Does UC Browser Mini For Android “Fake” Proxy Mode For Some Sites?

   When I reviewed UC Browser Mini 8.6 for Android last month I was pleasantly surprised that it was able to load almost every site I tried. Even more impressive was how well the browser rendered popular sites including Twitter and Google Plus.  Mini 8.6 seemed to be much improved compared with previous UC Browser Mini versions that had rather inaccurate rendering and a tendency to throw errors when asked to open a number of pages. UC Browser Mini is proxy … Continue reading

UC Browser Mini 8.6 For Android Reviewed

  Earlier this month, UCWeb Inc. released UC Browser Mini 8.6 for Android. It’s one of just two proxy browsers for Android, the other being Opera Mini. Proxy browsers parse, render and compress web pages before sending the compressed page to a thin client on the phone. The client decompresses and displays the page. The main advantage of proxy browsers is greatly reduced data consumption. A good proxy browser can reduce the amount of data transmitted while browsing by up to 90%.  … Continue reading

Opera Mini and UC Browser For Symbian Updated

Symbian lives! Opera Software and UC Browser have both released new browser versions for the Symbian platform. That makes sense as Symbian’s installed base is still around 190 million,  making it the third largest smartphone platform after iOS and Android in terms of current active users. Today Opera released Opera Mini 7.1 for Symbian S60V2 and latter. According to a post the company’s Opera For Phones Blog this release is focused on improvements to Opera Mini’s download manager along with performance and stability enhancements. Opera lists the … Continue reading

Opera Mini 7.1 For Java ME and BlackBerry Released

Today Opera Software released new versions of the Opera Mini Browser for feature phones with Java ME support and for BlackBerrys running OS 4.2.1 for latter. The new release adds several of frequntly requested features to Opera Mini’s download manager. The new features in the release are: Downloads can now be paused and resumed. You can even pause a download, exit Opera Mini and resume the download the next time you launch the browser. Smaller files (up to around 15 MB) … Continue reading

Data Saving New UC Mini 8.0 Proxy Browser for Android Now Available

UCWeb has released a new 8.0 version of its proxy based UC Browser Mini for Android. The new version is only available from the UC website and is not in the Android Play Store yet. The non-proxy version of the UC Browser 8.4.1 is in the Play Store, but it’s just a user interface wrapper around Android’s Webview class. There are lots of Webview based browsers for Android. They are differentiated by their user interfaces but render pages identically to the Android browser. … Continue reading

Data Saving New Nokia Xpress Proxy Browser for Lumia Windows Phones Speeds Page Loads

Nokia recently launched a Beta version of Nokia Xpress, a proxy browser for Nokia Lumia Windows phones.  The new browser is somewhat similar to the Nokia Series 40 proxy browser that I reviewed previously and which is now also called Xpress. Like Opera Mini and the UC Browser, Xpress uses a proxy server to pre-format and compress pages before they are sent to the device. The compression cuts page size by up to 85%, reducing network traffic and saving lots of money for … Continue reading

New Opera Mini 7.5 Brings the “Smart Page” To Android

Opera Software has launched Opera Mini 7.5 for Android. The major change in this release is the inclusion of Opera’s Smart Page, which has been part of Opera Mini for Java, Symbian and BlackBerry since Opera Mini Next and Opera Mini 7.0. The goal of Smart Page is to provide users with instant access to their friend’s latest social media updates along with contextual news updates based on the user’s browsing history. As Opera CEO Lars Boilesen puts it, “There are … Continue reading

UC Browser 8.5 for Symbian Reviewed

UC Browser 8.5 for Symbian  was released a few weeks ago.  UC is a proxy based browser similar to Opera Mini. Proxy browsers pre-render and compress pages in the cloud before they are downloaded to the mobile client, which makes them particularly suited to basic phones, slow networks and anywhere that mobile data is expensive. Although relatively unknown in the US and Western Europe, the UC Browser claims 300 million users worldwide. The majority of UC users are in China, … Continue reading