46
Best android browser?
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
46 points (97.9% liked)
Privacy
31609 readers
94 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
FAQ from https://github.com/tuyafeng/Via#faq
Which rendering engine does Via use?
Via uses the built-in WebView renderer included on the Android platform. On Android 5.0+ devices, the WebView implementation is usually Android System WebView (com.google.android.webview), you can update it in the Play Store for a better browsing experience. If you want to know the current WebView implementation and version of your device, you can click "Settings - About" in Via and tap on the Via logo to get the debugging information which contains the WebView information.
I use Via on my Android 2.3.7 device. What is using there?
How are you still using that old os ? Also how does it perform ? do the modern web run in it ?
Old device that I use for some older games and as spare. Device is Huawei IDEOS U8150 running CyanogenMod 7
Modern web used to work on it a couple of years ago and quite smoothly too if you set your user agent to Symbian (in Via settings). But I tried this year and unfortunately most websites now will give SSL errors, or just got way too heavy for the less than 256MB of RAM available and will crash the device. But the device used to crash for other things, not only heavy browsing.
Resident Evil 4 and GTA 3 both Android releases will do the same because RAM is just that little. Or also using ADWLauncher2 will crash it despite being quite a light launcher, so I have legacy ADWLauncher that runs much better than the stock Android launcher. Despite the new version crashing the device, before it does so it still runs better than the AOSP launcher. Setting legacy ADWLauncher to kill its own process after opening another app helps a lot too, but of course slows you down when you leave the app you opened as it has to reload everything again.
Google Play Services will take the entire space available (not in 2023, Google dropped support completely to even logging in). It was already best to uninstall it but now that Android Market no longer works it doesn't install itself ever again.
But Google Maps, the latest version of the app for the OS version being from 2014, still works with no data missing and all updated (but navigation, used to be a separate app, doesn't and now doesn't even connect to display the "update the app" message). I downloaded the map of my city and nearby on it, and used it to go to the repair shop twice to fix my real device like a non-digital map.
To be honest I expected maybe it had something else. But you are right, it just uses a never updated very old build bundled in the OS.
Yeah, so if it's truly the download or install size you care about, then Via is a good choice in that regard (I know nothing else about it).
But in terms of program complexity and runtime resource usage, it is basically Google Chrome with a different UI.