Firefox 4

The Mozilla corporation released the production version of Firefox 4 on 29th March. Unfortunately it only supports phones with ARM 7 processors; older devices that run on ARM 6 will not be able to run this app. Thus neither HTC Magic or HTC Wildfire are able to run the Mozilla browser - click here for a full list of supported devices.

A big selling point of this browser is its Extension support. The huge range of extensions available for the desktop browser is a large part of what makes Firefox so popular, and perhaps the same will happen for the mobile version.

You can install Firefox through the Android Market web site, or go to http://firefox.com/m on your phone.

Dolphin HD

This browser is an evolution of the original Dolphin browser which was one of the first alternative browsers available for Android. In 2010, the Beijing-based software team secured a large injection of venture capital, and went on to develop the HD version. At first, there was a free ad-supported version and a paid-for premium one, but the premium product is now free and the ad-supported version is gone.

One of my favourite things about this browser is its gestures, which let you define finger-swipe patterns for common browser functions, such as back, forward, close tab, go to Facebook (or any site of your choosing), and many more.

Like all the browsers on this page, Dolphin HD lets you open multiple pages in tabs, and navigating between them is simple with a tab bar just like on a desktop browser. A double tap on the page shows or hides the tab bar meaning it doesn't take up valuable screen space when reading a web page.

Dolphin HD is probably the only Android browser other than Firefox that supports extensions, and quite a few are already available.

Get it from the Android market here.

Skyfire

This is browser aims to make mobile browsing more pleasant with a couple of unusual features. When you open a web page, it collects all the flash videos it finds on that page and makes them available in a separate menu. This makes browsing video sites much more agreeable on the small screen of your mobile.

When you open a web page, there are three toolbars on screen, at the top is a tab bar letting you quickly switch between open tabs, below that is a web bar with a Home button, Bookmarks button, User-Agent switcher button, and a 'More' button, where functions such as 'Find on page', 'Select text' are located. Then, right at the bottom there is yet another toolbar, with a Video button where you can view all flash videos found on the page. As well as that it has buttons for Facebook, Twitter and various similar sites which are really just bookmarks taking you to your Facebook or Twitter pages. Also on this bar is a Popular button, that brings up a list of pages that other Facebook users liked on the current site, and also a Facebook Like button. You can customise what buttons appear on this site, although I don't think you can add your own.

It certainly has a lot of toolbars, but they don't get in the way because as soon as you start scrolling, the top two bars scroll off the page with the content, and the bottom bar disappears (pressing the menu button brings it back). Overall I find this to be a good way to offer a lot of functionality at your fingertips.

The browser is quite demanding though, and older phones such as my pretty ancient HTC Magic will struggle to keep up at times. It is also prone to the occasional crash, although stability will probably improve with future updates.

It's available on the Android market here.

Opera Mini

Not to be confused with the Opera Mobile browser, Opera Mini is my favourite browser for internet use when I'm on the mobile data network (as opposed to a fast and reliable WiFi connection). When you visit a web page, Opera compresses the content, including images, and sends that compressed content to your phone, making pages much faster to load.

Even on the desktop, Opera has always been the only mainstream browser to make sensible use of history, and this is the mobile version's second winning feature. If you go back to your previous page, Opera won't reload the page - it won't even reload the headers to check if the content has been updated. This is exactly what a mobile browser should do: pressing back will often instantly show you the page you've just seen.

There are a couple of drawbacks that mean I don't use this browser full time. Firstly, there are some graphical glitches which mean page content gets a bit distorted when scrolling up and down. Secondly, this browser has been the most unstable that I've tried, and it crashes much more than the others.

Find it on the market here.

Miren

Haven't tried this one yet, but it's free and popular with many users. Like Dolphin HD, it's another Android browser that orginates from China. Its page on the Android market is here.