Silk internet browser free#
If Amazon were to introduce a 3G Kindle Fire with a very affordable or even free dataplan, cloud caching might have made sense. The choice to launch this cloud-caching feature alongside the Kindle Fire always seemed suspect.
Not to mention those pesky CPU limitations will keep you from loading any web page at even 15Mbps. The WiFi stack in the Kindle is limited to around 15Mbps so even if you opt for a slower internet package you should be able to exceed what the Kindle Fire is capable of consuming. Customers can purchase cable internet plans maxing out at 50Mbps downstream. Time Warner recently (finally?) upgraded the Raleigh area to DOCSIS 3.0. Consolidating network access on a cellular network seems to make sense, there's just one problem: the Kindle Fire was launched as a WiFi only model. Things are even worse on Verizon's EVDO network where I get sub 1Mbps speeds. AT&T's 3G at my house tops out at 3Mbps, but more frequently than not it's down in the 1 - 2Mbps range. The parts of the loading process that aren't CPU bound are typically limited by the speed of the cellular network you're on.
Silk internet browser upgrade#
It's why you notice a performance difference when you upgrade from a two year old smartphone to a modern day model, even if both were running the same OS. A huge portion of web page loading on smartphone platforms is actually CPU bound. The reduction is even more impressive if you look at what it does to a more involved front page like Engadget's: there the list drops from 34 down to 1.Īmazon claims the cloud-side caching can improve performance, however I was skeptical of this claim. The list of 13 is reduced to a single IP address. The table below shows you all of the IPs that are contacted when loading with and without Amazon's cloud acceleration feature turned on: With Silk, the request is sent to Amazon's cloud, where Amazon's servers retrieve (and cache) all of the elements of the web page and deliver the result to you directly. Each host is contacted, the request acknowledged and then data is exchanged between it and your browser.Īmazon believes that this is an inefficient way of loading a web page. A typical load of pulls content from thirteen different hosts. What makes Silk unique is its ability to funnel your web requests through Amazon's Web Services (AWS) cloud. Silk is yet-another-webkit based browser with all of the usual features: tabbed browsing, Flash support, integrated search/URL bar, etc. At its launch Amazon introduced a new web browser called Silk. Doing so eliminates the processing power advantages that are the program’s primary selling points, though.We've been working on our Kindle Fire review over the weekend but I thought I'd break out a particularly interesting section of the review for release a bit early. Luckily, you can switch off the cloud features and use Silk as a regular browser. So, the company gets your login information, passcodes, images, and everything else you enter into the apps you’re accessing. Plus, you’re never directly interacting with websites, but with Amazon’s cloud. While Amazon claims it keeps the gathered information anonymous, there’s no guarantee that third-parties can access it with the right authorization. Privacy and securityĪll this speed and convenience through the cloud raises issues of security and privacy, though. Making a profile makes each browser visit more personalized than the last. Plus, this feature increases convenience, as you get access to tailored content.
With time, the guesses of which pages you’ll access get increasingly accurate, speeding up performance even further. Its machine learning predictive technologies develop your profile. Tailored suggestionsĪpart from providing a much smoother performance, Silk’s connection to the cloud personalizes your experience. You won’t face any time lag between a command and its execution since Amazon’s cloud is always open. Finally, its performance doesn’t have latency issues. This approach also reduces the cache size on your device, saving storage space. The primary reason for its speed is that it uses its cloud to render the largest part of the web pages. Compared to all these options, Silk operates the same but performs faster. You might enjoy your native mobile browser, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or another, more niche alternative.
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