Explore the Web From Your Phone...Any Way You Want To.

As I have stated in previous posts, one of the greatest things about the Android OS is the level of customization that is available. You can change anything from the keyboard on your screen to the calender that you use, or the way that your homescreen is set up.

One of the ways that you may want to customize your Android experience is in which browser that you use. The Android phone comes with a built-in browser that does fine, but does not allow you to all of the things that you web addicts may need to do. Since there are several different browsers available on the Android Market, I'm just going to list a few of them and give you a little bit of an idea of their capabilities, but I will come back and do individual reviews on these apps at a later point.

Steel

The Steel browser is a basic tool with a delightfully simple interface. All of your buttons and tools are hidden until you want to access them, and the long press menu is a thing of beauty. I personally played with it for a good fifteen minutes just zooming in and out...But, then, I am very easily entertained. If you want to try the Steel browser though, you may want to hurry, as they have recently been purchased by...

SkyFire

SkyFire is a browser for the Android device that allows you to play Flash videos in a separate page when they are available on the web page that you are browsing. This browser comes with a little tutorial to let you know how to use it, and also has the toolbars that you can hide. Like Opera Mini, SkyFire actually routes all of your page requests through their own servers in order to compress the page and allow you to load it faster. I personally would like it better if it had the long press menu that I loved so much in Steel, but it is still a good way to browse your favorite Flash-laden pages.

Opera Mini 5

Opera Mini is a decent little browser, and is at this point in sort of a beta stage. Your page requests are routed through their browsers in order to compress the page for your phone first, and you have a speed-dial homepage. The Opera browser has some advantages over the stock browser, but SkyFire beats it with it's flash video support. It's a decent little browser though, and more polished versions should be on their way.

Dolphin

This app was for a time the most popular browser on the Android OS, but it has fallen from grace somewhat, partly because of Opera's introduction of their app to the Android Market. The gestures on Dolphin certainly have their use, but, for the most part, I would rather use one of the other browsers. Dolphin also seems to be a lot slower than most of the other options.

So now you know of some of the browsers that are available to you on the Android OS. Go and check a few of them out, and, by all means, let me know what you think!