The Daily App: Bolt Browser for Android

The number of available Web browsers for the Android ecosystem continues to expand – and expand at a meaningful pace.

One browser that sets itself apart from others is the Bolt Browser by the developer of the same name, and we think its significant for important reasons:

• It works well on both tablets and smart phones. Particularly on tablets, where the browsing experience is expected to match or improve upon PC-based browsers, Bolt Browser offers tabbed views for your browsing history, for your favorite sites, for social media and for Web Apps.

• It provides major PC features including an easy “find in page” option, download management, easy tabbed browsing, easy refresh and more.

• It scores 100/100 on the Acide3 test for support of Web standards, meaning apps built to work well on PC-based browsers should be expected to work exactly the same on an Android device running Bolt Browser.

Bolt Browser’s graphical, carousel-like page-view for favorite sites is a very nice touch, and will make navigation to important sites – like Google apps, news sites, webmail, etc. – much more efficient.

We were not as impressed with Bolt Browser’s speed. The developers say that a cloud-based “super efficient” data compression technology leads to a much faster browsing experience. We noticed it was a bit faster, particularly when using the graphical, tabbed, page-view – but it didn’t bowl us over, even with the reference to “cloud-based.”

Still, Bolt Browser is a browser you really need to try out on an Android tablet, and we do believe the developers are onto something that could have definite staying power.