Dolphin Browser HD is a fast and easy-to-use web browser for Android phones. It is packed with useful features to help you navigate the web more efficiently.

Dolphin Browser HD makes it easy to browse for sites and enjoy their content on your mobile, thanks to its excellent browsing features. Pages are opened in the form of tabs (you can have up to eight open at once). You can flick between sites effortlessly by clicking on the tabs or sliding the screen down to access the thumbnail window view, where previews of all the currently-open sites are displayed.

Other helpful browsing aids in Dolphin Browser HD include a bookmarks panel, which slides out from the left of the screen, giving you quick access to your favorite pages. You can easily customize the order of the bookmarks by clicking and dragging them around the list.

Dolphin Browser HD includes a Speed Dial for fast access to commonly visited pages. There's also a Webzine feature for reading Facebook, Twitter and news feeds in a comfortable way, through timelines with thumbnails.

Touch friendly

Dolphin Browser HD features full multi-touch support. You can navigate around sites with the flick of a finger, zoom in by tapping or pinching (a feature which is sorely missing in Opera Mini and Firefox Mobile.

On the subject of touch, this latest version of Dolphin Browser HD adds even more support for touch gestures. This allows you to draw a letter or a symbol on the screen to access a particular site or perform a function. For example, writing an 'f' will open Facebook; or drawing left and right arrows will move you back or forward through pages. You can even create your own custom gestures!

Getting around quickly

Handily, Dolphin Browser HD includes address auto-complete, which speeds up URL entry by suggesting likely matches from your bookmarks or from the web. There is no search bar to speak of in Dolphin Browser HD, but if you type a word into the URL bar and hit Enter you'll be taken to a Google search results page. There's even a voice search feature powered by Google, which works very well.

Dolphin Browser HD is very quick and it includes full support for HTML5. Unlike Skyfire, Dolphin Browser HD doesn't support Flash video within the browser, and instead it'll prompt you to launch a separate player.

Plug in to new features

There aren't a huge amount of advanced features built into Dolphin Browser HD, which may be part of the reason for its streamlined performance. However, you can beef up its capabilities by installing add-ons, which are accessible from a slide-out panel on the right of the screen. Among the downloadable extras are a password manager, YouTube search, ad blocker and Google Translate.

Given its slick performance and ease of use, we rank Dolphin Browser HD as the best alternative browser for Android.