When comparing Photon vs Samsung Internet, the Slant community recommends Samsung Internet for most people. In the question“What are the best Android web browsers?” Samsung Internet is ranked 19th while Photon is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Samsung Internet is:
Samsung allows this application to be installed to non-Samsung Android devices starting with Android 5.0 Lollipop.
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Pros
Pro True desktop browser experience
In flash mode you get remote access to desktop Firefox on a Linux server. Unbeatable desktop web compatibility on Android.
Pro Can be installed on any Android devices
Samsung allows this application to be installed to non-Samsung Android devices starting with Android 5.0 Lollipop.
Pro Ad-blocking features
Samsung Internet supports Ad-Blocking features such as AdBlock Plus, AdBlock, AdGuard, Disconnect etc., but must be installed separately through Google Play, which these apps can also used in other browser which supports Ad-Blocking.
Pro Sync with Google Chrome desktop app
Samsung Internet can sync the bookmarks and history to Google Chrome desktop app, where the Samsung Internet extension for Google Chrome is available.
Pro Picture-in-picture (PIP) video
Samsung Internet supports picture-in-picture (PIP) video, which means the video that played in this web browser can be pop-out and visible in the Android screen even if the browser is minimized.
Pro Light and smooth + has chrome extensions
Pro Notifications
Samsung Internet supports web notification from various websites such as Facebook, Telegram etc. which it will also works even if the browser is closed.
Pro Clean GUI
Pro Do Not Track features
Samsung recently collaborated with Disconnect to include do not tracking features to prevent any websites to track with each other.
Cons
Con Videos are compressed twice
In Flash mode, you get an interactive streaming video of a desktop browser running on their server, but this means that when you watch videos (a major use case for Flash mode), which are already compressed, it has to be lossy compressed again to get to you, with noticeable loss of quality. So it's better to watch videos with Flash mode off if you can. There's also a bit of lag when scrolling and such.
Con Flash mode has ads
You can also get an annual subscription to turn these off, but it's $10/year. That's kind of pricey when you can get Puffin Browser Pro with unlimited service for a single payment of $4.
Con Has the filter bubble
Like chrome, samsumg internet tracks you and filters your searches.
Con Not supported by Password Managers
BitWarden and LastPass do not work with the browser.
Con No data saving mode
Unlike Google Chrome or Opera, Samsung Internet does not comes with data saving mode which is a disadvantages for users who relies on limited data usage.
Con Android only
Android dropped older iOS support after about SI 3.
Con It's Google
Data collector!
Con Only for Samsung Devices
While the competitors are vendor-agnostic, this browser is only limited on Samsung devices and can't be found anywhere else unless you pull the APK for the browser itself from the device.
