When the iPhone debuted, you had one choice for an iPhone browser: Safari[1]. And while Safari is a good browser, it doesn’t offer some innovative features that are found elsewhere, such as fullscreen mode, tabbed browsing, or gestures. And, of course, it doesn’t support Flash[2].
So, to bring those features to the iOS, third-party iPhone browser apps stepped up. There are now iPhone web browsers that offer custom gestures, Flash support, multiple unique user accounts, and fullscreen mode, among the many new features they’ve brought to the iOS. But with so many choices, how do you decide which app best meets your needs?
While there are surely more than an dozen such apps available as of this writing, the chart below compares 12 common iPhone browsers on a number of key features. To read a full review of the app, click the star rating in the far right-hand column.
To see how we think these apps stack up, check out The Top Web Browser Apps for iPhone & iPad[3].
iPhone Web Browsers Apps Compared by Features and Speed
| Speed (Apple.com on 3G, in seconds) |
Flash | Native iPad version |
Fullscreen mode |
Tabbed browsing |
Gestures | Price | Review | |
| Atomic | 8 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | .99 | 4 stars[4] |
|
| Cloud Browse |
2 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | .99+ | 2.5 stars[5] |
||
| Dolphin | 4 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Free | 4.5 stars[6] |
||
| Flash Browser |
7 | ✓ | .99 | 0.5 stars[7] |
||||
| Mercury | 4 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | .99 | 3.5 stars[8] |
|
| Opera | 5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Free | 4.5 stars[9] |
||
| Photon | 7 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | .99 | 3.5 stars[10] |
||
| Puffin | 5 | ✓ | ✓ | .99 | 2 stars[11] |
|||
| Safari | 6 | ✓ | Free | N/A | ||||
| SkyFire | Incomp. | ✓ | ✓ | .99 | TBD[12] | |||
| Switch | 5 | ✓ | .99 | 3.5 stars[13] |
||||
| WebOut | 6 | ✓ | .99 | 3.5 stars[14] |
References
- ^ Safari (ipod.about.com)
- ^ it doesn’t support Flash (ipod.about.com)
- ^ The Top Web Browser Apps for iPhone & iPad (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 4stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 2.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 4.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 0.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 3.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 4.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 3.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 2stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ TBD (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 3.5stars (ipod.about.com)
- ^ 3.5stars (ipod.about.com)