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Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

wsj.com

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Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#71

Post by mintplant »

figure8 wrote: post #36
jaxondu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also enlarge the default font size similar to desktop browser. Can not do that on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Reading this site on UC is much easier on my eyes.

This text reflow feature is key to my choosing a mobile browser. I use Opera mainly for this reason. Text reflow used to be standard. Does anyone know why Chrome and Firefox removed it?

There's the Fit Text to Width add-on for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/fit-text-to-w...

The Accessibility section in the Firefox for Android settings also contains options for adapting pages to the system font size and overriding zoom-blocking. And there's the built-in Reader View which extracts and represents the text from supported pages.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#72

Post by enitihas »

A very large reason for the huge user base of UC browser is that it used to work on very low end phones, like Nokia S40 editions, similar to Opera Mini, and many people who migrated from those kept using UC.

Also, these browsers operated with very less data using server side comprssion. Not good for privacy maybe, but good for slow connections.

Another thing I hear from people using UC is that it has really good download capabilities. Such functionality might be common in today's mobile browsers, but 4 years ago, it was difficult to find another browser which could pause and resume downloads, which is essential if you have a slow internet connection.

A lot of people using UC were using Opera Mini. However, UC has a much larger bigger marketing budget and that I think made the difference.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#73

Post by vel0city »

aceofspad3s wrote: post #53
Sylos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried Firefox? They've had a pretty big update recently, which also broke many extensions and ways of making advanced extensions, so some people do take that as reason to say that it's now "long way from its former glory", but if you've been a Chrome user up until now, it'd strike me as odd for you to think that, since it's still much more extensible than Chrome. Well, unless you haven't seen the ne…

Firefox is much slower than Chrome on Android, at least on my (reasonably powerful) Qualcomm 625

Firefox with uBlock installed gives a much faster overall experience on my device compared to using Google Chrome. Ads have become such a nightmare on mobile sites.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#74

Post by mintplant »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #11

If you’re in iOS, UC is a great way to pop out videos so you can, for example, watch a YouTube video while reading Hacker News. It also enables you to listen to just about any video in the background, when you switch to other apps.

Firefox for Android does background playback too, and even provides media controls (exposing play/pause etc through the standard system API). Some sites may need the Video Background Play Fix [0] add-on.

For popping out YouTube videos I use NewPipe, a FOSS Android YouTube client [1].

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#75

Post by mintplant »

aceofspad3s wrote: post #53
Sylos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried Firefox? They've had a pretty big update recently, which also broke many extensions and ways of making advanced extensions, so some people do take that as reason to say that it's now "long way from its former glory", but if you've been a Chrome user up until now, it'd strike me as odd for you to think that, since it's still much more extensible than Chrome. Well, unless you haven't seen the ne…

Firefox is much slower than Chrome on Android, at least on my (reasonably powerful) Qualcomm 625

When did you last try it? If it was anything more than a month ago you might want go give it another spin, and/or try a Beta or Nightly build, as the Quantum revamps aren't all enabled yet in the stable channel of the Android edition.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#76

Post by dictum »

gketuma wrote: post #50

UC Browser is now holding the web back by not adopting new standards like css-grid and flexbox. No version of UC supports these standards and with the rise of UC globally, developers are hesitant to use these standards as millions of users especially in India and China are left out. I know there are ways to configure fallback, but still.

As soon as I read the headline on the frontpage, I came here to search for a mention of flexbox.

It's the only non-deprecated browser that only supports the first draft of the flexbox spec. There's no workaround for the lack of flex-wrap — you have to assume it's a small mobile device and arrange items on a single axis.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#77

Post by jordache »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #11

If you’re in iOS, UC is a great way to pop out videos so you can, for example, watch a YouTube video while reading Hacker News. It also enables you to listen to just about any video in the background, when you switch to other apps.

how does it get around apple's policy of not allowing another browser engine in the OS?

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#78

Post by Symbiote »

kurthr wrote: post #25
greenbush wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read the article. :) The article specifically talks about smartphones, not feature phones. It mentions how Chrome is an issue for cheaper smartphones with less storage: "The UC Browser app takes up 31 megabytes of space, compared with Chrome’s 125 megabytes". And aside from a smaller app size, UC also compresses data and blocks ads to reduce data requirements (data tends to be expensive in emerging…

I don't think this makes much sense, just looking at China (where I have some insight). You can easily run Chrome (default install) on a https://www.phonearena.com/news/8-best-cheap-phones-under-15... I'm suspicious that the numbers also include non-smart phones, just because of the 430M size, use of the word "mobile", and discussion of a browser from 2004 that predates the iPhone. Further, to the extent that compres…

"Mobile" is just British / Commonwealth English for a cell phone, regardless of performance or features. Maybe the author is based in such a country.

I can believe 430M, compared to a few years ago it seems every other person in a developing country now has one.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#79

Post by AsyncAwait »

ams6110 wrote: post #61
aceofspad3s wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is much slower than Chrome on Android, at least on my (reasonably powerful) Qualcomm 625

I'm pretty happy with Firefox Focus on a Moto G3. Some people may not like the lack of features in that browser however, e.g. no history, no cookies saved, etc.

> Some people may not like the lack of features in that browser however, e.g. no history, no cookies saved, etc.

That's kind of the point of Focus, it's meant to be a private browser. You can also get regular Firefox with uBlock Origin to have a similar experience with these features, if this annoys you.

Re: Alibaba’s UC Browser is dominating in Asian markets with lower-end smartphones

#80

Post by taobility »

EKLM-ZK88 wrote: post #63
gketuma wrote: post #50

UC Browser is now holding the web back by not adopting new standards like css-grid and flexbox. No version of UC supports these standards and with the rise of UC globally, developers are hesitant to use these standards as millions of users especially in India and China are left out. I know there are ways to configure fallback, but still.

Why do these markets use these browsers and not chrome or firefox, or even the built in browsers on their phones?

The question is like why those users do not use iPhone or Samsung Galaxy 7
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