Who is looking for the best browser to use on an Android smartphone or tablet to surf the internet can try Mercury Browser. Chrome for Android is, say, the favorite of all those who use Chrome also on the PC, because of its synchronization of favorites and web pages displayed that unifies the experience. Dolphin Browser is also excellent for its integration with LastPass and the synchronization of passwords while Firefox is useful for viewing videos in flash. Mercury Browser is a fast and secure application, which owes its popularity to the version for iPhone and iPad, an excellent alternative to Safari.
The Android version came much later, but it must already be considered one of the most viable alternatives.
UPDATE: Mercury Browser has been retired and is no longer developed. for alternatives, see the updated list of the best browsers for Android
Mercury Browser can be downloaded directly from Google Play and is compatible with all smartphones and tablets.
When you open Mercury Browser for the first time, you can fill in the quick selection section of the sites by putting your favorite ones.
The main menu is located in a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and never disappears as it does for other browsers. In the bottom bar there are the navigation buttons, the one to open multiple tabs, the one to configure the browser, the one to synchronize your favorites and history and the one to enable or disable the plugins that are really interesting.
Meanwhile it is possible, in the main options, to share a web page. change user agent to simulate desktop or iPhone browsing, and browse privately without saving anything in history. In the settings you can choose to disable the images, the size of the text, the night reading mode, the brightness adjustment and the screen rotation lock.
Inside the settings, there is a button that leads to the System Settings where you can choose to create an account to use for synchronization, to change the homepage and the privacy options.
As far as synchronization is concerned, there is an interesting surprise, namely that favorites and history can be synchronized with your Chrome or Firefox . In practice, just install an extension downloadable from the Mercury Browser site to connect your computer to your smartphone or tablet and have the same data on both. The Google Chrome and Firefox favorites are then transferred to Mercury which becomes an absolutely personal browser.
In the Plugins there are some accessory tools including the one to better read a web page, the file transfer tool via wifi, the translator, the search inside a page. By pressing the wheel of the plugin window you can also enable the integration with Dropbox and the automatic night mode, convenient for reading the internet in the evening and at night. Mercury Browser is also customizable with the choice of search engine, among 12 possibilities including Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, Reddit and YouTube.
The file transfer function via Wifi only works for files downloaded via Mercury, to transfer them quickly to your computer without having to download them a second time.
You can scroll through the open tabs with the appropriate button even if it would have been better to be able to switch between the tabs by sliding them on the screen. Also missing is a network bandwidth management feature that allows you to save data on Chrome and Opera. For now, Flash support and some other customization features that are available in the iOS version are also missing:
However, if it continues on this path, Mercury browser can be an excellent alternative to Chrome as the default browser or, at least, as a backup browser to navigate quickly and easily, which does not tire the eyes (thanks to the night mode).
