UC Mini-Download Video Status 12.12.10.1227

Even with the development of high speed connections, people generally still appreciate an app that goes out of its way to streamline data transfer in the service of higher speeds and lower megabyte count. Opera Browser Mini was for some time the only mobile browser to cater to the frugal user in such a way. Not any more though, UC Browser Mini comes from Asia... with love and speed.

Like its bigger brother, UC Browser, UC Browser Mini retains the same color scheme and general functionality. Yet in the same way as Opera Mini, it sacrifices some graphic elements of pages and compresses others. This is far from a perfect browsing experience but unless you generally do your web-surfing on a leather couch with a Martini and Cuban cigars nearby handy, then you will have no problem with it.

UC Browser Mini contains all that is expected from a decent browser. Bookmarks, multiple tabs, incognito mode, they're all there. There is also a Night Mode, a feature that is not only useful for browsing in darkness, but it can also be a deciding factor for many when choosing a browser.

The Incognito mode is simple and almost unnoticeable. Switching to incognito is not reflected in the interface in any way except for the state button. This means that you might browse incognito and not even now it. Turning off incognito mode will bring up a dialog asking if you also want to close open tabs and clear browsing history. The second part is somewhat confusing since no browsing history is recorded while incognito was on.

Back and Forward commands are implemented elegantly by using the device swipe function. Simply swiping left will show the previous page and vice-versa. Of course, you can also use the dedicated buttons on the bottom bar, but if you also enjoy viewing pages in full screen then that won't be an option too often.

The home screen contains a customizable speed dial and two cards called Hot Games and Hot apps. If you do not enjoy having extra content that you don't care about on the home screen, you can simply disable them from Card Management.

The feature that will keep you proud of using UC Browser Mini is the Data Usage screen. Here you check how much data you have used so far and how much data you've avoided loading along with a percentage of saved data just to make things clear. You can re-set the counter whenever you like if you intend on making specific measurements.

You can't actually say that UC Browser is bare bones. Although it is optimized for speed, the developers managed to include enough common sense features in order to make it a viable option for any device. The only downside is that as websites are not designed to be displayed with missing parts, some addresses will not look that great or may not display at all. For those cases you might also want to have a backup browser.

Features

• Website data filtering and compression
• Night mode
• Incognito mode
• Speed Dial
• QR Code reader
• Tabs

Pros

• Lightweight (only 1.1 megabytes)
• Excellent speed
• Many standard browser features

Cons

• Display issues on some websites

Conclusion

All in all, UC Browser is a very nice surprise. Having Night Mode among other features, it can surely be the browser of choice for many night-time commuters. Not being able to disable filtering is a bit unfortunate, but other than that, having a one megabyte browser that runs like the wind on mobile connections and also offers the basic user comforts is something to take notice of.