Updated: April 21st, 2010

Introduction

Us, Hero owners, have been waiting for an OS upgrade for a loooooong time, since the phone got released last October with Android 1.5.

At first, we were hoping for 1.6, then 2.0, and finally 2.1 was promised ("Totally for real this time, yo" - said Sprint and HTC but we saw nothing).

Other phones kept getting 2.1 upgrades but our favorite Hero saw only promises after promises with release dates pushed further and further back.

Android 2.1 On HTC Hero

Therefore, when a Hero Android 2.1 build got [inadvertently - oh, the drama with these leaks!] leaked online, and an Android ROM hacker by the name of damageless (hi damageless!) incorporated the code from the leak into his ROM, called DamageControl, we knew the finish line was near.

Nov

The Not So Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: My List Of 20+ Problems With HTC Hero

Posted by Android Police Team in Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Sprint

Last Updated: April 16th, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

Alright, I was really excited to get the HTC Hero. REALLY. I had extremely high hopes for the Hero (those are long gone) and Android (which I still do - I even began developing for it) but the Hero has so many ridiculous bugs that I am *this* close to bringing it down to the Pre level (I'm not going to dare though - Pre still leads in the "I Want To Smash This Phone Into A Wall" category).