Naked Browser for Android 0

I’ve started using a new browser on my Android HTC One M7: Naked Browser.

No, it’s not for naked pictures (go wash your mind out with soap)–the idea is that it doesn’t have a lot of cruft and useless eye candy to louse up performance.

I won’t use Chrome on a bet. Google probably knows everything there is to know about me, but, by God, I’m not going to help. and I’ve stopped using Opera, my go-to browser on all platforms since it was first released over a decade ago, because I don’t like the direction the company has taken for the past two years.

I tried Dolphin for a while; it was reasonably fast, but the ads got real obnoxious real quick.

I have been using Firefox for Android, which has some nice features, but the interface is a kludge and it is painfully slow; my brother, whose phone is not as powerful as mine, tried it and gave up.

I must say that, so far, I’m quite impressed with Naked Browser. It’s as fast as any other browser I’ve tried and faster than most, and it’s reasonably configurable and versatile.

The interface is quite basic, not all dressed up, and doesn’t get in the way. It allows you to sort your bookmarks into folders, but it did take me a little while to figure out how that works. It also doesn’t do plugins, but I was able to configure it to use Startpage search by default, because it allows you to enter a custom search string to be called when you enter a search term in the address bar. It doesn’t have as many configuration options as Opera Mini, but it has enough to keep me happy.

The Startpage basic search string is

https://startpage.com/do/search?

A web search for “Naked Browser Android” will turn up a number of favorable reviews. Naked Browser has its quirks, but, after a week of use, I am satisfied with it.

Naked Browser is free from the Play Store.