Smart Browser#

Smart Browser is an Android browser app that I released on Google Play around 2012. It has since been removed from Google Play for maintenance reasons.

I built this app to submit it to an event in 2012 called “Google Hackfair.” Back then, the mobile market was a battlefield, and at the same time it still wasn’t as mature as it is today. I personally had a few pain points while using Chrome on Android, and when I decided to participate in Hackfair, I thought: “Then why not build the browser I want myself?”—and started the project.

Why build a new browser#

Looking back, browsers already had strong players. But at the time, I felt there was still room to experiment more boldly at the app level—especially around things like the reading experience on mobile, one-handed control, and saving / reusing only the information you actually want.

The key idea of Smart Browser was replacing a fixed top address bar with a movable “remote control layer.” By placing controls where your thumb naturally reaches, it was designed so actions like reading / saving / clipping / searching / translation could happen quickly within the same browsing flow.

Demo video#

Here’s a demo video of Smart Browser:

Store listing at the time (original app description)#

Below is the app description I used in the store listing back then:

Find a comfortable, easy read that is optimized for touch-based mobile devices—a new-concept browser!
The third idea app by a Mensa member!!

1. Composition
  1) Main Activity: favorite links, favorite web pieces, and stored HTML files.
  2) Web Activity
  3) Control Tool Layer: a collection of tools for using the browser
  4) Easy Read View: extracts the content of a web page so it can be read in a clean, comfortable environment, and supports search and translation.
  5) Source View: view the HTML source of the web page.
  6) Settings View: settings for the Control Tool Layer and Easy Read View.
  7) Lock Screen: while reading a web page, the app can show a custom lock screen after turning the screen off and on. The lock screen is released by double-tapping the unlock button at the bottom.
  8) My Page: a personal page that contains the user’s favorite links. You can share this page with other people.

2. Features
  1) Use the Control Tool Layer instead of the address bar.
  2) Add favorite links and favorite web page pieces to the main screen.
  3) In Settings, set the desired background, font size, font color, line spacing, and margins for Easy Read View.
  4) Search and translate easily in Easy Read View.
  5) View the current web page on the custom lock screen.
  6) View the HTML source of the web page.
  7) Save web pages and view them when the network is unavailable.

Hackfair reception & looking back#

On the day of Hackfair, the response was very positive. Even now, I still think features like one-handed control, a clean reading mode, search / translation after selecting a word, and webpage clipping / saving were genuinely solid ideas.

And honestly, looking back, it was a time when indie apps still had a lot of opportunity. That’s why I sometimes wonder, “What if I had tried even a bit of performance marketing back then?” I have a small lingering regret. At the time, building was simply fun, and I didn’t feel the importance of operations and marketing the way I do now.

Why I took it down: maintenance costs & reality#

As Android kept evolving, maintenance issues accumulated and the app required updates. I decided it wasn’t reasonable to keep investing personal resources into it, and I eventually removed it from Google Play.

I personally used the app a lot, too—but over time, more and more features stopped working properly, and my willingness to fix them kept dropping. Back then, I was working at my day job until midnight and doing personal projects until 3 a.m. When I was building something new, it was fun—almost like “playing.” But fixing bugs and stabilizing a product during operations isn’t as fun as building it the first time, so it was hard to keep it going by carving out time from an already packed schedule.