Tag Archives: UC Browser

Latest UC Browser 9.0 (Signed Java Version) Modified to Remove the Virtual Keypad On Samsung, LG and Other Touchcreen Phones

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Dennis Bournique

I did a post a while ago explaining how to modify Opera Mini's jad file to hide the unneeded touch keypad that displays at the bottom of the screen on some touchscreen phones. The post included a link to the modified Opera Mini. I received a request asking for a copy of the latest signed Java version of UC Browser modified to hide the keypad.

The process for modifying the UC Browser or any other Java app is exactly the same as what was described in the original post:

1.Download the app's jad file to a PC. You can get UC Browser jad files (signed or unsigned ) at www.ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/platform.html?platform=java

2. Open the downloaded mini.jad with a text editor or Windows Wordpad

3. Scroll to the bottom of the file and paste in the following lines:

Nokia-MIDlet-No-Exit: true
Nokia-MIDlet-On-Screen-Keypad: no
Navi-Key-Hidden: true
UseNativeTextButtons: hide
ReverseSoftkeys: hide
UseNativeCommands: hide
MIDlet-Touch-Support: true
MIDlet-ScreenMode: ROTATE
MIDlet-Landscape-Support: true
LGE-MIDlet-Width: 240
LGE-MIDlet-Height: 400
LGE-MIDlet-On-Screen-Keypad: no
LGE-MIDlet-Display-Mode: both

4. Upload the file to Dropbox.com or another file sharing service that is easy to use in your phone browser. Click here to get a free 2GB Dropbox account (by using this referral link I get an extra 250 MB of storage in my Dropbox which I thank you for).

5. Visit Dropbox with your phone browser and click the modified mini.jad link to download it to your phone.

If that didn't work or you don't have a PC or are just in a hurry, here's are links to the latest signed version of the UC browser as well as some older versions.

Latest Version

UC Browser 9.0 (25-Apr-2013) The latest "full" (non-cloud) UC Browser release. According to UC, new features in it include:

Fast Video and Audio Playing We have designed the Fast Video and Audio Playing feature to break through storage limitation and poor network connection. The new feature allows users to play video files that have been saved to UDisk directly, without having to download those big files to local phone storage. Enjoy the fluent videos watching on Java Phone.
Account Information Saving To make logging-in to your favourite webpages more convenient, we’ve added the ability for you to save usernames and passwords on several websites, such as Facebook and GMail.
Improved User Interface We’ve given our user interface a makeover, optimizing the design to provide an enhancement of user experience. The menus, night mode, operation in touch screen phones and more has been optimized.
Bug Fixes The stability of this version has been increased and there have been numerous bug fixes, such as a solution to the missing Speed Dial issue.

Download the modified UC Browser 9.0 jad at:
wapreview.com/download/UCBrowser_V9.0.0.260_Java_pf70_(Build13042317).jad
Short Link: is.gd/uc90touch

To install, go to is.gd/uc90touch with your phone's browser.

Older Versions:

UC Browser 8.9 (29-Jan-2012) A "full" (non-cloud) UC Browser release. New features include: Incognito Browsing, Improved Search Bar, Select and Copy and Optimized Text Input

Download the modified UC Browser 8.9 jad at: dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.9.0.251_Java_pf70_%28Build13012415%29.jad

Short Link: is.gd/uc89touch To install, go to is.gd/uc89touch with your phone's browser.

UC Browser 8.8 (25-Dec-2012) Another "full" (non-cloud) UC Browser release. New features include: increased download speed, customizable shortcut keys and an improved File Manager.

Download the modified UC Browser 8.8 jad at: dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.8.1.252_Java_pf70_%28Build12122410%29.jad
Short Link: is.gd/uc88touch To install it, go to is.gd/uc88touch with your phone's browser.

UC Browser 8.7 (7-Nov-2012) This is a "full" (non-cloud) UC Browser release. New features include: users can switch between multiple accounts when signing in to a website, long press the OK button to invoke the Actions menu, users can save pages directly without changing the page name.

Download the modified UC Browser 8.7 jad at:
dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.7.0.218_Java_pf70_%28Build12110609%29.jad
Short Link: is.gd/uc87touch To install it, go to is.gd/uc87touch with your phone's browser.

