The best way to "Desktop" browse the internet on a Samsung Galaxy S2

A long while back Scott explained a way in which he was able to browse the internet with his Samsung Galaxy S2 with a desktop display with the phones stock browser. Sadly though it seemed as if he'd been lucky as many people left comments explaining that they couldn't find the options that he had available and had shown how to use. As a result he advised people to try different browsers namely "Skyfire" and "Boat Browser", and we've come to the conclusion that using "Boat Browser" is probably the best option (we'll explain why at the end of this guide).

Of course before you read any further you will need to pop off to the market and quickly download "Boat Browser" (don't worry, it is free!) When you've downloaded  the browser you will notice that it's not, by default, showing pages in "Desktop" mode. Firstly you will need to press on the symbol in the bottom right hand of the screen (the icon with the 2 arrows). This will open up a 

a menu (like the image at the top of this guide) with an option saying "Set UA", this is the way in which you select "User Agent" and is the option you need to select.

After clicking on "Set UA" you will see a list of user agents popping up (like this list here) and you will see that "Android" is ticked, from this list you need to select "Desktop" instead. After clicking on "Desktop select "Done" from the bottom of the screen and refresh the page your on to see the "Desktop" version of the site.

After refreshing the page you should notice that the regular "Desktop" version of the website appears (as shown by this screen capture of the BBC homepage). After setting "Desktop" you should never have a mobile version of the site loading on you again as the phone tells the website you are browsing from a desktop browser.

So we do we prefer Boat Browser over Skyfire?

We think that the huge (and I do mean HUGE) amount of options available to users on Boat Browser is simply amazing though what we especially like is the easy in which it copes with a number of impressive tasks (like running youtube in the browser!). Personally I find it to run smoother than the other options (such as Dolphin, Skyfire and even the Stock browser) and the ease of use is something special.

You should also note that some of the other user agents can be used as Desktop browsers as well if you wish to try them out.

How to change the search engine on the Android internet browser

 Whilst google is by far the market leader in the search engine world it's not everyone's preferred search site. If you're one of those who prefers to use Ask Jeeves, Yahoo or Bing then thanks to the in built internet browser on Android phones your in luck. To start with you will need to enter the browsers "Settings" menu, to do this you press "Menu" on the phone and then select "More" to reveal a list of options like the list to the right. When you see the screen to the right click on "Settings".

At the "Settings" menu you will need to scroll right down to the bottom until you stumble up on the "Advanced settings" sub menu. The first "Advanced setting" you will see should say "Select search engine". Clicking on this option will see a new short menu pop up (see the screen shot to the right) allowing you to pick from the in-built search engines.




A question to my international readers here (and I know I do have some of you) can you please help me and tell me what option you get instead of "Yahoo! UK & Ireland"? Is it just Yahoo! Then the name of your country or is it something else?

How to change the home page on the default android internet browser

 Although I'm not a huge fan of the default android browser (preferring to use either Skyfire or Opera mini) I do use the default browser on a more than regular basis, mainly to keep a track of this blog whilst I'm out.

As a result of playing with the browser  I've decided to explore what you can do with it and one of the first things I did was change the homepage from the default Vodafone "myweb360" to the much more useful google.com. This guide shows how I did just that starting with the screen on the left (to get to this screen press menu and then press on more).

On the screen on the right you need to scroll down to Settings which will open a screen like the one on the left here. At this screen you will notice a lot of options, the one that you need to click on is rather unsurprisingly "Set home page". As you can see in this image the home page has been set to "http://myweb.360.com".

By clicking on the option you will get the chance to set a new home screen as you can see in the screen shot to the right here. You can type in any page that you want to open when you open the browser or a new window. If you're already on the page you can easily click "Use current page" instead of typing in the web address.
After opening a new window you will see the new home page in effect just as you can see here. This is very simple to do and although it's not enough to make me an out and out use of the default browser it is a very useful feature that you may wish to make the most of if you are stuck into using the default browser.