I recently spent time gushing over the new Maxthon 3 desktop web browser in our Firefox alternatives post earlier this month, and the more I use it, the more impressed I get. It’s incredibly fast, uses very little memory (and with zero memory leak) and has a ton of really useful features built in. It also keeps my laptop running around 20 degrees cooler than Firefox, especially with lots of tabs open. Something to do with CPU load I guess.

Anyway I’ve also been playing around with the Android version of Maxthon 3 and I have to say it’s as good, if not better than its desktop sibling. The company has managed to cram in a great feature set for a mobile browser, probably the best I’ve seen in a phone browser, and done so without sacrificing speed. I’ve been looking for a fast, comprehensive alternative to the stock Android browser for ages, and although Opera was good, I never really felt completely comfortable with it for some reason.

 

Likewise the other mobile browsers like Firefox for Android and Dolphin HD. The main thing with Maxthon is the fact you can customise the heck out of the program, to make it run the way you prefer. You like full screen as default? No problem. You like to use swipe gestures to navigate? Ditto. There’s a lot of options but they’re easy to set and valuable, not just fluff. It also features tab browsing, no adverts at all and offers a completely private browsing mode where you save no cookies or history.

If you’ve been looking for a fast, full featured and clever web browser for your smartphone, this is one definitely worth checking out. Highly recommended!