UC Browser 8.6. (20-Sept-2012): This is a "full (non-cloud) UC Browser release. New features in this release are: full offline download support with synchronous status shown in the download manager, you can now preview the images before uploading, "clear all history" option before exiting UC Browser added, new options to disable the virtual keyboard, faster uploads and display of the upload speed in KB/sec while uploading. This version uses the new user interface from the cloud version with different menus for touch screen and non touch screen phones

Download the modified UC Browser 8.6 jad at: dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.6.0.199_Java_pf70_%28Build12092011%29.jad
Short link: is.gd/uc860touch To install it, go to is.gd/uc860touch with your phone browser.

UC Cloud Browser 8.5 (6-Sept-2012): This is first non-Beta version of the UC Cloud Browser, a redesign of the original UC browser optimized for smaller download size and faster page loads. New features in this release are: new user interface with different menus for touch screen and non touch screen phones. Supports copy and paste in the URL bar and all input fields. New screen brightness setting. New share image on Facebook feature. New Game Center free game download store.

I've posted the modified UC Cloud Browser 8.5 jad at: dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.5.0.185_Java_pf83_%28Build12082909%29.jad
Short link: is.gd/uc85touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc85touch with your phone browser.

UC Browser 8.4 (23-Jul-2012):. Major changes are: simplified theme installation, the traffic statistics display is back, the link to browsing history has been moved to the top of the bookmarks page and a there's a new Tools > Phone menu option for making phone call or send a texts from within the browser. See my review for more about 8.4: UC Browser 8.4 for Java Released With Bug Fixes, New Features.

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.4.0.159_Java_pf70_(Build12070415).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc84touch

UC Browser 8.3 Alpha (7-Jun-2012): New features include; UDisk cloud based storage and the App Gallery, a new home screen tab providing quick access to UDisk, bookmark backup and restore and the Quick Reads news deader.

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.3.0.154_Java_pf70_(Build12053010).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc83touch. To install it, go to db.tt/ajY88aHm with your phone browser.

UC Browser 8.2.1 Production (non-Beta) (20-Apr-2012): New features include a built in RSS reader and bookmark backup and restore. See my review for more details.

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.2.1.144_Java_pf70_(Build12041210).jad
Short link: db.tt/ajY88aHm. To install it, go to db.tt/ajY88aHm with your phone browser.

UC Browser 8.2 Alpha (21-Mar-2012): It features many enhancements and bug fixes see my review for details. This is the latest patch release that adds swipe navigation and fixes a bug that made entering URLs on bada phones impossible:

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.2.0.132_Java_pf70_(Build12032111).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc82touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc82touch with your phone browser.

UC Browser 8.0 (1-Feb-2012):

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.0.3.107_Java_pf70(Build11112416).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc8touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc8touch with your phone browser.

Posted in Browsers | Tagged Java ME, LG, Samsung, touchscreen, UC Browser, Virtual Keypad | 228 Comments

Opera Mini and UC Browser For Symbian Updated

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Dennis Bournique

Symbian lives! Opera Software and UC Browser have both released new browser versions for the Symbian platform. That makes sense as Symbian's installed base is still around 190 million, making it the third largest smartphone platform after iOS and Android in terms of current active users.

Today Opera released Opera Mini 7.1 for Symbian S60V2 and latter. According to a post the company's Opera For Phones Blog this release is focused on improvements to Opera Mini's download manager along with performance and stability enhancements. Opera lists the changes in 7.1 as:

Possibility to rename files before download
Non-finished downloads are now preserved upon browser exit and can be resumed in the next browser session
Support for resuming of a failed download
Target folder is now saved for each type of download (e.g. music, images or video)
Added warning dialog if download with the same filename already exists
Various improvements and bug fixes for Speed Dial and Smart Page
Localization updates
Connection stability improvements

I installed Opera Mini 7.1 on my Nokia N8 running Belle. My bookmarks, Speed Dial shortcuts and saved pages from Opera Mini 7.0 all survived the update. The new release worked well although I didn't notice any obvious changes from the previous version. I downloaded a 2 MB .zip file with no issues. Downloading seems much faster than before and when I downloaded a second .zip file Opera defaulted to the same SD card subdirectory that I downloaded the first .zip to.

Opera Mini 7.1 for Symbian is available now by visiting m.opera.com using your phone's built in Nokia browser. If you prefer to download Opera Mini to your PC and transfer it to phone via Bluetooth or USB go to opera.com/mobile/download/versions/. Their are separate downloads for S60V3 and latter and for S60V2. As of this writing, the Opera Mini in the Nokia Store is still the old 7.0 version so it you want the latest and greatest you will need to get it from Opera.

