One of the most exciting mobile phone launches of 2011 will face new competition in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The iPhone 4S has been delighting consumers since its launch in October, but Samsung’s new phone is destined to become the most desirable phone available today. We look at the web browser facilities on both models.

The iPhone 4S uses the familiar Safari browser that we have seen included in previous versions of the phone. However, things are a bit different on this new model, as the new iOS5 operating system has made some significant improvements to the browser. Tabbed browsing is a fairly common feature, so it’s not a huge surprise to find it included in the 4S. The phone allows you to run up to 8 different web pages at the same time, allowing you to scroll back and forth between different web sites. If you find a site that is of particular interest, you now have the option of not only bookmarking the page, but also adding it to your Reading List so that you can easily access it at another time. Many modern websites are packed with ads and multimedia content, and the new Reader mode is perfect for such sites. When you click on the icon at the top of the screen, the phone removes all unnecessary content from the page, leaving you with a simple text document that is much easier to read than the original. The only downside to the Safari browser on the 4S is that it does not support Adobe Flash files, which means that some of the video content cannot be viewed when browsing the web.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus uses the basic Android web browser and looks great on the phone’s large 4.65-inch screen. In addition to the obvious benefits gained from the large screen size, the browser is also very fast thanks to the dual-core processor that the model uses. If you want to zoom in on a particular segment of a web page, the Nexus allows you to use a pinch method to zoom or just double-tap the area you want to zoom in. This zoom function works very well, although the phone does not allow you to get as close as the iPhone 4S does. When viewing multiple sites in this model, the pages are displayed in a vertical list on the screen. This doesn’t feel as natural as Apple’s phone, which allows you to perform a horizontal swiping motion to read other pages you have open. This system is more similar to what we are used to on desktop systems like Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, and therefore instantly feels more familiar than the vertical arrangement. Adobe Flash is not compatible with this version of the Android browser; however, a software update will be available soon that will change this.

There is very little to choose from in quality between the web browsers used on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the iPhone 4S. Both models offer a great online experience and are perfect devices for browsing the web on the go.

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