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Steel Android Web Browser

User Rating3.81/5

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Steel Android Web Browser is a new user interface for the Android web browser engine. Touch support, auto-rotate, downloads, and virtual keyboard. Introduces gestures for zooming and page flipping, as well as several bug fixes.

Price: Free

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Steel brought the Android web browser to a level it should have been in the first place by adding some features that were missing, keeping the ease of use in mind.  It easily services as a drop-in replacement for the Android OS provided browser.

Features:

At its core, Steel Android Web Browser uses the same WebKit engine to render content which is the defacto standard for mobile browsing today. Scrolling with gestures works very nice.  Where Steel stands out are the added features.

First, Steel Android Web Browser can be configured to automatically rotate when your phone is turned on its side providing a landscape mode that is nice for those wider websites.  It also ads zooming features.  When you long-press a spot in the web page, an intuitive menu comes up that you can move your finger over for quick zooming.  The nice thing about this is that the menu does not appear until you want it to, unlike the zoom menu in 1.5 version of the Android firmware.

Steel Android Web Browser also brings an easier way to cycle through multiple browser windows (tabs on the desktop).  Using the flipping gesture to the left or right switches quickly from one to the next.

The virtual keyboard provided by Steel works OK for entering short URL, but my experience is that it tends to be a bit slow in its responsiveness which can cause some mistyped words.

Usefulness:

Steel Android Web Browser is hands down a better UI for the browser for the current Android firmware.  Once 1.5 is released, the developer will need to come up with some other features to make it attractive, but for the current 1.1 firmware (RC33 in the US and RC9 in the UK) it is a must-have for frequent web surfers.

Ease of Use & Interface:

The UI works very well, just be careful when using the virtual (soft) keyboard.

Frequently Used:

If you browse the web a lot, it is a multiple times per day application.

Notes:

As of the time of this writing, Steel Android Web Browser did not work with the 1.5 Android firmware but the developer stated a fix will be coming soon!