Android devices have gone too far, and today there are mobile devices which have far better specs with respect to most of the computers. Keeping all these in mind even the developers have been increasing the demands of their apps in terms of resources. Resource-hungry apps can be found easily, but if your device is a low-end device or might be an old device, then with each update your device might have become slow which would have resulted into crapy performance.
Today we are going to talk about the browsers with which you can easily do most of your tasks on your low-end Android device, or even on devices which are still rocking perfectly but are over 4 or 5 years old.
Most of the Android phones now are running Android 5.1 Lollipop and lower versions comparing to the Marshmallow and Nougat which are the latest. Though many users are updating their devices to Marshmallow or Nougat, a majority of users are sticking to the Lollipop.
Every smartphone user needs a browser. Though all the smartphones have the stock browser which comes along with the OS that is not convenient for many users. The play store has a big list of browsers. Among them, we tried to find out the five fastest browsers for old Android devices.
1. Opera Mini
Opera Mini is one of the old players in the browser market. In our opinion, Opera has a great developer team which always consider the user’s opinions and clear the bugs and glitches as much as they can. When it comes to fast browsing, Opera Mini is pretty decent in it. Users must learn the settings in Opera mini. Opera Mini settings are helpful in making the browser experience faster as well as convenient to use.
This web browser has been the best when it came to the slowest of mobiles, in the old days Opera was the best and was used to be rocked on the Nokia S40 and S60 mobile units, while even Symbian had an Opera Mini browser pre-installed. On the computer people who had a crappy internet connection used to get an Opera Mini browser installed in order to have a snappy performance of the websites.
The browser is capable of rending pages from a different server which will send you an optimized and less resource Hungary version of the same web page. The data usually is compressed which makes it work better on limited connectivity from the cellular data. Hence people who live in rural places have to use Opera Mini to browse over the web comfortably. Opera Mini bundles a lot of features which makes it easier for the people to use the application or browse web pages, which includes ad blocking, limited video compression for slower internet connections.
If you are rocking a 4G connection then also you will need Opera Mini for other sets of features which are being rocked by the application, which includes the UI color, phone and table layout, and other finely handled features made to make the user relaxed while using the application. Also if you are using the Opera Mini browser on the PC then you can sync your history, bookmark, and other things between the PC and the mobile.
But you might be annoyed by the web browser due to the frequent new stories which are recommended by the Opera Mini browser even while surfing the net and while you are using the phone without opening the app in the notification panel.
2. Lightning Browser
This browser is not as well-known as the Opera Mini Web Browser but is the best when compared to the other competitors, this browser is capable to be working with the Android 5.1 based devices and even older. The look and feel of the browser are just like the Google Chrome, and at first, people can be confused if you are using any other version of Google Chrome. The web browser is loaded with a lot of information where you can customize the theme of the browser with light and dark themes, and can even black out the design for the AMOLED devices so it saves more power.
The browser also supports the built-in web view, but make sure that it will work on Android 5.0 and above and not on the older version of windows such as Android 4.4 or earlier. The web view is always updated via the play store and hence this browser is the lightest of them all and will work smooth till web view on any particular Android version is optimized.
Some of the advanced features of the Lightning browsers are User Agent which will enable you to enable disabling JavaScript, cookies, ads, and video playbacks. There is also an option to delete all your bookmarks or even export them for later usage, the exported bookmark backup can be imported to other browsers like Chrome, Opera Mini, etc.
We can say that Lightning browser is a light version of the Google’s web browser offering the Google Chrome. Another great thing about the browser is that it is an open source project hence you can learn how a web browser works with the help of the source codes. There are two different versions of the web browser wherein the free one you can open up to 10 tabs simultaneously and if you are looking to use more than that then there is even a paid version which is worth 1.50$.
3. Jelly (by LineageOS)
This web browser comes as standard on the LineageOS Project, this was done to replace the outdated AOSP browser which was designed to be working with the low-end devices. Just like the Lightning browser this web browser is also open source and works with the WebView engine which makes it a fully open source project.
There are a lot of different unique features which are better than the other lightweight web browsers such as the tabs which are shown in the Android Recants screen where you can change the tab from the multitasking panel. That feature was debuted with the Android 6.0 but later in Android 7.0 it was removed, but it is a great feature developer got it back in the Jelly.
If you are using Lineage OS then only you will be able to use this application as it is not available via the Google Play Store. Compatibility is also an issue because it works on some devices below Android 6.0 while on some it doesn’t. There are many developers which are working on it, and in future, we might see a better working version of Jelly, but for now, this is another lightweight web browser available for an Android phone which can barely work with the latest Web Browsers.
These are some of the web browsers which can make your low-end Android device to work well with the latest websites, and hence can make you browse the content without any issue. Do you have any other web browser which works great? If yes do let us know in the comments so we can add them up in the list, so future viewers can get benefited from the same.
4. Puffin Browser
Puffin browser is the best browser in terms of overall performance. In the past, Puffin was slow and had some slow performance issues reported. But, the latest Puffin beta 6 version is really fast and much better in the user interface. Puffin, like other mobile browsers using data compression techniques to load the pages as quick as possible. The servers of Puffin are encrypted with Cloud protection and hence no one can track the traffic data and analytics of the users.
5. Dolphin Browser
Dolphin Browser is a top grade browser used by more than 100 million users. It is the top rated browser in the market. But when it comes to the fast browser performance, there is no much difference to other browsers like Chrome, Firefox or UC Browser. It has different versions for different devices and Android version.
6. Firefox Browser
Firefox is one of the best private browsers. The privacy elements also help for the faster browsing. It is also a developer friendly browser. For the users with technical knowledge about browsers, Firefox’s configuration page is a heaven. It brings tons of settings which allows the users to have their own settings. Firefox has a large number of free add-ons which can also be used to tweak the performance and browsing speed.
7. Chrome Browser
Google Chrome browser is the most used browser in android. One of the reason is, it comes pre-installed on millions of Android devices. It is a fast browser for old android devices. But the main issue with Chrome is privacy. Chrome is not good for users who want to keep their privacy while using a mobile browser.
8. UC Browser
UC Browser has the best downloader in any browser. For users who download a lot of files including large memory files, UC Browser is a good choice. It has many settings to give a convenient user experience. One of the major issue with UC Browser is ads. They suggest websites and apps which may irritate the users and it is also not good for privacy.
Conclusion
In my opinion, all the browsers are providing a fast browsing experience in old android devices. If we compare the timing of page loads, the difference would be tiny. At the same time, all of them has their own issues.
- Opera Mini is our first choice as the fastest browser for all Android versions.
- Jelly browser from Lineage OS is one of the finest browsers which consumes very low system resources and bandwidth to load websites. It is developed by LineageOS, which is a third-party Android OS developing team.
- Chrome is a fast browser but it is not privacy-friendly, though it is from a big house also.
- UC Web is good for downloading large files.
- Dolphin and Puffin Browsers are good for fast browsing. But has bugs and issues reported on user experience and features in the recent updates.
- Firefox is good at privacy and user settings. It came from a reliable developer team. It doesn’t save user data unnecessarily. Firefox also offers better-browsing speed on any device.