While companies like Google, Mozilla, and Opera are providing and have been providing apps and services on mobile phones for years, smartphone manufacturers have their own apps too. HTC is one of those manufacturers and like a handful of them they made many of these apps available on the Play Store as a means of keeping them updated at a more consistent rate without having to update the phone itself. One of those apps, HTC’s browser, will be saying goodbye in the near future as HTC plans to discontinue the app at the end of next month on November 30th.
HTC doesn’t seem to have given an explanation as to why they decided on removing the app next month, or why they will no longer be supporting it, but no future support after the app is pulled from the Play Store is a big reason to switch to another browser sooner than later. Having said that, users who prefer the HTC Internet browser can use the app after it’s no longer offered as an available download on Google Play as long as it’s already installed on their device. Again, though, no future support means that no new features will be added, and if there are ever any future security risks that come along, continuing to use an unsupported browser puts the user at risk.
If you don’t have an HTC device, then not to worry as you weren’t able to use this browser anyway, but for the loyal HTC device owners who have either enjoyed HTC Internet or were simply using it because it kept them from having to install something else, now would be a time to initiate the switch which would include things like transferring your bookmarks and any saved browser data that you’d want to keep. If you’ve been using Android for a while, then you likely already know that there are a world of available options out there for Android browsers, and a few really great ones come from the first three companies that were mentioned above. While HTC hasn’t explained the reason for killing off the app, it’s entirely possible that they plan on introducing a new stock browser, or they could simply be deciding to have Chrome be the default browser on phones going forward.