Check out Surfy for Windows Phone 8, combines speech with tabbed browsing

Ron

Check out Surfy for Windows Phone 8, combines speech with tabbed browsing

Looking for a cool new app to check out on your Windows Phone 8 device? How about a new web browser? Check out Surfy, a feature-rich web browser app that combines innovative speech capabilities with a desktop like tabbed browsing experience.

“The most intuitive and feature rich web browser for Windows Phone! View multiple websites with a flick of a finger, open links in new tabs, enjoy full screen reading, enable private browsing, save images, and read pages aloud with the all new text to speech feature!” the app description reads. Here are the key features of this app:

  • Mobile optimization that reduces data usage to save you money and time
  • Disable images
  • Private browsing prevents your history from being saved
  • Full-screen support
  • Save images via a context menu
  • Open links in a new or background tab via a context menu
  • Change the UI language and the language of requested pages
  • Set website viewing preference to mobile or desktop
  • Night dimmer, which decreases screen brightness when viewing pages in the dark
  • Pin pages to the phone’s start screen
  • Autocomplete – Surfy suggests links by searching the web as you type in the URL box
  • Landscape and portrait support – with the ability to lock orientation via an onscreen lock that becomes visible when the orientation changes
  • Fluid interface with desktop like tabbed browsing
  • Listen to pages using any of the phones installed languages. Surfy detects the language of the page and selects the appropriate Text to Speech voice
  • Play videos
  • Fast app resume allows you to quickly restore the app after you’ve switched out of the app
  • Hide or show the system tray
  • Share pages via Email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Surfy was designed to feature a minimal interface, with only three application bar buttons at the main screen, a new tab button on the left, a full screen button on the right, and a center dashboard button that provides quick access to favorites, options, help, and about.

Aside from the app’s voice command feature, there is also text-to-speech functionality, allowing you to listen to a webpage while you browse another webpage. The app can also utilize text-to-speech offline and switches reading voices with ease.

The app developers also tout a “full-featured browsing experience” when visiting Google owned sites, such as Google search and YouTube. Basically, Surfy “impersonates” as an Android device to enable you to log in to Google a little easier, an option which is not available on most other browsers including Internet Explorer for Windows Phone.

The app is free but is limited to three browser tabs. The paid version provides six tabs and the ability to increase the number of tabs and enable other features via in-app purchases. Try it out below and let us know what you think.