Mobile internet company, UC Web has launched new versions of its UC browser web browser for Android, Java and iPad.
The company also announced that it was opening its second headquarters in India as it had seen a good uptake of the browser amongst Indian users. UC Web claims that it is the number two mobile browser in India with a 25% market share. It also informed that the combine share of active UC Web users on iOS and Android was 250 million.
The Android version of the UC browser(version 9.0) now includes UI enhancements including multiple start-up screens and unlimited speed dials, as well as the ability to drag and drop shortcuts or favourites to create folders within the start screen.
The browser now also allows users to cache online videos for offline viewing when a network connection is not available.
It also offers customised themes and wallpapers via the UC Theme Center. The browser also supports incognito browsing, allowing users to surf the web without leaving traces in the form of cache, cookies and searches, in addition to supporting ad blocking in web pages. The browser comes with an improved tool for taking screenshots of webpages and for editing and annotating them.
The Java version of the browser (version 9.0) now sports an improved user interface that is optimised for touch screen devices and also offers a night mode (white text on black).
The browser also supports UDisk, UCWeb's free online storage service for UCWeb users that offers them 2GB of permanent storage space online and 4GB of temporary space for 7 days. The browser can utilise UDisk to download multimedia files in the background for faster playback. It also allows users to save form information such as user account credentials.
UC Web claims that its new iPad browser (version 2.0) has received many under the hood changes. It says that the browser's U3 engine has been given a performance boost and graphics processing has been increased by 300% with up to 30 frames per second on the iPad 4. The browser now supports WebGL and can render even those graphics heavy pages which can not be handled by Apple's Safari browser. The iPad version of UC web also uses advanced hardware rendering to improve speed.
The browser also offers a 'View it Later' mode that caches web pages, complete with their videos, images and text for offline viewing. It supports cloud downloads for saving files that the iPad cannot recognise for later access through other devices.The browser features cloud acceleration technology, which according to the company reduces data costs by up to 85% and reduces loading time of webpages. The browser also brings a new user interface and night mode.