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Bolt Browser discontinued

By Phil Nickinson  | Dec 12 2011 | 3:10 pm  | 15 Comments

Bolt Browser

Bad news for fans of the Bolt browser for Android -- it's been discontinued follwing the split of its parent company, Bitstream. The message at boltbrowser.com says it all:

The free BOLT mobile browsing service will be discontinued. Unfortunately, the economic circumstances prevent us from running a free service going forward. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your loyalty and support. 

And that, folks, is that.

Source: Bolt; More: BitStream; via CrackBerry

Phil Nickinson

Phil Nickinson Editor in Chief

"Phil is a recovering print journalist, editor of Android Central, subtitles and street signs."

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There are 15 comments

I_Am_Incredible says:

Man. Haven't used Bolt since my HTC Hero days.

frozencloud says:

i havent use it since my bb days.

mr nruz says:

ahahaha i knew this browser wouldnt make it. i tried the beta and it freaking sucked a$$ uninstalled it after 2 days. it even looks crappy

aapold says:

I used it a lot on my (HTC) Fuze, on windows mobile 6.5...

frmorrison says:

You still can use it, just the browser will not be updated.

I tried the browser on Android, it was slower than stock so uninstalled.

bdfull3r says:

i hope they open source what is left of BOLT, give it over to developers.

icebike says:

Bolt was merely a wrapper around the stock webkit browser.

Its claim to fame was the service that it provided, which is the bit they can no longer afford to do.

That service was sort of like Opera mobile which uses a server to fetch content of the web page you asked for, and then streamlined the download (reduce image sizes), filter malware, and drop page elements that were not deeded on mobile devices. It was always only as fast as the server side.

EvanGMan says:

Meh. I doubt it'll be missed by many. Great idea, bad execution.

jc78 says:

I might miss it a little bit. There are a couple of websites that just load quicker/better, and handle better on Bolt browser for me. Sure, I have other options that will load them, but Bolt just seemed to do it better. Oh well...

Para- says:

Never used it. I personally use Dolphin Browser Mini.(HD is too clunky on a 600mhz device.)

uansari1 says:

Just as well.. It was easily the worst browser I'd tried for Android. Uninstalled it after less than a day.

elvee68 says:

I used it back in my bb storm days. Back then anything was better than the bb stock browser.

MrJazz says:

It actually was pretty good on the abysmal Cruz T301... and offered some nice features.

Jonneh says:

Yeah, BOLT was awesome in the Blackberry days.

Cadillac.Cowboy says:

Meh.

I use Opera's browsers on my computer, smartphones and when I get one shortly, tablet... All kept in sync with each other via Opera Link.

It was great to see some competition, but let's be honest, Opera is a pretty tough competitor when it comes to browsers on ANY operating system...