New Touch-Friendly UC Browser 8.0 Beta for Java ME

UC Browser 8.0 Java Main Menu

UC Mobile released a new version of the UC Browser for Java ME last week. It’s 8.0 Beta and is notable for its brand new, much more touch friendly user interface.

This is Beta release, a number of features that were in previous UC Browser versions are not implemented. Here are the ones I noticed

  • No save page or open saved pages options.
  • No share to Twitter or Facebook option.
  • No way to view the copy/paste clipboard.
  • No option to remember the last page on exit and restore it when UC is restarted.
  • No option to clear browser history on exit.

Previous versions of the UC browser used a text-only hierarchical menu for navigation. Menu items were closely spaced and quite hard to hit accurately on touch only devices. The new interface’s top level menu is a row of good size icons at the bottom of the screen. Sub-menus are still text based but now use a larger font with more spacing between menu items, making them much easier to navigate by touch. The new UC menu design looks very similar to the one that Opera Mini 5.0 and latter employs on touchscreen devices. Unlike Opera which has different UIs for touch and non-touch phones, UC uses the same menu, for both.

UC Browser 8.0 Java "1" Key/Long Press  Context Menu MenuUC Browser 8.0 Java Shortcut MenuUC Browser 8.0 Java- Settings Screen

I tried UC 8.0 on a Samsung Wave 5800 bada phone and a low end, non-touch feature phone, the Motorola Rambler WX400. It worked well on both phones. The new menu was much easier to use on the touchscreen Wave and at least as usable as the old design on the non-touch phone.

This is also the first UC Browser I’ve tested in a long time that was able to open every site I asked it too. Previous versions have had problems with popular sites including Facebook, Twitter and Google and Yahoo apps that required login. I tried all thoese and many more without a single failure.

UC Browser 8.0 Java Home ScreenUC Browser 8.0 Java - TwitterUC Browser 8.0 Java - Wap Review
UC Browser is a proxy, or server assisted, browser. The cloud server pre-renders pages and optimizes and compresses them by up to 90% before sending them to the phone. If you are on a slow network, pay for data by the KB or MB or have a low data cap you really should be using a proxy browser. Pages will load faster and use much less data.

The leading proxy browsers are Opera Mini, UC Browser and Bolt. For a long time my favorite proxy browser has been Opera Mini, which I prefer mainly because it has the best rendering of the three. Opera also used to have the most stable and reliable proxy browser. But lately Opera Mini’s performance seems to be deteriorating. Too often when I click a link, Opera just reloads the current page or displays a blank screen or an error instead of loading the proper page. Pressing the submit button on web forms in Opera Mini also tends to reload the page without submitting anything. Lately when I have trouble with Opera Mini, I paste the problematic URL into UC Browser and it always seems to work. I’m not quite ready to make UC my main browser, its page rendering, especially in “zoom” or desktop mode, tends to be quite inaccurate and downright ugly, which bugs me. But for loading pages and submitting forms quickly and without a hassle, UC can’t be beat. I recommend it for anyone who needs a good proxy browser on a Java phone.

UC Browser 8.0 Java - CNNUC Browser 8.0 Java - Google PlusUC Browser 8.0 Java - Facebook

UC Browser 8.0 is also available for Android v 2.1+ and Symbian 2nd. Ed. and later. Earlier versions of the UC Browser are available for iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. Android, Symbian and iOS versions re available in iTunes, the Nokia Store and Android Market respectively, although the Nokia Store version is 7.9 rather than 8.0. The latest released, for all platforms except the iOS, are available directly from UC at www.ucweb.com (PC) or wap.ucweb.com (mobile).

21 thoughts on “New Touch-Friendly UC Browser 8.0 Beta for Java ME

  1. Hai,
    am using uc mobile browser v8.5.0.185 in my nokia asha 305.my problem
    i saved several pages in the uc browser saved page folder.now al d
    data in my browser is cleared.so previously it shows saved
    pages(20).now it shows saved pages(0).but the source file is not
    deleted.the saved pages are al in my memory card.but i cant retrieve
    those pages to my uc browse.plz helpme.

  2. how to open my save pages?
    Because wen i eject my memory card and back it again on my cellphone the save pages was lost
    unlike on my opea mini browser i can get anytime my save page pages
    please help me because i have many important files that i save on my the save pages

  3. I love the UC BROWSER 8.0 It is better than the previous.. If u want to save, go to menu, file, save as and u get ur page saved..

    But this UC folks need to add streaming functions..cant watch videos with it

  4. This uc 8 is a total failure. They ‘ve removed so many options like save page,dial,rotating the screen options. They have to revisit this browser . To uc 7.9 is far better

    • Greetings!

      I agree with Nasiru – they released version 8.0 before it was ready. I switched back to 7.9 two days after installing 8.0. On the other hand, Dennis is right too; this is a beta version, and maybe we should reserve final judgement until the next release.

      More importantly perhaps, it should serve as a wake-up-call to the good people and developers at UC browser – and other tech companies out there – NOT to rush new products or upgrades out to market before they’ve been fully tested and debugged. For me, UC 8.0 was so disappointing, I’m now a little reluctant to try any future upgrades.

      Kent

  5. Iam using Nokia 5233, downloaded uc Browser 8.0.. It is fast and finger friendly. It’s my favorite brower and also i recommend many of friends to download it. Thanks for developer.

  6. Dennis one thing that have been left out of the ucweb 8 version is the data stats? I cant find it nowere.hav u notice that on the previous version u clicked help and u saw it on one of the link but not here…

  7. Dennis it’s a pleasure to visit your Website as aways!

    I hope you can help the Opera Mini team to fix these kinds of Webpages problems by reporting them in the Opera Mini bug tracker.

    • I’ve reported quite a few. Unfortunately most of the link reloads page/blank screen type errors seem to transient and aren’t consistently reproducible which makes for a lousy and easily dismissed bug report. I suspect the root cause of most of these is overloaded servers.

      I’m working on creating a test case for a reproducible form posting issue that occurs on a password protected portion of one of my sites.

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