Amazon has released a light-weight internet browser for Android smartphones in India, simply called Internet. The app itself weighs just about 2MB in size and is designed to offer an efficient way to browse the internet on devices with limited processing power and available storage space. The India-focused web browser is already listed on the Google Play Store with the screenshots revealing its user interface. The navigation bar of the browser is placed on the bottom, a design element adopted by countless modern Android apps. A handful of popular local websites and services can be seen listed in the top section of the homepage including Cricbuzz, BookMyShow, Indiatimes, and MakeMyTrip. Below it, there is a feed of the latest news from different Indian media outlets, a feature similar to the Google Chrome browser.
These features are evident that the browser is indeed targeted at the Indian market with the app’s feedback email address also provided by Amazon.in. Other listed features of the Internet app include tab previews and private browsing, which allows the users to surf the internet without saving any piece of their browsing history, besides an automatic full-screen mode. Interestingly, the app was released about a month ago but could come to light only now. Amazon has designed the app for Android 5.0 Lollipop and higher, but it cannot be downloaded on devices running newer versions of Android as of now citing incompatibility as the reason on the app’s Play Store listing. The app description mentions it to be a ‘private’ app for it doesn’t demand unnecessary permissions to collect private user information. Weighing 2.4MB, the web browser has a significantly smaller footprint than other browsers having a download size of tens of megabytes.
Many of the tech giants are pushing to bring ‘lite’ versions of their core apps. A while back, Amazon released the Kindle Lite app also for the Indian market, while Google now has a whole suite of lightweight apps for its core services under its Android Go program, like Maps Go, YouTube Go, Files Go, and Gmail Go among others. Facebook also launched ‘lite’ versions of its Facebook and Messenger apps for Android. Even the Google Play Store has started recommending the lite apps on their respective main app pages to promote the use of these efficient versions.