UC Browser for Symbian S60V3 and latter was updated earlier this month to version 8.8. Here's what UC says is new in 8.8:

Customized online wallpapers - For those who want their browser looking good, we now have a range of customized online wallpapers available on our network for download. If you’d like a change from your old default browser background, we’ve got a bunch of great ones for you to choose from!
Share to Twitter - For Twitter fans, you can now quickly and easily share links and images via Twitter. So if you come across a great picture or link you just have to share with your followers, just long press the item, then choose Share.
Improved bookmarks managing on touch phones - For those with touch phones who like to keep things organized, we’ve added new and improved ways to manage your bookmarks. On the bookmark menu you can now drag your bookmarks around to group them how you want, and use the sort function to keep them in order.
Auto-complete of search keywords - For those who want quicker and easier searching, our auto-complete function has been upgraded. It now has the ability to give you relevant suggested queries and results as you type your query into the search box.
Clear browsing history on exit - For your convenience and privacy, upon exiting UC Browser you now have the option to clear your browsing history.

I installed UC Browser 8.8 on the N8 with no problems. My bookmarks were retained and the browser worked well. UC Browser 8.8 can be downloaded directly to your phone from wap.ucweb.com or to your PC for side loading from ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/platform.html?platform=sis. There are separate downloads for Symbian S60V3, S60V5 and Symbian^3 and latter phones.

Opera Mini and the UC Browser are both proxy based browsers. That means that the browser on the phone is a thin client that's small in size and in memory requirements. The actual browser engine is part of a proxy server "in the cloud" that pre-renders and compress web pages before sending them to the phone. The proxy architecture reduces downloaded page size by about 80% which makes for faster page loads, especially on slow networks as well as reducing data consumption. The main disadvantage of proxy browsers is limited support for interactive JavaScript which means a small number of sites don't work or don't work as smoothly as they do in a direct (non-proxy) browser.

I keep both UC Browser and Opera Mini installed on all my phones that support them. I pay for data by the megabyte so using proxy browsers saves me quite a bit of money every month. I generally prefer Opera Mini as it renders pages more accurately and attractively. UC Browser is my fallback browser for the rare site that doesn't work properly, or at all in Opera.

Posted in Browsers | Tagged Opera Mini, server based browser, Symbian, UC Browser | 2 Comments

Data Saving New UC Mini 8.0 Proxy Browser for Android Now Available

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Dennis Bournique

UCWeb has released a new 8.0 version of its proxy based UC Browser Mini for Android. The new version is only available from the UC website and is not in the Android Play Store yet. The non-proxy version of the UC Browser 8.4.1 is in the Play Store, but it's just a user interface wrapper around Android's Webview class.

There are lots of Webview based browsers for Android. They are differentiated by their user interfaces but render pages identically to the Android browser. Proxy browsers pre-render and compress pages using a cloud based server. Opera Mini, the Silk browser on Amazon's Fire Tablet and UC Browser Mini are the only Android proxy browsers that I'm aware of. The main thing that proxy browsers have going for them on Android is that they reduce data consumption by up to 90% and can also be faster on slow networks.

The new UC version seems to be a relatively minor update to UC Browser 7.8, which was released in July 2011 and was the last UC proxy browser release for Android. According to UC the changes in this version include:

Brand new UI design, simple yet aesthetic.
Better performance: Faster page loading speed and secondary compression saves more traffic.
Smooth scrolling: scrolling speeds up by 20%.
Cursors added to ‘Select and Copy’, easier to adjust copy range.
Different builds for different screen sizes and resolutions: Fits HVGA,WVGA and QVGA(or smaller) screen perfectly.
Quick access to traffic statistics on Menu.

The most noticeable change is with the UI. There's a brand new start screen (image above, left) and the menus now have a gray background (image above right) instead of black. The menu icons have also been redesigned. None of the new features (bookmark syncing, U-Disk cloud storage or the Quick Reads RSS reader) from recent Java and Symbian versions of the UC Browser have made it into UC Browser Mini.

For me the best new feature in the UC browser is one that isn't mentioned in the release blurb. The browser now supports bookmarklets, browser bookmarks containing a JavaScript snippet. Bookmarklets let you do things like share the current page on Twitter, create a short URL, subscribe to feeds in Google Reader, translate the page with Google Translate or change illegible page colors to something more readable with just a couple of clicks.

