Portal ($1.99) is a full-screen web browser for the iPhone (and iPod Touch), although that description is a little misleading, since this app’s killer feature is not the way in which it hides the top and bottom bars. That would be a little mundane, and Portal is anything but.
Portal is a full-screen browser, but with a crazy cool slide-up, pop-out interface that’s entirely navigable with one hand (this would understandably have made for a very long app name). What you see when you load Portal up is an unassuming little orb at the bottom of the screen and a so-so launch screen that I immediately replaced with Google.com.
Slide a finger over the shiny orb at the bottom and three menus will pop out: one for tabs, one for general navigation (back/fwd/bookmarks), and one for actions (more on these later). If you’re brave enough, you can then slide that same finger over one of these menus to display a sub-set of menus with specific browserly buttons like Back, Forward, Bookmark, and Goto URL. Unlike most other apps on the App Store, you won’t usually press on any buttons within Portal. Instead, you’ll spend most of your time sliding your way through menus, and then releasing your finger to activate the currently selected function.
This radial layout for a touchscreen browser can take a few minutes to get used to, but after a day or two it becomes second nature, and I love how much it stays out of my way (you can even hide the orb by shaking the iPhone – neat!). It’s also more than a little satisfying watching all the menus slide in and out while high-tech sound effects play in time with them.
PUT IT ON MY TAB
There are, of course, other very good reasons for using Portal aside from its whiz-bang UI, and the super tabs are probably chief among them. MacStories got it right in their review when they noted that the tabs within Portal tend to act differently than in other iPhone browsers. Basically, as long as Portal stays open, your tabs will, too — just like on a desktop browser. This makes Portal a really great browser for people who use a lot of web apps like Gmail, Google Reader, and Twitter, because it should save a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted refreshing and reloading your web apps. In essence, this feature makes Portal your one-stop shop for web app usage, and that’s another great selling point right there.
EXTRA ACTIONS
Recall that one of the main tabs in Portal is called Actions. Some of these actions are standard fare like “bookmark this”, “email this”, or “print this”. But Portal also offers some pretty unique extras, like browser profiles (useful for going incognito or saving data while on 3G), finding text in page (with a better implementation than in Mobile Safari), and Research.
Research is probably the most interesting of all of these extras. It essentially provides your mobile browsing experience more focus when you need it, so if you’re researching for a history paper about Heinrich Heine, you can add him his name as a research subject and tag specific text selections and websites where his name pops up.
PORTAL OR SAFARI?
I could definitely see Portal as a Safari replacement for many users, although, I’ll probably be sticking to Safari as my main browser. I don’t use all that many web apps and I do most of my mobile surfing through Twitter and Reeder, and the “Open in Safari” can’t be turned to an “Open in Portal” button in iOS 4.2.1. I also think Portal could use a few more tweaks before it can really rip me away from the default Apple browser, since I still miss features like “scroll to top”, one-tap access to bookmarks (it’s three taps in Portal), and the way that Safari shows a website as it loads (Portal insists on loading a site in its entirety before showing anything on-screen).
(Edit: the developers have since told me that you can turn off this Connection Screen in the options so that pages load just like in Safari.)
PORTAL AND SAFARI!
If it isn’t terribly obvious already, Portal is an incredibly capable app. It’s more than just a full-screen enabler, and it’s more than just a pretty (inter)face — and thanks to extras like Research, you don’t even need to justify the $1.99 price as going towards a Safari replacement, since you can treat the app as a reference or research utility, as well. So while Portal may not be sitting in my home screen dock right now, I will be keeping it around because it’s still a very functional and flexible utility…and it’s also tremendous fun to show off to friends.
—
Portal was provided by Gareth Clarke for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS:
