Although the eyes of the world will be on the physical design of Samsung’s upcoming flagship, inside the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus handsets the software continues to evolve to challenge assumptions and create better user experiences for millions of Galaxy smartphone owners.
A large part of that is the web browser. Samsung has continued to develop its own standards-compliant web browser for its Android platform. It already stands apart from Google’s mobile Chrome browser because of a focus on content blocking and privacy. You can now add secure mobile payments and better web app integration to those bullet points.
The latest major update to the browser (v5.4) is in the final stages of beta testing and a public beta version is rolling out in the Google Play store. And for the first time, it’s also going to be available for non-Samsung handsets as well.
Allowing the browser to run on Nexus devices may not significantly increase the reach of the browser to the public, but it does mean that many more developers can work with the features in the browser, confident that the reach of the Galaxy platform will reward them.
The browser is also bringing in another important part of Samsung’s mobile vision. It now supports web payments, allowing users to pay for goods and services directly in the mobile app. The intention is to enable web payment to use Samsung Pay if it is available on a device, otherwise card details can be stored on the handset with biometric sensors used for security. If developers want to make use of web payments, the option is there. Like much of the code in the Samsung the option has been implemented using W3C standards, in this case for web payments. As it stands this is the first mobile device that will support web-pay.
Users may not initially spot the payment services the ability to add a content blocker or the wide range of supported W3C standards. But with the new browser likely to feature on the Galaxy S8 firmware, they will spot the impact of ambient and progressive web apps.
Developers working with these tools can do far more than just "show a web page." Progressive web apps are hybrids of regular web pages and mobile applications. You get all the benefits of a website and an app in one, so details can be saved between sessions, notifications can be sent and received, you can save it to the home screen as an app launcher, you can work with the aforementioned payment services, and much more.
You may have seen some of these around the internet in recent months with web pages asking you to allow them to send notifications. Twitter and Facebook both use PWA elements in their mobile websites, and there’s another example closer to home… Here’s Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis Dvorkin talking about this very site’s implementation of a progressive web app:
The PWA technological framework enables us to better serve audience segments -- and attract marketers in those segments. All our content will always be part of the larger FORBES web site. Consumers with specific interests will now be able to install subject-specific PWAs on their mobile home screens, yet still have the ability to jump to all our content. And, they can do so without the search-and-download friction of Apple's app store. Check out this visual. At the top is a card-based for what we're calling FORBES Passport, a luxury travel offering. Beneath that is a card-based stream for Women@Forbes. Consumers can easily install distinct apps for each. Marketers can join the experience, too, through sponsorship, native content or display ads and reach consumers who self-selected such interests.
Many people, including myself, look at the duplication of apps on an Android-powered Samsung handset and wonder why there are two web browsers, two notepads, two calendars and so on. The answer is (pardon the pun) twofold. The first is that the Google apps are there because that is part of the agreement to access the Google Play store and services. Without those an Android handset will not have many of the expected features or the required support for many apps.
Samsung believes there is a better way to implement features on a mobile device, which is where these first-party apps come in. The web browser starts in the same place - much of the code is derived from the open source Chromium browser, and the South Korean company is the second biggest contributor to the project - but it strikes out a different ideological path to Google’s own browser.
Just as Samsung believes that a waterproof phone, a curved screen, or wireless charging makes for a better smartphone, it believes that this browser delivers a better experience for its user. And having that level of competition in software not only lifts Samsung, but also lifts Google and the entire Android ecosystem to achieve more.
