The navigation window stays out of your way during your full-screen browsing experience.
Portal is a $1.99 fullscreen browser for iOS devices that shows the many features possible in a mobile browser while at the same time highlighting the absolute sufficiency of Apple's built-in Safari app.
The coolest thing about Portal is that it looks and sounds cool, with fun little sound effects, gorgeous navigation elements and screen fonts that lend the mobile browsing experience a sense of design -- without necessarily making tasks any easier.
Profiles are easy to set up and work well.
If you want to take the time to create different browser "profiles," say, one for work and one for fun, Portal can handle that. And if you're a bit paranoid about some of your mobile browsing habits, Portal supports "stealth" profiles that never display search history or bookmarks, should your device find its way into the wrong hands.
Remember Jeeves? He misses you!
Portal supports eight easily selectable search engines, and up to 8 tabs that are easily accessed from its main nav wheel. You can download and save files to access later through iTunes, and if your device is running iOS 4.2 you can use Portal with AirPrint.
The bottom line. Portal builds a lot of power and functionality into a mobile browser that looks and sounds well beyond the mundane. Its navigation tools take a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of them Portal may surprise you with some of the things you can do with this mobile browser. In practice, however, Portal's bells and whistles can get in the way of just finding a web page and opening it up.
iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.1.3 or later
Gorgeous nav graphics and sound effects make a compelling UI but hinder functionality. Supports file downloading, saving and printing.
Supports user profiles and "stealth" mode for privacy.
Prone to crashing.
iBod
February 22, 2011 at 6:56pm
U list a no of positives and not many negatives for just an okay rating. Seems slightly excessively harsh....slightly uneven as a whole....
ilikeimac
February 22, 2011 at 3:50pm
It certainly has a better looking UI than my current mobile Safari replacement (AtomicWeb). Sound effects and Profiles? Meh. The 3 things I like most about my browser are:
Full screen mode
Dropbox support (for downloads)
Support for spoofing the browser ID, so you can see the full desktop version of pages that offer insufficient "mobile" versionsOh, and if you want to use a non-default browser on the iPhone you should consider jailbreaking so you can install "Browser Changer" and have links open in your new browser instead of Safari.
