BlackBerry (Storm, Tour, Bold )/JM2ME Free Apps 2Day: Bolt 1.5 Faster Browser

By Contributor Wireless and Mobile News on October 6, 2009 9:02 PM

Here's good news for those you who follow our BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Tour Apps of the Day, the BOLT browser has been popular for BlackBerry smartphones and plain ordinary cell phones from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile is now out of beta.

The BOLT mobile browser was in public beta for eight months and was downloaded more than 2 million times, rendering in excess of 200 million web pages.

They claim that BOLT 1.5, its fastest, most capable mobile browser to date. Many of our readers have reported how much they love the BOLT and it especially appreciated for veiwing YouTube videos. We saw a demo of it at CTIA in April and it was impressive.

BOLT displays full web pages like they do in a computer web browser. In comprehensive speed testing, BOLT was routinely 25 to 50 percent faster than the next fastest mobile browser. With advanced features like the ability to stream video from the most popular video websites, copy and paste, upload files such as photos and videos to websites, and order and arrange favorites into custom folders, BOLT is also the most fully-featured mobile browser.

Built in J2ME and able to operate on phones of all types, BOLT can work on an estimated 3 billion phones already in the market. A version of BOLT created specifically for BlackBerry includes all the features of BOLT but also includes default BlackBerry shortcuts and optimizations.

Built with proprietary compression, navigation and rendering technologies, BOLT enables users to find and read information quickly and easily. Once users have navigated to the specific section of the large Web page they are viewing, they can then zoom in to display clear text and images that look crisp on even small mobile phone screens or low-end phones. Employing the Webkit 4.0 rendering and layout engine, BOLT offers users the most accurate rendering of complex Web pages available on mobile phones.

The new BOLT 1.5 includes all the features in previous beta versions plus important new features and service enhancements to improve reliability, usability and speed.

BOLT's beta feature set included:

Fast, secure, desktop-style web browsing on both high-end and low-end handsets.
Streaming video capabilities.
Split screen and full screen modes for easy navigation and viewing
Easily add and select favorites and view browsing history
Intuitive keystroke shortcuts for easier navigation and content selection .
Protection against spyware and malicious or faulty add-ons
23:1 compression uses less data than competing browsers

New features and enhancements to BOLT 1.5 include:

Cache Support to speed users' ability to move quickly back and forth between the currently and previously viewed web pages through the use of backward and forward navigation.
Download Manager for easy download of files directly from BOLT and the ability to save them to specific folders on the mobile phone (requires JSR75 support on the device).
Support for Streaming Videos of Any Length that overcomes limitations on some phones' ability to stream videos of longer lengths. The new approach ensures video clips will play on all devices, for any length video.
Video Wizard to assist users in configuring their device for optimal video playback.
Dedicated Search Bar on home page, for easier and faster online searches.
Improved Ability to Manage RSS Feeds by allowing users to arrange and file feeds just as they do with their favorites and bookmarks.
Enhancements for TouchScreen Devices such as simple volume controls for the BOLT media player which now offers volume controls on the screen.
Enhancements for BOLT Servers in the cloud, which increase the already fast BOLT mobile browser by an additional 10 to 20 percent.
Bitstream added more behind-the-scenes enhancements to BOLT and its rendering servers to improve the company's ability to quickly add new functionality or extend support and management capabilities to mobile operators and handset manufacturers.

Also emerging from beta testing is BOLT LiteTM, the newest member of the BOLT family, introduced in June 2009 along with the third and final version of the BOLT beta. Recognizing that some mobile phones currently in use cannot support robust applications and some network providers limit the size of application downloads, Bitstream created a new light version of the BOLT mobile browser.

BOLT lite contains all the essential features of the BOLT mobile browser, retaining BOLT's feature-rich functionality, best-of-breed download speeds and desktop PC-style page layout. BOLT Lite's 150KB package has been optimized for entry-level devices by eliminating BOLT's non-critical features such as landscape and portrait orientation settings, inline videos, transport protocol settings, copy-paste operations, favorites organization, inline editing, find in page feature, and 3XL magnification.

BOLT and BOLT Lite are both available for free download at http://boltbrowser.com starting on October 7.

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