Puffin
Puffin’s ‘cloud technology’ approach brings
to the iPad and iPhone video and interactive sites powered by Adobe Flash –
including games. It does this by rendering the entire site on servers in the US
and streaming it as video or images to your iOS device. Clever! This also lets
it claim to be significantly faster than Safari.
Puffin
Browser
In our tests, Puffin was variable. In our
first test across a 9Mbit ADSL connection there were often visual arte facts
and stuttering with video and Flash animations, although most static sites
rendered well. Our second test the next day was more successful, but video was
still slightly blurry and the sound had a tendency to be slightly out of sync.
A visit to addictinggames.com showed
that most Flash games are just about playable, provided they don't require
lightning reflexes, because both games and videos have a characteristically
slower frame-rate. To play games that require a keyboard or mouse, you can
activate an on-screen gamepad or trackpad. The latter comes complete with
directional controller that sends the up/down/left/right cursor keyboard
presses. The trackpad activates a mouse pointer, which can help with certain
Flash sites that are tap-unfriendly.
Because Puffin’s rendering servers are in
the US, sites appear as they would if you were living in the US. Visit the BBC
News site, for example, and there are adverts running across the top. However,
this means UK residents can finally watch Hulu.com, although not South Park
episodes where the site somehow spots that we're dialing in from the UK.
The
BBC News site
All sites are rendered more quickly than
Safari, however, although because they're rendered on Puffin’s servers they
don’t use the usual fonts. This means pages look a little odd - like you're
using an Android device, in fact. You can’t copy text to the pasteboard either,
because you're essentially viewing an image.
Elsewhere, Puffin's feature set makes for a
competent although not exceptional browser. iPad users get tabs along the
bottom of the screen (iPhone users have a simple-to-understand tab manager screen
that shows thumbnails) and there’s a download manager and file viewer.
We recommend you try Puffin, especially if
your net connection is fast We can’t help having concerns about privacy,
though; although Puffin says it takes this very seriously, it’s not
unreasonable to be concerned that everything you request is generated on
somebody eIse’s computer.
Puffin costs $2.96 if you want Flash
support. A free version brings the basic browser plus a two-week trial of
Flash.
Opera Mini
Opera Mini's biggest boast is that it can
save money if you use mobile phone data connections. It does this by
compressing data: Opera Mini sends the address of any site you request to
Opera’s sewers, where it’s then fetched, compressed as much as possible, and
encrypted, before being squirted to your iPad or iPhone. Opera claims you
receive up to 90% less data this way. Sadly, in our tests it just didn't work
and we wished there was a way to turn it off (there isn’t). On an iPad’s 3G
mobile connection showing three bars – an ideal test, considering Opera Mini is
supposedly also designed for slower connection speeds – Safari was able to load
pages in around a third of the time it took Opera Mini. It was even slightly
slower than Safari when using a 9Mbit ADSL connection.
Micromart
on Opera Mini Browser
Additionally, because Opera’s servers are
getting the data for you, they access non-UK-specific versions of sites. You’ll
see the international page for BBC News, for example (although it appears
Opera’s servers aren’t in the US, so at least you don’t see ads on the bbc.com).
Needless to say, this technique of fetching data elsewhere also raises privacy
questions although Opera points out that the data is encrypted.
We also didn’t Iike the fact there’s a
separate Google search box when most other browsers here use the Omnibox
approach.
“If software is to be measured by the
number of gimmick it features, then Dolphin ranks highly”
Elsewhere, Opera Mini is pretty basic. Tabs
on both the iPhone and iPad version are handled by a pop-out tab manager, which
works well but still isn't as useful as actual tabs on screen all the time.
Pages can be saved for offline viewing, which avoids the need for apps like
Instapaper, but perhaps the key feature for fans of Opera on the desktop is
syncing.
It should be noted that Opera Mini isn't
Opera Mobile, which hasn't made it onto i0S, although is available on Android.
The slim number of features in Opera Mini is a design feature.
As with Puffin, you should try Opera Mini
to see how it works for your circumstances. If you’re locked into a mobile data
plan with a ridiculously low monthly allowance, then it might be a godsend.
However, be prepared for flashbacks of life in 1998, because it ain’t fast.
Dolphin
If software is to be measured by the number
of gimmicks it features, then Dolphin ranks highly. Its biggest boast is the
use of gestures. Activate gesture mode then draw a G, for example, and you’ll
visit Google.com. Draw a T and a new tab will open. Draw a down arrow
and you’ll go to the bottom of the page. You can also create your own gestures
very easily.
Dolphin is also built around sharing and
saving; you can share links with one tap via Facebook, Twitter, email, and with
other Dolphin users on the same network. You can also save pages to Ever note
and Box (not Drop box, although this can be installed as an extension,
available on Dolphins website). Extensions are available for the desktop versions
of Chrome, Firefox and Safari to allow syncing too.
Dolphin
Browser
Pay 69p on the iPhone and you can also talk
to Dolphin to tell it not only search terms but also commands like ‘close tab’
or the name of sites. This works as well as any other speech recognition, but
there’s a pause after each input, just like with i0S’s built-in speech
recognition. It’s usually quicker just to tap the relevant button on the
interface.
Tabs are shown all the time on the iPad and
can be set to be shown on the iPhone too, where the lack of screen area is
overcome by simply scrolling the tab and address bar along with the rest of the
page, and showing them again when the user scrolls to the top.
Many features found in Dolphin can also be
found in the similar Mercury app, such as user-agent faking to allow access to
non-mobile sites and one-click access to private browsing mode.
Overall, the speed of Dolphin seemed fine in
our test and the interface is simple albeit clunky – to input gestures, for
example, you have to press a special button first. To make speech commands, you
then have to slide a further on-screen control. Surely this can be made more
intuitive? And we never found a way to activate the Webzine mode, which claims
to show online articles in a similar way to a magazine layout. We couldn’t
locate a button anywhere in the app and the instructions on the website appear
to be out of date.
There’s a lot to like in Dolphin but
nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd. That said, we can imagine
sharing sites between nearby devices appealing to teenagers.