UC Browser Mini is actually a dual mode browser. It's a proxy browser in "Fit to Screen" mode, which is the default. You can switch to a non-proxy, Webkit-based "Zoom Mode" by taping Settings > Browse Mode menu.

In Fit to Screen proxy mode, the browser re-formats all pages into a single column (image above, left). Pages are generally usable and readable. but the result isn't always pretty. Basic CSS features like floats and centering blocks with margin: auto, sometimes don't work (image above, right).

The browser feels fast and most of the sites I tried, including, Facebook and Twitter, loaded and worked as expected. The only sites I had trouble with were the desktop version of Google Reader, where the page was truncated after the first few items, and Google Plus which blocked me with "Your browser is no longer supported" messages on both the desktop and mobile URLs.

To download UC Web Mini for Android go to ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/platform.html?platform=android with phone or PC. There are separate versions for phones with QVGA (240 x 320px) screens and for larger screens, 320 x 480 px and up.

Among proxy browsers, I prefer Opera Mini because it renders pages far more accurately than UC Browser Mini. But if you are a dedicated proxy browser user, either because you need to minimize data consumption or are stuck with a slow network, I recommend having UC Browser Mini available for those times when Opera has trouble loading a particular page. Both browsers tend to have issues with pages that are slow to load or have complex or buggy JavaScript, but where one doesn't work the other often does.

There's a recent interview with UCWeb's CEO Yu Yongfu on All Things D where he says he wants to increase the number of UC Browser users from 300 million to one billion over the next five years. I believe that improving page rendering and an emphasizes on its data saving proxy mode are the key things that UC needs to do to the drive the browser's adoption.

Posted in Browsers | Tagged Android, server based browser, UC Browser | 3 Comments

UC Browser 8.5 for Symbian Reviewed

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Dennis Bournique

UC Browser 8.5 for Symbian was released a few weeks ago. UC is a proxy based browser similar to Opera Mini. Proxy browsers pre-render and compress pages in the cloud before they are downloaded to the mobile client, which makes them particularly suited to basic phones, slow networks and anywhere that mobile data is expensive.

Although relatively unknown in the US and Western Europe, the UC Browser claims 300 million users worldwide. The majority of UC users are in China, where the company is based, but the browser is also quite popular in India and Indonesia.

New features in this release are:

Official support for the Symbian^3 platform phones including Symbian Belle
Optimized search
Optimized data compression to increase speed and reduce traffic and cost
Support for addition languages.
Built in QR Code Reader

The biggest news in this release is that UC finally supports Symbian^3, almost two years after the OS launched. This isn't as big a deal as you might think as the Symbian 5th ed version of UC Browser has always worked reasonably well on Symbian^3 devices.

I tested UC 8.5 on two Symbian phones, a Nokia N8 running Belle and a Nokia N95-3 (S60 3rd ed. FP1). For the most part it worked well on both phones. I didn't run formal speed tests but the latest UC does seem a bit faster the previous version.

The QR code reader worked although autofocus seems to be disabled making it tricky to focus on and read some of the smaller QR codes I tried. A dedicated reader like UpCode is easier to use.

I'm not sure what the claimed search optimizations are in this release. There's a built in web search box which defaults to using Google but lets you change the default search provider to Bing or Yahoo. There's also Find in Page function which I had trouble finding in the Symbian^3 version. (It's hidden away in the Tools > Help sub-menu. Both search options work well, but I don't see what's optimized about them compared with previous releases.

UC 8.5 was generally stable on both the N8 and N95-3. The only problem I encountered was with the bookmark sync feature which caused the browser to crash on the N95-3, just as it has with every UC Browser release since 8.2. Bookmark sync worked on the N8.

If your mobile browsing suffers from slow page loads or you pay for data by the KB or MB you ought to try a proxy based browser. On Symbian phones you have a choice of Opera Mini or the UC Browser. I prefer Opera Mini's more accurate page rendering and more efficient UI, but UC Browser does seem a little faster. It's also able to open some pages that Opera Mini can't such as outlook.com. Conversely, there are also pages UC can't render that Opera can.

In conclusion, UC Browser 8.5 is a fast, capable proxy browser for Symbian phones and is a recomended upgrade for UC Browser 8.4 users. It's available for Symbian 3rd ed. and later from the UC Browser site (desktop) (mobile). Avoid downloading UC Browser from the Nokia Store if you want the latest version. The one in the Store is 8.2 and it will ovewrite newer versions without warning!