Web browsers

There's a few browsers available for your Android.  The first one being, of course, the default one name "Browser".  I shall call it "webkit".

Others include Firefox, that you already know, Opera, Dolphin and Skyfire.

Let's start by first splitting them into two groups.  There's "standard" browsers, and "mobile-accelerated" browsers.  The latest being Skyfire and the Mini version of the Opera browser.  They're accelerated because most of the browser software isn't running on your device, but on their internet servers.  Those servers perform all of the queries for the pages you want to see and their embedded images, render the resulting page, compress it, then send it to your phone.  This gives a tremendous advantage in two situations: if you have a slow data connection, or if your hardware's older and slower.  In those cases, those two browsers should definitely be on top of your list.  Or rather, Opera Mini should be, since all I've been able to get out of Skyfire is bugs and crashes :(

And what if you've got a modern device with good internet access?

Your choices are the default webkit, Opera, Firefox & Dolphin.

Webkit's decent but have limited functionality.  Less so with the ICS (Android  4) version with it's new features and interesting thumb menus.

Dolphin is a mobile-specific browser, that's feature-full and efficient enough.

Firefox, being the PC version's counterpart, have a well-established name and good performance but it sadly dosen't work as well as it should on Android.

Opera's my favorite.  It's feature-full, the UI's pretty good, and you can enable "turbo" mode which makes it use their internet servers to pre-render your pages and reduce your bandwidth and processing requirement if you want.  It's the browser that better handle zooming and reflowing text on the pages you view, and it's handling of tabs is very good.

One last thing to consider is the browser you use on your PC.  All browsers try to sync your bookmarks and other data between your mobile and PC.  So if you prefer Firefox, Chrome or Opera on your computer, using it's Android counterpart might be the natural and logical thing to do.  Or the other way around... I'd never really used Opera before, but since I use it on Android I started using it on my PC too.