Given that my first weekly app review was of Opera for Android, a suitable replacement for Chrome, I thought I would look at something even a little more different when it comes to web browsing. We as consumers are always looking for quicker, more efficient means of consuming information, and we don’t want to sacrifice quality. When it comes to web browsing on Android devices, Flynx from InfiKen Labs tailors to that need.
Imagine you’re scrolling through Twitter, finding all kinds of juicy links that you want to click through to and read, but once you’ve clicked on one and read what you wanted to read, you’ve lost your place in your stream. Well, Flynx’s main premise is that you can open links in the background all while continuing to find more interesting sites, articles, videos, etc.
Clicking on a link in Twitter, Facebook, Google search and more will spawn a little bubble overlaid on your screen which is very reminiscent of Facebook’s chat heads. From there you can continue scrolling/reading and find more interesting links to click on. Once you’re ready, click on that floating bubble and all of your tabs are magically ready to be viewed. Done with a tab, or all tabs? Just drag one or all down to the little circular ‘X’ at the bottom of your screen. Poof!
You may also like: “Weekly App Review #1: Opera for Android”
Upon digging further into the app, I found that Flynx isn’t as bare-bones as it may seem. It actually has a few cool features that enhance the user’s experience. Pages loaded in Flynx are automatically stripped of advertising and other unnecessary elements to provide a distraction-free reading environment for users. Flynx calls this mode ‘Quick Read’. Don’t worry though, if you need to view the full site, you can easily switch back to a normal view.
Users can also save sites to a read-later folder which is found by entering the actual Flynx app. Sharing functionality is built in as well, so you can pretty much do anything a normal browser can do.
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Luke Larsen of Paste Magazine made an interesting point about the app in his review. He states: “The interesting thing is that although I switched to using Flynx as my default browser, it’s pretty much only used for opening links, so Chrome is still there for when I want to search for something or check a specific website. In that way, it doesn’t even feel like it was meant to replace Chrome, but instead just to be a second browser made specifically for opening links.”
I can agree with that statement in that Flynx is great for curating multiple articles on a certain topic, or even multiple tops for that matter, but for a full-blown experience I’ll stick to something like Chrome or Opera. It is worth mentioning though that Flynx has a dedicated button in which you can quickly open the page you are viewing in a different browser. Good thinking from our friends at InfiKen Labs.
Pros:
Allows you to quickly and easily queue up multiple sites for further reading
Familiar mechanics if you’ve used Facebook chat heads
Quick Read mode removes ads to provide a distraction-free reading environment
Great for multi-tasking
It’s free!
Cons:
Only can have up to 4 tabs before needing to invite friends for more – 2 extra tabs allowed per install
Some apps (Twitter and clients, Facebook, etc.) may need additional settings to allow external browser link opening
Download Flynx for free from the Google Play Store here.
What do you think about Flynx? Does the ability to quickly open multiple tabs and read them when you’re ready seem like something you’d be interested in? Let me know in the comments below or connect on Twitter – @HOOKDin!
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– A.J.
Open links in the background with Flynx. Weekly App Review #2 | HOOKD.in Given that my first weekly app review was of Opera for Android, a suitable replacement for Chrome, I thought I would look at something even a little more different when it comes to web browsing.