Long story short, it’s simply the best mobile browser ever! And we mean it. If you are of the opinion that no one can beat the Opera mobile, then we have a piece of bad news for you. Need more details? Here is our detailed review of Dolphin Browser HD for Android:
Speed Dial
The first thing that you’re going to see when you start your browser would be the speed dial that allows you to visit your preferred sites really fast. You can easily add or get rid of options in the speed dial interface.
Tabs
The other thing that you’ll notice right off the bet is tabs. They really make browsing with multiple sites open a snap. You can open a few sites in a really convenient way and just toggle back and forth to the site you need at that particular moment.
Gestures
Another really big and prominent thing in the browser is gestures. Let me explain if you’re not exactly sure what that might mean in terms of the app. Say, you want to go to Google. What would you do? The odds are that you’d either just type in the URL in your browser’s address bar or just click on a link (speed dial button as an alternative).
The neat thing about this browser is that you can just draw a handwritten G and it’ll go straight to Google. The feature has a bunch of options such as Facebook, Youtube, or just close tab, open tab, and things along those lines. But what really is going to blow your mind is that you can add your own gestures and tell them what sites you want them to open once you draw them.
While drawing all sorts of gestures you are not supposed to be absolutely precise or something. Just draw approximately that letter and off you go.
*Idea for Android Developers
Testing this super-duper cool feature of the browser, it occurred to me that it would really rock if the same idea worked across the whole phone. I mean so that you can draw like a clock, and it fires up your alarm clock app. Things like that. I’m not sure if it’s technically easy to do, but the idea itself seems to be very to the point, right?
Full-Screen Mode
If you feel like you can’t see a website in its full swing, you just swipe to the left and enable the full-screen mode. The right-hand panel also allows you to add all sorts of add-ons for the browser, but it’s a topic for a different story.
Bookmarks
In order to access and manage bookmarks, you need to swipe from the left-hand side. Once you tap on a bookmark button and hold it down for like a second, it’ll bring up a menu that allows you to open, edit, delete, or add a shortcut to your home screen.
Settings
The settings option allows you to go to your bookmarks, forward, draw a gesture, share your page, manage downloads, or exit your app. One of the options in the “More” section has another settings option, which presents you with a more in-depth way of tweaking the app:
– User Agent
You can specify how you want a site to be viewed: Android (default), Desktop, iPhone, iPad, or custom, etc.
– Search Engine
This feature just allows you to set your default search engine. You can opt for one of the following options: Google (duh!), Bing, or Yahoo.
– Exit Settings
This section allows you to specify what should happen when you wish to shut down the app: confirm before exiting, clear cache when exiting, clear history when exiting, and clear cookie when exiting.
– Set Homepage
This set of options enables you to tweak your browser home page just a bit: Home Button on URL Bar (in case you need a home bar like in a standard desktop browser), Use the New Page Tab, or Open this page (you can specify the page to open).
– Show Bottom Menu Bar
In case you want it to be within your reach and view all the time.
– Set as Default Browser
This feature as the name suggests just makes it possible to specify the default browser.
– Gesture & Sonar
This section includes all the settings for the respective features. In the Gesture tab, you can check, edit or even create your own gestures. And the Sonar Settings portion enables you to tweak settings like Shake to Activate, Enable Bottom Left Button, etc.
– Account & Sync
This option allows you to connect your Dolphin browser with Facebook, Google Account, or your Dolphin account. Whatever works best for you.
– Web Content
In this section, you can define your text size, text encoding, Auto-fit Images, Default Zoom, Open Pages in Overview, and Load Images. In addition, you also have the option to enable Flash (it’s off by default), JavaScript, etc. You can also choose if you’d like to block pop-up windows and see security warnings.
– Privacy and Personal Data
It’s got a whole lot of options. You can clear any data of your choice: cache, history, HTML5 data, all cookie data, form data, passwords, and location access. Apart from that, you can backup your stuff, it’ll encrypt and save your settings, bookmarks, and web data to your SD card (you may also want to take advantage of the possibility to set your password to that data for extra security). Sure thing, you’ll be able to restore all that data down the road.
You might need to use the feature when you reinstall your Android device operating system. One of the features in this section enables you to import your bookmarks, but I’d suggest installing the Xmarks add-on for Dolphin. Also, you can define the download directory (the folder where all your downloaded files will automatically go).
The settings in there give you the control of whether you want to accept cookies (not the ones from the kitchen), remember passwords, remember form data, and enable location. And the Website Settings portion allows you to clear data on specific sites.
– Help
Should you have any issues or questions, you can refer to this button and the odds are you’ll find the exact answer you’re looking for.
– Lab
This particular section has some extra interesting features: enable swipe action (which you might want to disable because sometimes those side panels that appear while accidental swiping can drive you nuts), open in a background tab, open in a new tab, enable long-press menu, and keep notification bar.
Plus, you can make the volume button do some additional stuff (the Volume Button Action). It can either perform the default Android action, scroll up/down the page or switch tabs. Plus, you can set your browser’s orientation such as auto (by default), landscape, and portrait.
The Keep Screen on feature makes sure that the screen never goes off and you can see your browser all the time. The Cache to SD Card option (when turned on) moves all your browser cache to your external SD card. And finally, you can decide if you want to show the Pinch-Zoom Button and whether you’d like to Enable Dolphin Notification (which you definitely need to do).
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s a very feature-rich app, which makes surfing the Net a snap. So, if you’re not happy with your current mobile browser, you have nothing to lose. Just dump that stuff and see what exactly mobile browsing should be like. Rest assured to fall in love with this amazing piece of software.
