Currently, the most famous browsers are Google Chrome, Safari for iOS, and then UC Browser. In this article, we are going to talk about another upcoming and rising browser known as Puffin Browser for mobile devices.
What is Puffin browser?
Puffin Web Browser is a wicked fast mobile browser. Once users experience the thrilling speed of Puffin, regular Mobile Internet feels like torture. Puffin Web Browser includes Adobe-Flash-Over-Cloud 24/7 now without additional in-app-purchase.
Puffin Browser is a web browser developed by CloudMosa which is an American-based mobile technology company founded by Shioupyn Shen.
How does Puffin browser works?
It does not work like any other normal browser. Your typically normal browsers interact with the hosts directly when you hit enter after typing in the website URL.
Puffin Browser utilizes encrypted cloud servers for content processing. It renders webpages in the cloud, it could make page loading, content rendering, and JavaScript execution faster than local device processing.
Can Puffin Browser be Traced?
Puffin Browser mainly focuses on speed, so website will be able to access a lot of information using your IP address and browsing activity of a user.
Features of Puffin Browser
There are lots of features that the developers highlight on their Google Play page and on their website, some of these are:
- Puffin speeds up mobile browsing by shifting the workload from the resource-limited devices to the cloud servers, and resource-demanding webpages can run super-fast on your phones or tablets.
- According to the official site, Puffin Browser is the only browser optimized for Android TV for video watching, music listening and Internet surfing. Puffin TV-Browser is faster than other browsers or even native apps on high-end Android TV / Set-Top Boxes.
- CloudMosa leverages the browser isolation technology to safeguard your web browsing in the cloud and keep threats like malware, ransomware, adware, and malicious links at bay.
- Like any other browser like UC Browser, the Puffin browser too has a Newsfeed that brings you the latest, breaking news from the world’s best journalists, which keeps yourself up with what’s happening in the world.
Some other features which you might be attracted to are:
- Incredible page load and rendering speed.
- Adobe Flash support over cloud during the daytime (also works on Android 4.4+)
- Download to cloud (up to 1G per file).
- Theater mode for Flash videos and games.
- Virtual trackpad and gamepad.
- The color theme for the toolbar and sidebar.
- Fastest JavaScript engine.
- Full web experience (desktop and mobile view）.
- Incognito tab: Auto-clean your browsing activities in the app.
- You can customize the data compression ratio base on your need. You can check the data usage in settings and browsing without worrying about going over the data limit.
Also if we go to their Kickstarter campaign for their own Puffin OS, then we get to know that Puffin Browser has already reached 100 million users worldwide. Puffin browser is the top utility app in the App Store in 58 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and more.
It is the #5 top browser in the US and is now one of the recommended browser options for Android users in Europe.
Now that we know the back story of the Puffin browser lets get into the real stuff.
Is Puffin the best browser?
No Puffin browser is not the best browser currently although it provides a lot of features not found in most of the browsers.
Does Puffin browser use a proxy?
In a sense yes ,it uses the company’s cloud servers that intereact with the website you ask the puffin browser to open.
Is Puffin browser secure?
Yes, but only to an extent. It redirects your data which you sent to their own company’s cloud servers for futher processing of the data that you wish to get displayed on your browser.
Are there ads on the puffin browser?
Yes ,To cover operational costs of maintaining Flash and loading resource-intensive websites on our cloud servers, ads may appear from time to time when viewing video content or playing games in the free version of Puffin.
Is Puffin the fastest browser?
No, although they claim that its one of the fastest browser but its not the fastest browser.
What can I use instead of a puffin browser?
Here is the list of browsers you can use instead of puffin.
1. Brave Browser.
2. Rocket Browser.
3. ASUS Browser.
4. Yolo Browser.
5. ONE Browser.
What is CloudMosa?
CloudMosa is a technology that creates an avatar of the user’s device in Puffin’s cloud servers to access data and execute applications on the Internet. Since the avatar runs remotely in high-performance computers with connectivity prowess, it can access data and execute applications at high speed efficiently, regardless of the original device’s hardware limitation.
The avatar also protects users’ devices by isolating unknown threats on the Internet, away from physical devices.
Now that we have mentioned all the awesome features of Puffin browser, lets move on to the other side of the coin.
Cons or disadvantages of Puffin Browser
- The data centers of Puffin Web Browser are in the US and the cloud servers can only access public web sites from US geolocations.
- For users outside the US, local content, especially videos of local interest, may not be accessible from the US due to geo-restrictions in their home countries.
- Puffin is blocked in some countries (e.g., China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) and by some schools (e.g., in the United States).
- The most recent update will not allow me to use the browser unless you allow them to use your location information. In addition to that, they force us into sending them usage (telemetry)information otherwise we cannot use the browser.
- And to add over that users are getting forced to ‘agree’ to send usage statistics, location ‘to improve search results and map accuracy’ to use the browser at all. No option to change in browser settings and checks every startup for location permission.
At starting the intent of the company might be good with all the features it provided with their Android App.
Currently, Puffin Browser is available on Puffin OS and Android OS. Puffin browser lost its support 2 years ago when the Puffin OS company was not able to match the requirements needed by Apple for its App Store.
Final Verdict : Is Puffin browser worth trying?
From AndroidHire Team we have a big NO for this browser. In addition to the disadvantages already mentioned in the above section, but the more recent updates are pushing the users to accept any condition whatsoever in order to use the browser. Instead, if anyone is so concerned with the privacy and stuff they can try the Brave Browser instead which rewards the user as well. If you still want to try Puffin browser you can go here and download the latest version from the Play Store
