I received an email this morning from BitStream letting me know that Bolt, a third party mobile web browser that works pretty well on the BlackBerry, is now out of Beta.
Many of the most significant upgrades occur “under the hood,” but you are sure to notice the results – v1.5 is the most reliable, fastest browser we have ever released – more than 15% faster than Beta3.
Here are some of the new and updated features in Bolt 1.5:
- Server upgrades (make v1.5 15% faster than Beta3)
- Cache support that enables directly browsing back to a previously visited page
- Download manager that downloads files directly within BOLT on JSR 75 capable devices
- Dedicated search bar, enabling search on popular search engines directly from BOLT
- Enhanced column width control that auto-aligns the text to columns for ease of reading
- Enhanced video support that includes inline media playing capability even on low-end devices.
- Support for streaming videos of any length
- Volume UP/DOWN controls in the inline media player
- Ability to rearrange the subscribed feeds using the ‘grab’ feature
- Access to History links from the URL window with inline editing OFF
- One click access on Home Page that ensures the cursor jumps to the desired widget
While I like the Bolt browser, I always go back to the HORRIBLE Blackberry browser because I hate the fact that I can’t change the default browser for the phone. Frankly, most of the web access I do comes from another app, so I don’t want to copy an address, open the Bolt browser, and paste it in.
Until the OS allows us to change default Browsers, the Blackberry will maintain it’s sub-par (too generous a term) browsing experience.
I know how you feel. But if you tried the leaked BlackBerry 5.0 firmware you wouldn’t go to another browser. I installed 5.0 OS on my BlackBerry Bold and I noticed the browser’s performance has been dramatically increased. I don’t quite care for flash support unless you want to slow down your BlackBerry to a halt. It displays and navigates websites 50 times better than before.
In general, 5.0 OS is a massive performance upgrade.
Try Opera Mini 5 Beta… It actually adds a open in opera mini option when you click on links. It is a pretty cool feature.
All 3 browsers are horrible: Bolt, Opera Mini AND of course BB’s sh!tcan browser.
Bolt’s browser is just freakin’ weird-looking to me. Idk, it’s just weird. When you want to type something in it takes you to a blank page so you can type something in. Weird. And after I installed Opera mini, the 1st thing I typed up couldn’t come up! The very first thing!
I’m tired of fighting BB’s monsterous browser. It’s getting to the point where the browser won’t even pick up images/pictures when I pull up sites (50-60% of the time). Support is expensive, apps are expensive, the phone is expensive when it should cost $79 tops with it’s short-comings. Idk. I’m just going to get myself an Android and never look back at this brand again.