Microsoft has just released a beta preview of their Edge browser on iOS and Android. iOS users will be able to access it through Testflight, while Android users can attain it through Google Play’s app testing service. Right now Edge is only available for smartphones, but when it is officially released it will support iPads and also Android e-Readers.
Edge will synchronize all of your bookmarks across all of your devices and QR Code Reader to pull up information at a touch of a button, Voice Search to use the web in more familiar ways, and InPrivate mode to keep your browsing data private. It has a reading mode function that will make checking out websites a little more robust, by stripping away most CSS elements, sort of like the Safari Reading Mode.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft won’t bring its own rendering engine to these platforms. Instead, it’ll rely on WebKit on iOS and the Blink engine on Android (and not the Android WebView control). On Android, this means that Microsoft is now actually shipping its own version of the Blink engine inside its app.
Microsoft is also including their e-book reader that is available on Edge browsers. You can use it to read PDF files and also e-Books purchased from the Windows Store. One of the downfalls about the Microsoft e-book experience is that it is only available for people living in the United States. I cannot even download a royalty free title because I live in Canada.
In order to download the Android or iOS app you need the latest Windows Preview Build.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
